Where can I recover Autosaved Notes?

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Level 1

5 points

Where can I recover Autosaved Notes?

Hi all

New to the forums here and after a couple of hours browsing the web I cannot find a solution to my problem so hoping someone has experienced my problem before and reached a successful conclusion.

I am using Yosemite and I use the Notes app regularly to take notes on seminars etc because I like the freedom it gives me to use the same notes on both my iPhone and Macbook when I am at home. The autosave function has worked well for me for the past year or so, especially when I try to command tab too quickly and close the window by mistake.

Today after about three hours of note taking, I accidentally hit command W instead of command tab and when I reopened Notes there was no autosaved file. It was the file from yesterday, the file that had a lot less notes in it.

Below are the steps I've taken already to find the autosaved note unsuccessfully, if anyone knows of any other methods they will be gratefully received.

Using Terminal to find the file using -
```
find * -iname 'autorec*'
```

Navigating to Users/~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Saved Application State // There are files in here but I cannot open them (data.data, Window_1.data, Window_2.data, windows.plist)

Navigating to Users/~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Caches/com.apple.Notes // Again files but unable to open (Cache.db, Cache.db-shm, Cache.db-wal)
Navigating to Users/~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Notes // empty folder
I don't have a folder with the address ~/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Autosave Information

Has anyone encountered and more importantly overcome this problem before? As I said it is three hours of work so ideally I don't want to have to do it again.

Thanks in advance

Louis

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Mar 7, 2015 2:22 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,222 points

Mar 7, 2015 6:34 AM in response to Louis_Tet

There isn't any "auto save" file as changes are written to disk immediately/uploaded to the server.

What at kind of account is it? iCloud, Gmail, local, ...,? If it is an online account, you can check their web portal.

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Answer 2

Louis_Tet Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 7, 2015 6:42 AM in response to Barney-15E

Hi Barney-15E, thanks for your response.

Notes usually save to my Macbook and iCloud immediately as you state, it seems however on this occasion the application didn't save the note for the duration of my editing, so when I accidentally closed the program, the only saved state of the note was yesterday's update.

It seems strange that the file wasn't being saved and the changes were lost, as the program didn't crash, it was closed by user.

Logging into iCloud is showing the same state as the Notes application on my iPhone and Macbook as expected, therefore the older version of the file.

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,222 points

Mar 7, 2015 6:50 AM in response to Louis_Tet

Was it just one long Note? That may be the reason it was lost, but even then it should have been written to disk whe you closed the window.

I don't know how often it pushes the changes to the server.

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Answer 4

Louis_Tet Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 7, 2015 6:55 AM in response to Barney-15E

Yes it was one long note, I have been updating it over the last few weeks as and when I have further information on the topic.

Yes this is what I thought also, it should have been written to disk. It pushes to server every 60 seconds or so as I have been doing tests on the feature today. If there isn't a copy on disk in a temp file or something then I think it is lost, the backup to cloud has failed.

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Answer 5

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,222 points

Mar 7, 2015 7:27 AM in response to Louis_Tet

I did some testing, too and it seemed to be rather rapid. I couldn't make it lose anything.

The only thing I can think of would be if you had a Time Machine backup, part of the note might still be in the notes database:

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

They are the NotesV4.storedata. The other files are Sqlite3 helper files for the database.

If you have a Time Machine backup during the time you edited the note, you could restore those three files and see if any part is available.

Copy the current files into another location and then restore into the original folder.

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Answer 6

Dec 20, 2015 9:12 AM in response to Louis_Tet

Hello-

Yes, I had this problem last night. After I had completed a long note in the Notes app, I clicked the back button. When I returned to the note, half of my work was gone.

It usually saves it automatically, even when I push the back arrow.

Does anyone know of any way to recover a record of a notes in the Notes app as it was being created?

Thanks for any help!

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