SSSophia

Q: Need help finding notes

     Hi, I was wondering if anyone could explain or help me understand what I've done and what I could do with my notes from a copy I made of my files on an external drive.

 

     A little less than a week ago, my laptop crashed randomly and when it restarted, it froze and got stuck in what seemed to be a boot loop (term I took from best buy employee, don't know if it helps describe the situation), so I spent a while looking for ways to fix it and ultimately decided to move all my files through the target disk transfer onto an external drive connected to another mac. I dragged the major folders like Applications, Library, System, and Users over to the drive and made sure my pictures and music, etc., were all in there before using the disk utility in recovery mode to wipe my computer. I put my files back upon restarting so at that point all was fine and dandy until I opened the notes app and realized I didn't know what file type notes get saved as and where they might be, and began doubting if they'd transferred over at all. I have some ideas of what file they are now after lurking around some forums, but they have strange extensions I'm not familiar with and I hear it's better to not mess with them at all. My question kind of has two parts:    

 

1) Did my notes get transferred over at all if I just copied the folders into the external drive, never exported notes as pdfs or anything?

2a) If they did, how can I both locate the files and get them to open in notes?

2b) If they didn't, I've heard nothing really gets deleted off a computer (or is somewhere in the hard drive, something like that, correct me if I'm wrong), so is there anyone I can go to who can go as deep as needs be to pull them back out?

 

Side note: Recovery mode and target disk mode were the only things that wouldn't freeze when I tried starting my laptop up, I tried reinstalling the OS but that froze halfway through as well. I was using El Capitan before all this. I never made any backups or used iCloud to save my notes, I intentionally kept these separate from the notes on my iPhone and iPod.

 

Also, I'm not that tech savvy but I'm not techtarded either. I'm a 17 year old who uses this laptop for both school and personal stuff and I just used Google to look up how to do all the things I've described doing. I highly value these notes and will do a lot to get them back.

MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 27, 2016 1:51 PM

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Q: Need help finding notes

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  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Sep 27, 2016 2:08 PM in response to SSSophia
    Level 8 (49,683 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 27, 2016 2:08 PM in response to SSSophia

    Notes are stored in the folder

     

    ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/

     

    I've heard nothing really gets deleted off a computer

     

    To be completely accurate deleted files might be retrievable using commercial data recovery software, but success is far from guaranteed. If you did not copy the entire contents of ~/Library/ then your Notes are most likely gone, having been completely erased from the Mac's internal storage.

  • by SSSophia,

    SSSophia SSSophia Sep 28, 2016 12:24 AM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 28, 2016 12:24 AM in response to John Galt

    Thanks. I copied them, they're in there, do you know how I could open them? Or is it okay to move them to the new notes folder that was created when I restarted everything?

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Sep 28, 2016 9:23 AM in response to SSSophia
    Level 8 (49,683 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 9:23 AM in response to SSSophia

    The only way to open those files is to use the Notes app, since they are stored in an encrypted format.

     

    Or is it okay to move them to the new notes folder that was created when I restarted everything?

     

    I think that's your only option since that's where Notes is expecting it to be. Back up the existing folder (or your entire Mac) before altering its contents.