How to repair corrupted Notes

Question

How to repair corrupted Notes

I used to keep my notes on textedit files in a system of directories. Then Notes in Mountain Lion came along and I transferred everything into Notes. I enjoyed the promise of having everything synchronized to my devices and a place that brought all emails, documents, and web links that I would want in my notes together. Now some of my notes are corrupted: documents that I dragged into a note are not showing up or when they do and I click on them, Notes crashes. After some poking around, I discover that the data of Notes is stored in a database. How do I repair a corrupted Notes database?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Sep 28, 2012 10:31 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 29, 2012 3:44 AM in response to carlosmaltzahn

I'm looking for the solution to this as well.

I have simular problem where I have a note window that contains the contents of a note long deleted.

If I try deleting or modifying the contents in any way the whole notes app crashes with this error.

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x00007fff4f59d8c8

I can provide screenshots and even screencasts if needed.

Thanks 🙂

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Answer 2

Nov 25, 2012 12:47 PM in response to carlosmaltzahn

My problem as well. It will work perfectly as long as I have the two problem Notes minimized. If I try to delete, email, close either of those, Notes crashes. Otherwise notes are syncing properly between iMac, iPad, iPhone. I have gone into the library /containers and moved com.apple.notes to the desktop as suggested elsewhere. All notes were then gone and Notes didn't work. checked and unchecked Notes in iCloud. I have do not have any other accounts attached to Notes. Also, not sure when this began or how I might use to Time Machine to go back to when things were working...? Frustrating....

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,111 points

Nov 25, 2012 1:36 PM in response to carlosmaltzahn

Have you tried Disk Utility/Repair Permissions?

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Answer 4

Nov 25, 2012 4:24 PM in response to Eric Root

Yes. I backup my system drive every night using SuperDuper! which I configured to repair permissions before the backup.

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Answer 5

Nov 25, 2012 5:22 PM in response to carlosmaltzahn

Update: the original problem has not been resolved but I found that Notes works OK if I follow these practices:

(1) Don't use Notes while connected to a slow or unreliable Internet connection: newly created notes can suddenly disappear, sometimes never to be found again. Workaround: use local notes and then move them to an account once on a reliable Internet connection.

(2) The synchronization of embedded documents like pdfs and images is broken. As far as I can tell, the database corruption happens when a note with embedded documents gets synchronized to iCloud and iCloud synchronizes it with another laptop or desktop (iPhone and iPads do not synchronize embedded documents). As long as the note is ony synchronized to iCloud, images show up on the iCloud/Notes web site. But once synchronization with another laptop happens, the embedded documents turn into untyped document symbols and selecting them within laptop/desktop Notes makes Notes crash. This happens on all Notes instances, including the one that originated the note. Workaround: Don't embed any documents until Apple has fixed this. Use email URLs for linking documents that are attached to emails. At least that works on the originating laptop/desktop (see below).

(3) Email URLs only work on the machine where the email link was created. It would be really nice to have email URLs resolve on all devices that share the same IMAP email account: that would be a nice workaround for linking to embedded documents. Workaround: Don't know.

(4) Notes synchronizes more immediately with iCloud than with Google accounts (the latter can be out of sync for quite some time). My organization uses Google so I'm stuck with it for notes subject to privacy rules. Workaround: Don't know.

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Answer 6

Eric Root

Level 10

684,111 points

Nov 25, 2012 5:25 PM in response to carlosmaltzahn

Have you tried deleting the .plist from your user library? Go to your Finder "Go" menu hold the option key to choose "Library". Then go to Containers/com.apple.notes/Container.plist Delete that file and relaunch Notes.

Maybe this thread will help. Linc solves a lot of problems.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4221030?answerId=19323036022#19323036022

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Answer 7

Nov 25, 2012 5:32 PM in response to Eric Root

Just tried that. The untyped documents were replaced by pdfs but trying to open them still leads to crash.

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Answer 8

Nov 25, 2012 7:41 PM in response to Eric Root

I have been dealing with this since my upgrade, thank you so much for this. It works perfectly now!!!!

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Answer 9

Nov 25, 2012 8:24 PM in response to Eric Root

Finally this works! Thanks!

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Answer 10

dltucker

Level 1

0 points

Jan 23, 2013 11:19 AM in response to washburnello

This worked great for me, I hadn't used the notes app on my mac in a while and one note was hung up. The notes app kept hanging and crashing, until I followed your directions.

Now all is good.

Thanks

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Answer 11

jpachner

Level 1

17 points

Feb 6, 2013 9:00 PM in response to Eric Root

I just wanted to say thanks Eric. I had already emptied my cache, done a PRAM reset & repaired permissions. But your advice saved my day. Nothing like success. Again, thanks.

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Answer 12

Feb 24, 2013 10:39 AM in response to carlosmaltzahn

I had a similar problem - an empty note would always open with Notes, and would be uneditable, and uncloseable (the moment I tried either, crash). Eric's plist delete trick (look up this thread) solved my problem.

Thanks Eric!

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Answer 13

javatoid

Level 3

696 points

Feb 26, 2013 9:11 PM in response to Eric Root

Thank you, Eric! Deleting the plist worked for me!

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Answer 14

Jun 7, 2013 11:36 AM in response to javatoid

I don't run exhange but have the same issues with Mac Notes.

I have tried everything in these posts...

Any fresh ideas:

Process: Notes [315]

Path: /Applications/Apple/Notes.app/Contents/MacOS/Notes

Identifier: com.apple.Notes

Version: 1.5 (107)

Build Info: Notes-107000000000000~3

Code Type: X86-64 (Native)

Parent Process: launchd [137]

User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2013-06-07 13:34:30.716 -0500

OS Version: Mac OS X 10.8.4 (12E55)

Report Version: 10

Interval Since Last Report: 21726 sec

Crashes Since Last Report: 27

Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 22 sec

Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 27

Anonymous UUID: AE416A17-5C9A-DC6E-5228-DBA27EB4130D

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)

Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSUnknownKeyException', reason: '[<SharingController 0x7f9679054100> addObserver:<NSKeyValueObservance 0x7f9679213130> forKeyPath:@"delegate.sharedNote" options:256 context:0x0] was sent to an object that is not KVC-compliant for the "delegate" property.'

abort() called

terminate called throwing an exception

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Answer 15

jteider

Level 1

4 points

Oct 1, 2016 6:59 AM in response to Eric Root

I'd like you very, very much!

I've deleted a notes folder very important and I was desperate!

Thank you very, very much!! 🙂

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