Coming from Periodic Notes
Periodic Notes has been unmaintained for a long time. This page maps its settings onto Journals, explains how to bring your existing notes across, and then covers four things people still ask for there that are already answered here — sometimes in a different enough shape to be easy to miss.
Settings
| In Periodic Notes | In Journals |
|---|---|
| Daily Notes … Yearly Notes, each turned on | One journal per period length — daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually — kept together on a shelf if you like |
| Format | Default date format, with Note name template {{date}}. A / in the format creates folders — see A note was created in the wrong place |
| Note Folder | Folder |
| Daily Note Template | Templates — a list, where the first template that exists and has content wins |
| Open daily note, Open weekly note and so on | "Open today's note" and the matching commands for the other period lengths, which a new vault already has. See Commands you create |
| Open next weekly note, Open previous daily note and so on | Open next note and Open previous note, which step to the nearest note that already exists in the open note's journal. See Built-in commands |
Importing your settings
Journals can read Periodic Notes' settings, set up matching journals, and connect the notes you already have. It reads the community-store version and the 1.0 beta, and also Calendar's week start and weekly note, and core Daily notes.
- Where — the main settings page offers Import… while an enabled plugin can set up a journal you do not have yet; Don't show again hides the offer for good. Maintenance always shows Import…, disabled with a line saying so when no supported plugin is enabled or the enabled plugins have nothing to import. Core Daily notes is on in every vault, so it counts toward the offer only once you have changed its settings.
- Preview — each period you use becomes a journal named after it, with its folder, date format and template, and each row carries Create this journal and Connect existing notes; nothing is connected to a journal you are not creating. A journal that already writes the same notes shows as already set up, whatever its name, and offers only Connect existing notes. A Daily notes or Calendar setup that Periodic Notes already covers starts switched off. With more than one calendar set, each becomes a Shelf above the journals that land on it, named after the set — rename it there if you like, and a name you already use joins that shelf instead of making a new one.
- Week start — when Calendar starts weeks on a named day, that day is offered as your week start, unless you have already set weeks to start on it; Calendar's locale default is not offered. It starts switched off once you have weekly notes connected, because applying it moves them to the new weeks. A week start that cannot keep your current first-week rule is explained instead of offered.
- Startup — the period Periodic Notes opens at startup becomes your startup journal, unless you already have one.
- Snapshot — your settings are saved to a snapshot before anything changes, and Maintenance can restore it. A snapshot restores settings only, not connected notes.
- Connecting notes — once the journals exist, a second step lists how many notes each will connect and why others are skipped, then connects them, or you skip it; either way, closing the report finishes the import and does not undo it. A note that fits two journals is connected to neither. A note Periodic Notes found by its name alone is not at the journal's path; connect it with Bulk add by Note title.
Only enabled plugins are read, so enable Periodic Notes or Calendar before importing.
Your existing notes
The import connects them for you; the steps below do the same by hand.
Periodic Notes finds notes by file name. Journals finds them by their properties, and adopts a note that was already in your vault only when you rename or move it onto a path the journal would use — so a new journal starts with an empty calendar. For each period length:
- Create the journal with the folder and format you used in Periodic Notes, so new notes land beside the old ones.
- Connect the old notes with Bulk add: Source folder that folder, Read the date from Note title, and the format they are named with. The first run is a dry run, which only lists what it would do.
If your Format put part of the date in folders — the row above notes that a / does this — pick Note path instead of Note title: it reads the whole folder-and-name layout back, where Note title alone cannot tell which folder a note came from.
Any cadence, not a fixed ladder
Periodic Notes offers day, week, month, quarter and year, with nothing in between. Here a journal can have a custom interval instead — Every a number of days, weeks, months, quarters or years — so a two-month planning cycle, a three-week sprint or a semester is an ordinary journal, with its own numbering, navigation block, decorations, and place in Zoom out and Zoom in.
A custom interval counts from the journal's start date rather than from the calendar year, so a two-month journal starting in January runs January–February, March–April and so on, while one started a month later has every interval shifted with it. That start date is chosen when the journal is created and cannot be changed afterwards. See Custom intervals.
A different template on particular days
Templates are tried in order and the first one that exists and has content wins, and each template path takes the same variables a note name does. So there is no per-weekday setting to look for: list Templates/Daily-{{date:dddd}}.md before Templates/Daily.md, and Fridays use Templates/Daily-Friday.md once that note exists. The variants, and a language trap in weekday names, are under A different template on some days.
A monthly note that lists its own weeks
Date variables can be shifted and snapped to a boundary, so a template can name the weeks inside its own period:
## Week {{date+1w:w}}: {{date+1w<startOf=week>:MMM D}} - {{date+1w<endOf=week>:MMM D}}
## Week {{date+2w:w}}: {{date+2w<startOf=week>:MMM D}} - {{date+2w<endOf=week>:MMM D}}Shifts always apply before boundaries, so each line reads "the week N weeks after this note's date, from its start to its end". The ranges run start of week to end of week; a working-week range such as Monday to Friday cannot be written this way and needs Templater.
Which month a week straddling a month boundary belongs to is your choice rather than a fixed rule — see {{week_of_month}} under Variables.
Archiving old notes
There is no archive folder setting because none is needed. A note belongs to its journal through its frontmatter, not its path, so old notes can be moved anywhere — one folder per year, a single archive folder, or somewhere else entirely — and the calendar, decorations and navigation keep working. A journal's Folder setting only decides where new notes are created.