How to recover my lost notes

So there are basically two reasons why the notes disappeared.

1. Users accidentally deleted the Notes folder in Gmail.

--> In this case, the notes will be stored in Trash for another 30 days. Users can go to their Trash folder and retrieve back the deleted note within 30 days, however, if no action was taken, the notes will be deleted after 30 days.

2. According to this article http://gmail-miscellany.blogspot.sg/2013/08/gmail-apple-notes-app.html, the way the Notes application on iPhone communicates with Gmail is that when a user creates a note using the application, it will send it to the user's designated email account in a form of email with a label "Notes." When this happens, the iPhone does not store the physical copies, what it does, instead, is syncing to the Notes folder in the designated email account when the user wants to access to certain notes. This "Notes" label works just like any other labels. If an email is labelled as "Inbox," it will appear in inbox, and if it is not, this email will be stored in a place called "All Mail." And thus, when the Notes folder in Gmail is empty (because the emails were unlabelled,) the Notes application has nothing to sync/ access.

--> This was what happened in my case. So the solution for this is

a. Go to All Mail

b. Select the notes you created (hopefully you still remember what notes you have created)

c. Label them as Notes

And if the user's iPhone is connected to the internet, the Notes application will be able to sync the notes back on the phone.

Dear, you have two free ways to recover lost notes on your iPhone

One, Recover Deleted iPhone Notes from iTunes Backup

Another, Recover Deleted iPhone Notes from iCloud Backup

But if you haven't backup, you can try it : https://www.doctor-telephone.com/lost-notes/recover-deleted-note-on-iphone.html

You will need another device that uses iCloud, that isn't currently powered up. Here is what I did using my iPad.

Turn the iPad on and quickly turn it to airplane mode, then go to your notes. Everything should be there. I then did a copy-paste of everything and saved it in Text Edit first.

Most likely something happened between syncing and it deleted from your phone or computer. If you get your iPad to airplane mode quick enough, it won't have time to sync up with the deleted notes. Good luck!

If you synced your phone while these notes were still on it and you haven't synced again since they were deleted, you may be able to recover them by restoring your phone to your last backup (the backup includes notes). This will revert your settings and data to those contained in the backup (not just notes) so be sure to save any more recent data prior to restoring). To do this:

1. Without connecting your phone, open iTunes on your computer and go to Preferences, on the Devices tab check "Prevent...from syncing automatically".
2. Connect your phone to your computer, right-click on the name of your phone when it appears in iTunes on the left sidebar and select Restore from Backup, choose your most recent backup to restore from.
3. When this finishes you can go back to iTunes>Prerferences>Devices and re-enable automatic syncing.

I have my Ipad notes and calendar synched to gmail and with gmail you can restore some deleted items (e.g. notes from the ipad). I just went into the trash and was able to restore some notes i inadvertently deleted on the ipad.

If the notes weren't deleted, i.e., they just disappeared, AND if you have a yahoo mail account as your default e-mail, check your e-mail "My Folders" box for a folder labeled "Notes." All of your notes should be there. No syncing required for this, they are automatically updated (through the cloud, I guess), so you don't have to worry about losing your latest inputs.

Thank you so much! This worked. 100% accurate info. My yahoo account is my default e-mail. I did find notes folder and my lost notes were recovered! I have to add a note. I only see notes folder when logging into yahoo mail from a standard computer, does not show up on iphone mail. Thanks so much seesamfly I never realized how important my notes are until I lost them. I think they disappeared after doing a icloud backup. Watch out people.

So glad to hear that this was useful for you. 🙂

This was very helpful seesamfly! Thank you for posting that fix. It truly was a life saver!!!

You're welcome!

This workd for me also, but how do I get the notes from my yahoo mail back onto my notes on my iphone?

Thankyou so much! This worked perfectly and I have all my notes back. This is so fantastic I've been in a bad mood for days because I had important stuff written down and I thought I'd lost it forever. Thankyou again!

You might just have to copy and paste them back on. I'm a bit wary about putting anything in my notes for fear that I might lose them again, and this time permanently.

You're welcome, notlikepeople.

JasonMcc, I don't recall how I got them back to my cell phone; I may have copy/pasted, but I think that I synced my iPhone to iTunes and got them back. But what I have done so that I don't run the risk of losing them again is to e-mail my notes to an address that I have set up exclusively for notes. No more worries when they disappear from my iPhone.

I had the same problem and found this thread helpful, thanks seesamfly. Anyone using a yahoo mail account will find this info from yahoo partially helpful:

http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&id=SLN3688&locale=en_US&y=PROD_MAIL_ ML

My latest struggle was, how to prevent yahoo from deleting the iphone notepad entries after they move over to the yahoo mail folder (still find that weird, but, then again, what a relief to find my missing notes there).

After an agonizing run around with yahoo and rogers chat support, (rogers is the provider of mine that packages yahoo for their subscribers but know nothing about the yahoo product), I finally found a way to turn off notes from syncing which will keep iPhone notepad notes intact (but I will need to give up the back up to yahoo notes folder - the price I'm willing to pay):

From iPhone, select Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Accounts: Yahoo! > Notes - slider "off"