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Note made on iPad disappeared when syncing to Mac

I just wrote a long handwritten note on my ipad during a meeting, and when I opened notes on my Mac to view it there, the iCloud sync spinner started as usual, and I watched as the note on my ipad completely disappeared and it vanished from both devices. It it no longer on the ipad, or on the mac version of Notes, and it is not in "Recently Deleted" or anywhere else. It seems to be a bug in the sync which lost my data. Is there anything I can do to recover it? It happened as I watched. I now have lost confidence in icloud syncing.

MacBook, OS X 10.11

Posted on Sep 15, 2020 8:56 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 15, 2020 1:52 PM

If it's not in the Recently Deleted folder in Notes, then it's permanently gone but you can always try the following -- If you're missing notes on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support.

3 replies

Sep 16, 2020 2:50 AM in response to zinacef

Yes, I suspect it is permanently gone, but is there a way to prevent this in the future? Is this a know bug? It seems like a very poor design if I cannot trust that something I created may or may not vanish without my intervention. In this case the icloud sync operation itself caused the note to disappear and be replaced with the previous note, directly in front of my eyes while touching nothing. The note was never uploaded to icloud, I believe, or at least never appeared on the macbook. I suspect it is a bug in the sync algorithm, perhaps a small drift in the clocks of my two devices or something that isn't correctly handled. I will submit a bug report to Apple. Unfortunately, it seems the solution is to not trust icloud for anything important in the future.

Note made on iPad disappeared when syncing to Mac

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