How to search, browse, and export your notes

Find any note in seconds, and save your notes in a format you can use anywhere else.

Explore is a separate tool from the merge tool — it doesn't combine backups, it just lets you look inside one. Open a single .jwlibrary file, and it reads the notes inside, right there in your browser. Nothing is changed, and nothing is uploaded.

Searching your notes

Type a word into the filter box and your notes narrow down instantly. The search only matches whole words or the start of a word — searching "loss" finds "loss" and "losses," but won't drag in unrelated words that just happen to contain those letters, like "Colossians." Whatever's matched is highlighted right in the note, so it's always clear why a note showed up.

Browsing by group

Notes are grouped by whatever they're attached to — a scripture, a publication, or a specific week's Watchtower or Meeting Workbook — collapsed by default so you're scanning group headers instead of scrolling past every note you've ever written. Click a group to open it, or use Expand all / Collapse all to open or close everything at once. While you're searching, groups with a match open automatically, so results are never hidden behind a collapsed header.

Exporting your notes

Above the note list are three export buttons: Markdown, CSV, and JSON. Each one exports exactly what's currently visible on screen — search first, and you can export just a subset instead of everything.

None of these exports touch your original backup file or your JW Library data — they're just a copy of whatever text was already in your notes, in a different format.

Try Explore