Help! iCloud synced notes disappeared!

I find the weeks running up to WWDC or a new product release are very stressful for iCloud services, that may be coincidental but problems happen with alarming frequency at these times of year.

Can you do a system restore from a Time Machine backup? (perhaps do this offline - so iCloud doesn't jump in and try and sync your Notes with it's now empty database).

As for an alternate, you could take a look at SimpleNote which is free, or you could consider Drafts, which is about $5 iirc (and possibly iOS only), however it is immensely powerful, supports Actions to help automate your workflows as well as Markdown and Remonders integration - The MacPower Users Podcast, episode 136 did a big write up of this app if you want more info.

I lost all my notes synced with iCloud, too. Notes synced with gmail are here, I'm very sorry because I trusted iCloud. Never again, it is muth safer to have localy stored notes, maybe sent to mail, iCloud is not reliable at all. I also recomend my wife to use iCloud, what a mistake, she is really mad for loosing notes.

Same for me. Today I lost all notes while activating iCloud. ***! Will continue to use Google. 😠

go to gmail and cheak your apple id email and login from there u can see all the notes

i cant even find my notes in my gmail!! or any mail acounts..the recent ones and long ones getting deleted./....***** big time!!!!

some one pls help me recover.too too imp stuff

I just lost several important notes. I noticed that my notes weren't syncing across all devices. They were, up until a couple of weeks ago. I signed out of iCloud on both my iMac and my Macbook Pro, then signed back in. Some notes were there, some not. I tried shutting down the wifi and checking BOTH iPads. Too late. Syncs already happened and notes lost. Even a note a made before the sign-out/sign-in was lost!

This is really disheartening, because I have trusted Apple with data that is critical to my work and my life. No more. The message is loud and clear: Do NOT trust Apple software or services with mission critical data.

I'm not an Apple basher. I have 3 iMacs, 3 iPads, a MacBook Pro, and an iPhone. That is not counting the 3 Macbook Pros and 3 iPhones for my kids. I am a Apple Developer. I own stock (not for long).

NOTES is a basic thing. You're either signed in or you're not. Your notes are either there or they're not. Apparently, something that simple is too uncool for Apple engineers.

The first warning was the total disregard for professional video editors when the all-new improved Final Cut Pro X came out a couple of years ago. Quality control--meaning simply asking the question: Does this just work for our customers? is no longer the guiding principle. There was a mass migration to other video editing platforms then.

Funny thing is that NOTES was something that reinforced my staying a loyal Apple customer. It was really great to be able to tap out a note or an idea and know that I could access it on any of my devices. Now that I can't even trust it to BE THERE AT ALL, ON ANY DEVICE, let alone on all my devices, I'll be more likely to experiment with a different phone next time.

But whatever hardware I use, I will never trust Apple software again with anything I can't afford to lose.

There is a way to get them back but be warned, its time consuming, tedious and ridiculous:

1. Disconnect your equipment from the internet. i.e. you want to be on your local network but deny your local network the means to reach an external IP address.
2. On a donor mac, perform a time machine backup.
3. On the same donor mac, restore from a TM backup from a date you KNOW you had your notes.
4. Your lost notes should appear.
5. Migrate your notes to Evernote.
6. Restore the internet connection
7. Done.

It is a ridiculous work around, and perhaps there's a patrollong genius who knows an easier mechanic, but I have used this approach for my wife and it worked fine.

We have not used Apple notes since this happened, it is just too unreliable. evernote OTOH is more cumbersome and not as easy to use, but far more stable.

Hope that helps.

Thank you. I appreciate your taking the time to offer some help.

I think I'm going to quit while I'm ahead and have lost only some important notes to Apple's capriciousness and disregard for customer's stuff.

I've already set up a gmail account for notes. It's invasive and a pain but it'll do until I figure out something else. I'll spend a few minutes migrating the Apple Notes that are still there to the gmail account.

I'm also going to start backing up my sizeable iTunes collection to disk and buying all future music from Amazon. No telling how long before my iTunes music collection becomes too uncool for Apple to maintain! Besides, with every new iTunes update, it becomes more cumbersome and less elegant.

The way of all flesh, and software.

Thanks again.

db

It happen to me too. Well, I sync my Outlook client with iCloud and, by mistake, I'd move the Notes folder to another location and my notes was gone. I'd tried to put back the Notes folder, but it was usefull.

Someone known how to recover the Notes?

sorry for grammer, just writing this quickly.

I just wanted to write a response, just in case anyone else is reading this. Nobody at the Apple store really knew the answer I had to figure it out for myself.

My old iphone had a lot of software issues, it was then transferred to new iphone. I had to restore new iphone in order to get rid of the bugs. Also some of my notes, of course the most important ones, were not transferred to the new phone at set up. I was told to email the notes from old iphone. Well, the old iphone was not restored yet and still had problems so the emails were lost in the ethers, who knows. I didn't know until next day, should have checked email on the spot to see if sent. Anyway, so thinking they were emailed, we restored the old iphone to original settings, with most icloud data transferred, (EXCEPT the important notes, for some unexplainable reason, I've been trying to get on chat for two hours online, something must be wrong with their system, so I still don't know why, I think it's some type of glych.)

I followed some advise below, but to no avail.

I then did what the technician at Apple store advised, to restore the iphone while plugged into pc. I did that, still the important notes weren't transferred.

Now this is so weird and makes no sense,

-after restoring iphone while plugged into PC (I do not know if the restore was even needed to execute the following...so try doing it without first)

-in Settings where it lists icloud, mail, notes, reminders, phone, messages, etc.

-I clicked on Notes

-it had two selections: icloud or gmail, so weird because hotmail is technically my main email. (Again, the "mysteries" of Apple ensue)

-where it said Default account, gmail was checked. hmm, gmail? that's weird I thought

-so I switched it to icloud

-when I went back into my Notes all the notes were magically there.

I have no idea how or why, but finally at ease....

I hope this can help somebody out!

Good luck.

I've just had a note disappear infront of me?

Was clicking on another note and it just vanished from my iMac?!? and so on my iPhone..

I use Notes to sync data and reminders as its so quick... now my confidence in Notes has gone!

How do i stop this happening and getting my notes back?

Hi, I recently lost all of my notes also, even the ones that I could previously see in my icloud. I tried to think of what I had changed before I lost all of my notes before one that was made on my phone before they disappeared. I had changed my email account in the mail app, which was the email hooked up to my notes. Signing back in to this email account on my phone didn't bring them back, but upon going on my computer, I could see a seperate folder labeled "Notes" had been created and all of my notes were found in separate emails to myself automatically sent from my phone when I made a notes. Please check all folders in your emails that you have signed in with on your iphone! They could possibly not be all gone!

Yeah, a similar thing happened to me, except I lost my photos too! I haven't been able to recover them.😩