I have created my JD system folder structure in MindNode and am wondering how I can import it into Bear app or Obsidian as an index using method 1. So individual notes for every ID. If I have to rewrite everything its painful and copy paste is not much of a time saving,
Also
How do I change my MindNode into a folder structure onto my computer?
You can export from MindNode a couple of ways. All via File > Export To >
Hereās a quick mind map, letās see what we can do with it.
The first useful thing in the list is File > Export To > Markdown. There are no further options, so Export... and letās see what we have.
# My system
## 10-19 Life admin
### 11 House
- 11.01
- 11.02
- 11.03
### 12 Finance
### 13 Motor
- 13.01
- 13.02
### 14 Health
### 15 Travel
## 20-29 My hobby
### 21 Research
### 22 Promotion
- 22.01
- 22.02
### 23 Sales
## 30-39 My side-hustle
### 31 Build it
### 32 Ship it
Thatās pretty good, and will import in to Bear (just copy/paste it) really nicely. If youāre on the latest version of Bear, those headers can now be folded using the little triangle to their left.
You can also File > Export To > Text > Plain Text. That gives us an indented version of the same.
My system
10-19 Life admin
11 House
11.01
11.02
11.03
12 Finance
13 Motor
13.01
13.02
14 Health
15 Travel
20-29 My hobby
21 Research
22 Promotion
22.01
22.02
23 Sales
30-39 My side-hustle
31 Build it
32 Ship it
Also not bad, but Bear wonāt recognise that as anything special. You may prefer this? Put it in a code block?
This is where our friend @SwissArmyWrench comes in. Does johnnybgoode do this? If not, could it?..
Thanks for the ping, Johnny!
Right now, johnnybgoode canāt do this, but thereās no reason it couldnāt! Since I am already planning on building code that would allow you to export in all kinds of formats, such as your own index format you designed, plus JSON, YAML, TOML, etc, thereās no reason I couldnāt also write that code in such a way that it could read in structured data and then recreate the folder structure based on it!
I had never even considered that this would be an option some people want, but now that you mention it, it wouldnāt be a bad idea!
I would be very grateful for this because, Mindnode is excellent at planning folder structure out.
It was painful to place Johnny Decimal index numbers into it manually, But if there is code that would do that also that would be good also.
How good are you with Excel? Iāve just realised the āquick ān dirtyā way that I would do this.
Iāll type it out, and if you know what Iām on about itāll make sense. But I can do you a video later if you like as well, just let me know.
So, export-as-plain-text from Markdown. Now you have a file with one line per folder that you want to create. Bring that in to Excel.
Now use your Excel wizardry to build the full path to each of your IDs, like
10-19 Area/11 Category/11.01 ID
ā¦using lookups and CONCAT and so on.
And now just CONCAT your way to a command that will create those folders:
CONCAT("mkdir -p ", cell_containing_folder_path)
The -p tells mkdir to create the full path. So you donāt need to create area & category folders first.
If thatās all voodoo to you just let me know and Iāll put together an example sheet. Itās a bit hacky (itās heaps hacky) but it works really well for this sort of thing. And I like that you can see exactly what command youāre going to paste in to the terminal vs. running some script and crossing your fingers.
Thank you Johnny!
I think a video will definitely help, lookups are not intuitive for many.
Iām at the library this morning, will knock something together when I get home mid-afternoon.
I have found that pasting the indented structure into Claude or another GPT and asking for a bash command to create the folder structure has worked well for me at least once.
@Kelso Just checking in that you achieved your goal? Let us know if youāre still in need of help.
Thank you, yes that helped and I also have another method from a colleague, which I will share
@johnnydecimal This is a really useful video, but try as a might, I cannot get the echo command to work whereby it places the created file in the required folder. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?
Also, I had to change a few things in my entries, which was throwing the directory structure off, such as using a ā&ā in titles.
Can you paste it (the not-working command) here? Happy to have a look.
Stick it between two `` backticks like this so any special characters are left as-is.
Here is the Excel formula Iām using
=CONCAT("echo # ", [@[ID/Desc]], " > ", SUBSTITUTE([@[ID/Desc]], " ", "\ "), ā.mdā)
Which results in something like thisā¦
echo # 50.00 JDex for Genealogy  > 50.00\ JDex\ for\ Genealogy\ .md |
|---|
Pasting this creates the file, but at the root and not in the JD structure I created.
Okay, so without any file path in front of the name of the file, thatāll create the file at the same location that your prompt is at, i.e. the root.
What does your structure look like? Weāll need to modify the CONCAT to add it to the front of that file path.
Or to be honest this sort of thing is sometimes quicker just done manually. Like if youāve only got to move 50 JDex files from the root in to a category folder, just drag them over. Thatād be more time-consuming if youāve got a folder for every entry.
I have a folder per entry so about 260 entries across three areas, so Iād really rather not do them manually if possible. Iām just not sure how or where to define the path.
Iāve figured it out using a single command to create both the file structure and the .md file at the same time.
=āmkdir -p āāā & F3 & āā" && echo āā# " & E3 & āā" > āā" & F3 & ā/ā & E3 & ā.mdāāā
Nice!
