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

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.

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

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.

rockmyplimsoul wrote:

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.

One slight correction to my conclusion above ... the note did not get pushed to my other iOS devices (I was looking at the wrong note).

Apparently, when you recover a note that was previously shared via iCloud, the recovered version remains only on the device that you restored. To get the note back to iCloud you need to copy and paste it into a new note (assuming that your notes are sync'd to iCloud).

You are right. I would rely on iCloud or thrid party apps such as iPad Note Recovery (Mac) to keep a backup of my iPad notes and restore at any time should I need to.

If you did the backup of your notes before deleting then you can easily know how to recover deleted notes on iPhone by the following steps:

1. First don’t connect your iPhone directly to computer because the iTunes only saves the most recent backup

2. Now make sure that you have a valid backup as listed iTunes> preferences> devices

3. Before connecting your iPhone make sure to check iTunes>preferences> devices “prevent iPhone from syncing automatically.” Because this will ensures we don’t erase the previously stored backup. Then select “OK” and close the window after checking “ don’t sync”

4. Now connect your iPhone to your computer and run iPhone Data Recovery .

5. Select the iPhone as seen in the left bar of iTunes, as listed under the devices.

6. Select version and click on restore from options.

7. It takes a while to for iPhone to erase itself, reset and restart.

8. After the iPhone is restart you will see Set Up Your iPhone in iTunes on your computer, and now just click the restore from the backup and click continue. It will take 10 to 12 minutes to recover your deleted notes, photos, music, videos, etc.

Honestly this feature wt iPhones is all screwed up. Just to restore one long important deleted note, you have to restore an entire stored backup. I'm 99% sure that I didn't delete a note today, but I'm 100% sure I didn't permenantly delete the note from my recently deleted notes . Yes I was looking at it, and yes it's now gone, but I looked in my recently deleted notes folder, and it's also not there. I never permanently delete longer notes, because there my be something in them, I might need. Sometimes I'll edit them shorter, and those notes I'll delete. There are a bunch of shorter notes in the recently deleted folder, but not the long one I'm looking for. That note had important things to remember for the gym. For instance when it closes on different days, my gym padlock password, specific exercises, and the amount I now lift. What a pain in the arse. Luckily I have my padlock memorized, or otherwise they would have had to cut my lock off.