I accidentally deleted a note that I need. I need to restore it. I do not have a recent backup other than iCloud.

Rockmyplimsoul

Okay

I don't see Notes in the list of backed up items, as well the historical posts have been pretty clear about Notes not being part of an iCloud back-up.

You get 5 GB of free iCloud storage for:

• Photos and videos in the Camera Roll
• Device settings (for example: Phone Favorites, Wallpaper, and Mail, Contacts, Calendar accounts)
• App data
• Home screen and app organization
• Messages (iMessage, SMS, and MMS)
• Ringtones
• Visual Voicemails

Rockymyplimsoul

This has helped me a lot, thank you,

There is confusion out there and I think it 's becoming clearer to me, so if you have patience for another question.

This is the screen from my iPhone I have notes in 3 accounts:

1. Gmail (actually none)

2. On my Phone - (local)

3. iCloud - most of notes synced over from my Mac

What happens with each one? That would help me understand the best

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878

If you are synched to your Mac you can access local snapshots (if you have TM turned on- this does not mean you need an external HD for TM.)

Introduced with 10.7 still applicable for 10.8

Dartiesdad wrote:

I don't see Notes in the list of backed up items, as well the historical posts have been pretty clear about Notes not being part of an iCloud back-up.

The last post you quoted was correct, Notes are part of the backup file, you can see that here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946

Although this article is written from the perspective of backing up locally, the backup file contains the same information whether stored locally or in iCloud. I can tell from experience that restoring my devices from my iCloud backup does indeed restore my Notes -- there would be howls of pain if there was a difference between a local backup and an iCloud backup!

I think part of the problem is the confusion between iCloud storage and iCloud backup. iCloud storage are the things you can access from your device (prior purchases, Calender, Contacts, e-mail, and yes Notes). Backup is the data that defines your device settings, app data, and a lot of other things defined in the article above. You can't access the things inside your backup, but restoring from your backup puts them back in place.

Rockymyplimsoul

Wow thanks very much!

This was terrific and I understand it much better now.

What actually prompted my question was I was building a spreadsheet to compare an Itunes back-up to an iCloud back-up. I did this by starting from the documentation on an iTunes back-up and then sorting through the iCloud documentation and trying to tag the comprehensive iTunes list with the items from iCloud.

Since the Tunes documentation was silent on notes (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4859) I made the assumption they weren't backed-up.

Thanks again for your help

Shopjnr

iCloud syncing is a double edged sword... it "immediately" captures changes you want on all your devices and it "immediately" captures unwanted changes on all your devices.

Notes are not part of an iCloud backup but are part of an iTunes back-up. Do you have a recent iTunes back-up?

Cheers

Well itf it's that old then if you restore you will lose some of your stuff that is on your phone since then. So if you choose to go that way then I think you should print the newer notes from your computer as they will disappear.

ughhh We all feel your pain.

Dartiesdad wrote:

Notes are not part of an iCloud backup but are part of an iTunes back-up.

Actually, entries in the Notes app are part of your device's backup, and if you restore from your last backup then the deleted note(s) will be recovered, as long as they were present at the time of the last backup.

Keep in mind that there's a big difference between iCloud and your backup file (which may or may not be in iCloud). The notes you keep in the Notes app to get pushed to iCloud (if you've set it to do so) and any changes you make within Notes are reflected in iCloud as soon as your device has web access.

But your backup file, which may be backed up in iCloud or on your computer (depending on how you set it up) will save your Notes. Restoring from the last backup will return the Notes to the state they were in at the time of the last backup. This is why one should back up daily, either as part of an iTunes sync or separately as an automatic backup to iCloud (assuming you've set it to backup to iCloud).

shopjnr wrote:

is there a way to only restore the backup of the notes app?

Restoring from your last backup is an all-or-nothing deal ... you can't pick and choose what to restore. Syncing to iTunes and backing up are not the same, and not necessarily connected. Anytime you do a sync a backup is created, but you can backup (to iCloud) without doing a sync to iTunes. How are you doing your backup, to your computer or to iCloud?

shopjnr wrote:

ok, how do i do a notes restore from iTunes? thanks so much for your help with this.

Connect the iPhone to iTunes and locate it in the left column. Since you're on a PC, right-click on its name and select "Restore from backup".

As noted above, your backup is done each time you sync so if you haven't done a sync in awhile then the backup could pre-date the missing note. But if you have your iPhone set to backup to iCloud automatically each day (external power applied, on wi-fi, screen off) then your backup could be very recent.

Notes from "On my iPhone" are notes you may have made prior to iCloud, or at least prior to syncing them with iCloud. These are stored only on the iPhone and are recoverable from your backup (I have such notes restored from prior backups).

Notes from the "iCloud" category, as well as any other sync'd service like GMail, are stored on the host server. As far as the backup of the content of these notes is concerned, now I'm questioning if perhaps only the account information is backed up and when restoring a backup the device will simply pull the notes in from the server, as opposed to replacing what's on the server with content from the backup. It is a subtle, but important difference.

Thanks for bringing this up, and sorry if I didn't think this aspect all the way through. One can see how you might think all Notes are part of the backup, but if the server is the master keeper of the data then a deleted (or changed) note will not be recoverable from the iOS backup. I guess the way to test this would be to establish a new note in iCloud, GMail, etc. and perform a backup. Then change or delete the note and restore from that backup. I'll give it a shot in the coming days, if for nothing else but to keep my knowledge base up to date!

rockmyplimsoul wrote:

I guess the way to test this would be to establish a new note in iCloud, GMail, etc. and perform a backup. Then change or delete the note and restore from that backup. I'll give it a shot in the coming days, if for nothing else but to keep my knowledge base up to date!

I have now done this test and confirmed that Notes are recoverable from your iCloud backup.

To verify this I changed my iPhone backup from my PC to iCloud, created a new Note and then initiated an iCloud backup. When the backup was complete I confirmed that the Note had been pushed to my other iOS devices since they all share Notes from my iCloud account. I then deleted the Note from my iPhone (which deleted it from all my other iOS devices), and then selected "Erase All Content and Settings" on my iPhone. After being erased, I then selected my iCloud backup to load back onto my iPhone.

When this was all complete, the Note that I had deleted came back to my iPhone from the iCloud backup, even though it had been deleted from iCloud and all devices linked to my account. This Note was also pushed to all my other iOS devices.

Yes, there is a way to recover it.

The way I did it was to:

1. Go to my iPad (or any iDevice): Settings: General: Reset: Erase All Content and Settings. This will wipe clean the iDevice, prompting you to set up as a new device or restore from an iTunes or iCloud backup.

2. Restore from iCloud backup. I had just deleted the note, so I chose an iCloud backup from the day before. You will need to be connected to your wifi network at this point. Let it go through the motions of restoring the information. It will give you an "estimated time remaining" status bar. You need to be by your router at this point. Once it finishes restoring, your iDevice will reboot. During the reboot, your iDevice will be loading all of the information that it just downloaded from the iCloud backup. At this point, your old note will be in there, but as soon as it loads, if you're connected to the internet, it will re-sync with iCloud and you'll will right back where you were before you did the restore. I know because I did it once already. To stop this from happening:

3. As soon as your iDevice starts to reboot, turn off your wifi router or otherwise make it to where the iDevice has no internet connection. Your iDevice will finish loading the iCloud backup, and your notes will be as they were the day before or at the time of the last back up.

I only had one note that I needed to retrieve, so I copied it and opened an email and emailed it to myself. I was a little concerned that this may not work, seeing as I was not connected to the internet, but, once I reconnected, the email sent. Naturally, at that point my notes were all synced back to current, but I had the note in the email and, thus, was able to recreate the note.

Your #2 presumes you're doing an iCloud backup, which may not be the case. But whether you back up to iTunes or iCloud doesn't matter, restoring your last backup will recover the lost note.

Your #3 is completely unnecessary, no need to disconnect from the internet at all, even if you're recovering your backup from iCloud. If the fear is that your device will attempt to match iCloud, and thus re-delete the note, that is not the case. The note will be recovered and remain on your device.