How do you backup Notes?

Thanks! I'm not sure it can transfer back though. Similar to PhoneView which I did buy and love.

I don't the "On My Mac" section - Not sure how to create it or why it's not there.

Any info on how to create?

I have Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

So it appears at this point in time the Notes app on OS X ML doesn;t get backed up in Time Machine, i.e like all other apps, you can't open the app, then 'go to Time Machine' and it brings up Notes history, it just seems to bring up Finder instead..

I hope Notes will be included and work just like other apps do when backed up via Time Machine.

Bubs_69 wrote:

So it appears at this point in time the Notes app on OS X ML doesn;t get backed up in Time Machine, i.e like all other apps, you can't open the app, then 'go to Time Machine' and it brings up Notes history, it just seems to bring up Finder instead..

I hope Notes will be included and work just like other apps do when backed up via Time Machine.

The "notes" are stored here:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.notes/Data/Library/CoreData/ExternalRecords/

Then it is burried in folders with unique ids.

You can dig into that folder to find them and use Time Machine to restore. They are saved with a name like p16.notesexternalrecord.

I haven't played with restoring them and seeing what happens when your recover in Time Machine then open Notes. I didn't have any that I deleted previously.

the .externalrecord files are not your notes. They are the spotlight previews of the notes. The notes themselves are in a sqlite database file.

Potato, potahto.

The point is to back them up and recover individually. Seems to come as close as anything.

Are you sure those aren't the notes and the SQLite database is just the index?

I won't have the time to dig into it deeper, so I'll leave that up to those who need the feature.

Barney, are you saying that is how you get to the notes backup in Time Machine? I deleted some notes accidentally. I forgot that my old iPhone that I was giving to my son would sync with my new iPhone and iPad. I was deleting things off of what I was giving him so he would have the space. Then I realized it was telling my two devices to delete them. So I turned Time Machine off right away so it wouldn't get the message to delete those, in case it worked that way. So I have searched in Time Machine by the word Notes and by the name of the Individual missing notes, but that didn't get me anything. So when you say the noter are at "

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.notes/Data/Library/CoreData/ExternalRecords/

Then it is burried in folders with unique ids.", how do I get to that? Open the first and then the next ,etc.?

I need to turn my son's phone notes OFF so they won't sync with mine anymore or he will be deleting the rest of my notes.

Yes, dig into each folder. You'll find some notes in there. I use Quicklook (press space bar) to read them.

If, as someone mentioned, they are just images, you at least can recreate the text note from the picture.

I found mine inside the ImapNote/_records/0 folder inside the unique ID folder at the above path.

Yes I am sure. The SQLite database is the store of record.

That said, for anyting "on the network" (i.e in iCloud), backing up and restoring the database isn't that useful because iCloud is considered the "store of record" so if you delete stuff and it syncs to iCloud, then restoring the SQLite database won't do much good: The next time the machine goes online the iCloud version of things (i.e. deletes) will bowl over the local copies.

Then, where is the database file?

/Users/blloyd/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes

These are the files:

FYI if you want to see EVERYTHING in notes you could go to that directory and type "sqlite3 NotesV1.storedata .dump" and it will spew it all out as ASCII. Do a redirect (i.e. sqlite3 NotesV1.storedata .dump > notesbackup.txt" and you have a backup. You could then figure out the SQLite command to re-load that backup if you ever need it (this is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)

I'll just write a SQL script for him.

Right, that's what has happened to me twice now. Once the note seemed to just delete itself on one device and I rushed upstairs to get it off the other device and poof, right in front of my eyes, it was deleted via iCloud. This time, though, I did it because I forgot that my son's iPhone (my old one) was still synced with my new phone and iPad and I was deleting notes from his and it then deleted them off of mine before I realized that was happening.

I don't know SQL or ASCII. I am going to see if I can follow what you are saying in Time Machine.

Hey there for everyone. I had the same problem, I wanted to restore my notes from my Time Machine Backup.

So its quite easy. You just open:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.notes/Data/Library/CoreData/ExternalRecords/

and the same path but on your backup. Then you copy the Folder with the large number onto your hard disk.

And the last thing you have to do is to open:

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

and replace the SQlite databases with the ones of your Timemachine Backup.

Im not using iCloud so I dont know if this will work out when you sycn the next time. For me its okay 🙂