Disappearing iPad note markups

Same here!!!

Please fix this problem...

For somehow reason, I am using apple pencil to write notes on PDF, and suddenly it scrolled up automatically and all the notes just gone...it's really annoying and hours of work just disappeared.

Dear Apple Support,

Please read this student’s post carefully. This is not an issue of lost notes. Yes, the word notes was used, but that is because the student is adding notes (meaning their thoughts, NOT the confusing name for your app that happens to be called Notes).

I have the same problem. I open a pdf in the Files App, and add a lot of markup (my thoughts) which are gone, poof, the next time I access the file. There are no incremental backups or versions saved anywhere? Really? In 2021? iPads in this regard are utterly unreliable tools for crucial work.

Lastly, I see that the moderator changed the title of the original post - I assume to make it appear to be about the Notes app, which the original post is not.

Thank you for carefully reading and considering our posts.

There are no solutions. Just happened a few hours ago 160 pages into a deposition summary for me. Been looking at every online link ever since. The solution is not to use pencil, or at best ONLY used for note taking in OneNote or some similar software. Not in preview. It’s a gimmick for artists, not for business use. This has been an issue for years and never even acknowledged, much less resolved from everything I’ve seen.

Same exact thing has been happening to me. I'm also a law student who got this iPad to take notes. All the markups on the files I worked on today are gone. Hours of work lost. And this is not the first time this has happened to me.

This is unacceptable and needs to be fixed.

Same problem here. My iPad Pro 2018 actually force quit the preview of the .pdf as I hit “Done.”

After marking up like 48 pages.

All of them gone. All of my time wasted.

For a vehicle of productivity, I’m feeling very unproductive this morning.

Apple, you need to fix this. Markups need to be automatically saved or backed up somewhere in real time.

This is a user helping user technical support community.

Cognizant and responsible Apple engineering employees and teams NEVER read nor participate in these user to user technical support communitirs.

If you want to keep alerting Apple to this long standing issue, you are encouraged to leave unacknowledged feedback directly to Apple by tapping the Apple product feedback page link below or contact Apple customer support using the Get Support link in the far upper right hand corner of every community support page.

Tap the Apple feedback page link below.

Feedback - iPad - Apple

Good Luck!

Same here! I have the same problem with my iPad Air, bought in December 2021. I bet most students have an iPad to be able to take notes on their books and pdfs. However, notes taken on pdf articles all of a sudden disappear. I personally could not care less about video editing, photo taking, ar and all other unnecessary features of iPad. This is a priority feature apple. Please fix it.

I've had the same issue two separate times while editing documents with the Markup feature on my iPad. While I was trying to zoom in or out, the document just went berserk for second, and afterwards ALL MY EDITS WERE GONE! Very very very frustrating!!

What I finally figured out today is that there is no way of getting your edits back, UNLESS you:

A: Place your document on the cloud (so you can later open it on your desktop)

B: Save it every stopping point you have (as often as possible).

C: When you eventually lose your current edits, leave the document open for a few minutes just in case the edits re-populate (the first half of my edits came back in one of the incidents).

D: Once you figure out that not all your edits will repopulate, open your document on your desktop.

E: Once on the desktop, got to File->Revert to -> Browse All Versions and restore to the last one that hopefully has 90% of your edits (because you followed step B).

Hopefully this helps. A little.

PS. If you didn't save your edits occasionally, but you worked on your document off and on for hours or days, your device might have random versions saved for you.

I have the same issue, but found out that after doing a Markup on large PDFs, after hitting the Markup button again (to disable) there is a short animation „saving images“. On small PDFs you can’t see this (loads to quick).

I also noticed that my noted disappear more often when I just hinted done after editing. When I disabled markup Frist waited a few seconds and then hit done it disappeared less often.

Another thing is that after closing the PDF (when stored on iCloud Drive) it’s updating the file. Instead of „Modified by Me“ it says some thing like „updating file“. When I open the file while it’s still updating, most of the time my noted disappeared.

It is no work around at all, because first of all it still happens quiet often and second of all this shouldn’t happen in the first place.

This is a really annoying issue ans frustrates me every time.

I am just hopping to be fixed soon from Apple.

@andyhuish, @selaudin, @DeeEmAB, @tala245, @AquiDonDiego, @rabbleryan, and others,

Again, if you want Apple to take action, please post a bug report to Apple here: Feedback - iPad - Apple. Please direct Apple to this discussion thread since they obviously are not monitoring this.

If enough of us report this en mass on an official bug report, and point out the gravity of the situation; hopefully Apple will pay attention.

In the meantime, if you are willing to shell out the subscription fee, Adobe Acrobat works.

Hey Seanyal01,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities!

We see from your post that you're having trouble with lost notes.

We can help!

Are you able to recover them with these steps?

If you're missing notes on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Cheers!

If EVERYONE here keeps on insisting on using the Apple Notes apps to edit PDFs and dicuments, that is really an unsuitable app for ANY real,,serious note taking and document editing purposes, everyone that posts here is going to get burned, at some point, every single time!

I have LONG since given up on using the free Apple Notes app for ANY important note takng or document editing.

The Notes app ONLY get new features once a year and trust, reliability of this app has always remained and issue/problem.

Find a good, reliable third party app ( if it is a paid app, so be it ) to do ANY serious work!

A new free note/document/PDF app to look at? Collanote.

Tap the link below.

Collanote

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/collanote-note-journal-pdf/id1540956268

Use a notes/document/PDF creation and editing app that is reliable and suitable for purpose, already!

The markup feature is a part of the Apple Notes apps, regardless of how it is accessed to edit notes, documents, PDFs.

The Notes app has NEVER, EVER been a very good app. Free, or not.

Find anoher third party app that is suitable for purpose and just STOP playing around with editing of notes/documents/pdfs using the Files app preview markup mode!

Just open the note/document/PDF in a reliable third party app and edit these text files from DIRECTLY within the third party app!

Enough with this insanity, already!

Hi Everyone who has this problem.

Please report this bug to Apple here: Feedback - iPad - Apple. I just did. I also directed Apple to this discussion thread in my bug report; I suggest you do the same. You should also tell them how this personally affected you.

If enough of us report this en mass on an official bug report, and point out the gravity of the situation; hopefully Apple will pay attention.

How I described the problem on the Apple bug report was that using the Apple Pencil to markup PDF files (i.e., in Preview or whatever Apple calls the equivalent on the iPad) disappears.

Again, I suggest that all of us here report this serious issue as a bug report here: Feedback - iPad - Apple.

Dear ivanka242, billandmaryc, emily_david , shachar196 and others like me having this issue, please report the problem to Apple here: Feedback - iPad - Apple

I do not know if any of Apple's product managers monitor this thread (they really should!).