# Bring In Your Old Notes > Available by request: hand Groupthink a pile of notes you already wrote about people, and each one lands on the people it mentions. Source: https://groupthink.com/docs/bring_your_old_notes/ Last updated: 2026-10-27 If you kept notes about people before Groupthink, in text files, Markdown, Word documents or one long running file, you can bring them all in at once. Groupthink splits them into separate notes, dates each one by when you wrote it, and files it on every person it mentions. A note about a dinner with three friends lands on all three. ## Request access Bringing in old notes is available by request. It is not on for every account yet, so if you don't see **Bring in old notes** on the **Paste meeting notes** card, it is not turned on for you. To ask for it, email [support@groupthink.com](mailto:support@groupthink.com) from the address you sign in with and say you want to bring in old notes. We turn it on for your account and write back. The rest of this page describes how it works once it is on. Until then, you can bring in notes one at a time with [Typed & pasted](/docs/quick_log). ## Summary - Available by request. See [Request access](#request-access). - Bring up to 20 files at a time: text (.txt or .text), Markdown (.md) or Word (.docx), or a zip of them. A zip counts as one file and can hold up to 2,000. A folder of any size counts the same way. You can also paste many notes into one box. - Each note is filed on every person it names, including the people you met. When a name could be more than one of your people, you pick. When it matches nobody, you decide whether to add them. - A big pile can take more than a day, because Groupthink reads a share of it each day. The progress screen says about how many days. It carries on by itself. - The import's own screen shows how far it has got and where every note landed. ## Where to find it Bringing in old notes sits on the **Paste meeting notes** card, next to the **Paste notes** button. Click **Bring in old notes**. You can reach the card from either place: - **Conversations**: in the left sidebar, click **Typed & pasted** under **Conversations**, then **Source settings** to open the **Typed & pasted settings** pane. The card is also in the **How things get in** pane on the full Conversations feed. See [Conversations](/docs/conversations#source-settings). - **Settings**: open Settings and choose **Capture**. The card is in the **Ingestion** section. The **Drop anything** card you open from the **+ New** menu is a different place: it takes one note or one file. See [Typed & pasted](/docs/quick_log#pasting-notes-or-a-transcript) and [Files](/docs/capture_uploads). ## What you can bring The screen has two tabs, **Files** and **Paste many**. ### Files Drop files onto the box, click **Choose files**, or click **Choose a folder** to pick a whole folder. Groupthink reads: - **Text files** (.txt or .text) - **Markdown files** (.md or .markdown), including notes from apps that write Markdown with a date at the top, such as Obsidian - **Word files** (.docx). Older Word files (.doc) are not read; save them as .docx first. - **A zip** of any of these. Folders inside the zip are fine. The files you picked are listed under **Ready to bring in**, each with a **Remove** button. Anything else you picked, such as a PDF or an image, is listed separately as not being brought in. When the list is right, click **Bring them in**. One import takes up to 20 files, and a zip counts as one. A folder of any size works too: your browser packs it into a zip before it goes up, so it counts as one file. A very large folder can become a few zips, and each counts as one. The folder is listed under **Ready to bring in** as one entry, with how many files it holds. Notes from a folder are dated the same way as files you pick one by one. Groupthink still sees the names of the folders inside it and each file's last-changed time, so a note in a folder named for a year or a month is still dated from it. Other limits: - A file can be up to 25 MB. A text or Markdown file inside a zip can be up to 5 MB. - A zip can hold up to 2,000 files. A zip inside a zip is not opened; unzip it and bring in its files. - One import makes up to 2,000 notes, from up to 50 MB of text. Over that, the import stops and asks you to split the pile into smaller imports. For photos, PDFs and voice memos, use [Files](/docs/capture_uploads) instead. ### Paste many Paste your notes into the box with a line of three dashes (`---`) between each note. Each part between the lines becomes its own note. Then click **Bring them in**. If the text is too long for one import, the screen says so. Split it in two and bring in each half. ## How a pile is split into notes A file is one note unless it clearly holds several. Groupthink treats a file as several notes when it has: - **Two or more date headings.** A Markdown heading with a date in it, such as `## March 14, 2023` or `## Coffee with Sam, March 14, 2023`, or a line that is only a date, such as `2023-03-14` or `Tuesday, March 14, 2023`, starts a new note. A line like `Date: 2023-03-14` inside a note does not. - **Two or more separator lines.** A line of three or more dashes, equals signs, asterisks, underscores or tildes, with a blank line above it, separates notes. One separator alone is treated as a pause inside a single note. In pasted text, every separator line splits, whether or not there is a blank line above it. In a Word file, headings set with Word's heading styles count as headings, so a running file of dated headings splits the same way. ## How each note is dated Each note is dated by when you wrote it, not by the day you brought it in. Groupthink looks, in this order, at: 1. A date in the note's first three lines, or its heading. 2. For a file that holds just one note: a `date:` or `created:` line in the file's front matter (the block between `---` lines at the very top), then a date in the file's name or the folder it is in, then the time the file was last changed. A file that holds several notes does not hand its name or its time to each of them. A note Groupthink finds no date for is kept with no date, rather than being dated today. A date later than today is read as today. Pasted notes have no file names, so each pasted note is dated only from a date in its own first lines. ## Who each note lands on Groupthink reads each note for the people it is about and files it on all of them. That includes the people you met, not only the people you talked about: a note headed `Coffee with Sam` lands on Sam, and on anyone the two of you discussed. You are not counted as one of them, and neither are companies or group addresses. When a name matches one of your people exactly, the note is filed on them. Otherwise, nothing is guessed: - **A name that could be more than one of your people.** Three people named Sarah, say. The import screen asks **Who did you mean?** and shows the name, how many notes mention it, and a button for each person it could be. Click one and every note in this import that names them is filed on that person. Click **None of them** if it is someone new: the name moves to **People we couldn't match**, below, so you can add them. If you skipped that name before, it is not offered again, and those notes are not filed on anyone for it. - **A name that matches nobody.** The import screen lists it under **People we couldn't match**, with how many notes mention them. Click **Add as a new person** to add them, and every note in the import that named them is filed on the new person. This works for a name you answered **None of them** for too: you get a new person even if you already have someone with that name. Click **Skip** to leave them out for good; a name you skip is not offered again. Nobody is added without you saying so. A note that names nobody Groupthink could file it on is listed under **Notes we couldn't file on anyone yet**, with its date when it has one. You can file it yourself from [Conversations](/docs/conversations), under **Typed & pasted**, where it has an **Attach to contact** button. ## While it reads Once the import starts, the screen tells you your old notes are on their way in, and you can leave the page. It carries on by itself. The progress screen, headed **Your old notes**, shows: - A line saying what it is doing: reading your notes, filing each one on the people it mentions, waiting for tomorrow, or done. - While it runs, about how many days the rest will take at today's reading limit. This line is not shown when there is no daily limit, such as when you read on your own AI key. - How many notes have been read out of how many were made, and how many people have been updated, with a progress bar while it runs. - How many notes were already in Groupthink and so were skipped, and how many could not be read. - Any files that could not be read, each with the reason. ### Why a big pile takes days Groupthink reads a share of an import each hour, up to a daily reading limit. When it reaches the limit, the import waits: the screen says it has read today's share, how many notes are left for tomorrow, and that the rest continue on their own. The next day it picks up where it stopped. Your most recent notes are read first, and notes with no date last, so the people you saw lately fill in first. Nothing fails because of the limit, and you do not need to start the import again. ### Coming back to an import On the **Paste meeting notes** card, under the buttons, **Your note imports** lists your imports, newest first. Each row shows the day it started, where it stands (**Reading**, **Filing notes**, **Continues tomorrow**, **Done** or **Couldn't be read**) and how many notes have been read. Click **See progress** to open it again. ## Checking what landed where The progress screen has a **Where your notes landed** list: every person the import filed notes on, with how many. Click a name to open that person's page and read what was added. Bringing in the same pile twice adds nothing new. A note that is already in Groupthink is counted as already here and skipped. ## If an import fails If a whole import could not be read, the progress screen says so, with the reason, such as a zip with more than 2,000 files or more notes than one import takes. Click **Try again** to go back to the first screen and start a new import, with a smaller pile if the reason was size. ## What it does not take yet As of October 2026: - **Apple Notes** has no way in. Copy notes out into text files, or use **Paste many**. - **Evernote** exports (.enex files) are not read. - **PDFs, images and audio** are not read by this import. Use [Files](/docs/capture_uploads) for those, one at a time. ## Related - [Typed & pasted](/docs/quick_log): one note at a time, from the capture box. - [Log an Interaction](/docs/log_an_interaction): notes for one person, with a date. - [Conversations](/docs/conversations): every note Groupthink took in, including the ones you brought in. - [Where Groupthink's Memory Comes From](/docs/memory_sources): every source in one place.