MrGoodHammer

Q: Why are my notes messed up after iOS9 update?

What the flip Apple?!

I updated my iPad Air 2 to iOS 9 today. It included an update to the Notes app.

Somehow, the update has exchanged all the Returns in my nicely organized lines of text, for spaces.

Now I have to go through 100+ notes and put the line breaks back in, so all my separate lines of information aren't one big glob of text at the top of the note.

 

Example:

 

BEFORE UPDATE:

 

Shopping List:

 

Bread

Mayonnaise

Cheese

Dog Food

Paper Towels


AFTER UPDATE:


Shopping List: Bread Mayonnaise Cheese Dog Food Paper Towels



APPLE! PLEASE Please please...don't go the way of Microsoft and make your loyal users dread updating their devices, for fear of finding some hidden glitch that makes things worse instead of better!! I can understand something like this happening with 3rd party apps whose code may have incompatibilities, but THIS IS A CORE APP! It's un-deleteable...it's the simplest app in iOS...it doesn't even have a sorting option! It's an iron anvil of an app! How in THE FLIP can you jack it up??!!


Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone have a work around?

I seriously doubt a patch can fix this. The information in my notes has permanently changed.

No patch can go through and figure out what is supposed be a line break, and what is supposed to be a space.

In all fairness...my iCloud notes seem to be unaffected. It's only the notes stored on my device.

I wanted to update my iPhone today, but am pensive now.


Since I always do a full, manual backup of my devices before a major update...I will Restore Backup and see if I can archive just the notes on my ipad somewhere. Perhaps a sync with Outlook will do the trick.

iPad Air, iOS 9, null

Posted on Sep 18, 2015 1:28 PM

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Q: Why are my notes messed up after iOS9 update?

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  • by ChrisJ4203,

    ChrisJ4203 ChrisJ4203 Sep 18, 2015 1:29 PM in response to MrGoodHammer
    Level 9 (57,902 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 18, 2015 1:29 PM in response to MrGoodHammer

    You are not addressing Apple here. This is a user to user support forum. So all of the "Apple, please" and the "what the flip" are not getting to whom you wished them to get to. Feedback to Apple goes here. http://www.apple.com/feedback and click on the appropriate subject area. I don't have any notes currently, so I cannot say if mine acted the same way as yours did. Although I haven't updated my iPad Mini yet, getting ready to, so I guess I can create a note similar to yours and see what happens.

  • by MrGoodHammer,

    MrGoodHammer MrGoodHammer Sep 18, 2015 1:34 PM in response to ChrisJ4203
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 18, 2015 1:34 PM in response to ChrisJ4203

    Thank you Chris. I'm aware that my post isn't going directly to Apple, but to the community at large. Mostly, I am blowing off steam in Apple's general direction, but will be submitting a direct support ticket shortly.

     

    Looking forward to seeing if your Test notes are affected.

  • by ChrisJ4203,

    ChrisJ4203 ChrisJ4203 Sep 18, 2015 1:38 PM in response to MrGoodHammer
    Level 9 (57,902 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 18, 2015 1:38 PM in response to MrGoodHammer

    I can understand frustration, but if you know it wasn't going to Apple, why did you write it that way?

  • by ChrisJ4203,

    ChrisJ4203 ChrisJ4203 Sep 18, 2015 2:36 PM in response to MrGoodHammer
    Level 9 (57,902 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 18, 2015 2:36 PM in response to MrGoodHammer

    I upgraded my iPad Mini with iOS 9. I decided not to update Notes at first to see what that would do. I had typed in the same list you did. There was no change. I went into the Note app to the area to upgrade it to the latest version, and then checked, no change. I've powered the device off and back on again, after force closing Notes, no change. Not sure what might have happened with yours, but I'm sorry (in a way) to report that mine did not react the same way that yours did. And unfortunately, I cannot think of a reason it would have done it as well.

  • by golfgrouch,

    golfgrouch golfgrouch Sep 18, 2015 11:01 PM in response to MrGoodHammer
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 18, 2015 11:01 PM in response to MrGoodHammer

    I have the same exact problem with line breaks on my iPad Mini 2.  Oddly, some notes are not affected, but most are.  It is definitely related to the new Notes app.  When I later upgraded my iPhone 5 to iOS 9 I intentionally did not update to the new Notes app and the formatting on the iPhone is fine.

     

    One workaround I'm doing is to email the notes directly to myself from my iPhone with the correct line breaks.  I copy-paste the email text into the new Notes app on the Mini.  It's certainly not an acceptable workaround, but it is better than manually inserting line breaks.

     

    I hope someone will come up with a better solution.

  • by golfgrouch,

    golfgrouch golfgrouch Sep 18, 2015 11:33 PM in response to MrGoodHammer
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 18, 2015 11:33 PM in response to MrGoodHammer

    OP, backup your Outlook data before syncing with your iOS devicesFYI, I usually sync my iOS devices with iTunes for Windows and sync Notes to MS Outlook.  After I synced my Mini with the new Notes app to Outlook, it messed up my Outlook data.  I now have duplicate notes: the original note and a duplicate without line breaks.  What a nightmare!

     

    I suspect that there is an incompatibility with the new Notes file format and MS Outlook.

  • by ChrisJ4203,

    ChrisJ4203 ChrisJ4203 Sep 19, 2015 7:13 AM in response to golfgrouch
    Level 9 (57,902 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 19, 2015 7:13 AM in response to golfgrouch

    FYI, my iPad Mini is the first one. I also use Outlook on my computer and my notes are synced. I upgraded my 5s to the new Notes and it did not affect any of them I tested. It did not affect my iPad, but then my original Mini gets the upgrade to Notes, but not the ability to draw. Since I sync with Outlook on my Windows computer, that affects your contention that it is Outlook incompatibility.

  • by golfgrouch,

    golfgrouch golfgrouch Sep 19, 2015 8:38 AM in response to ChrisJ4203
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 19, 2015 8:38 AM in response to ChrisJ4203

    In iTunes, do you still have this option for your devices?:

    Sync Notes with Outlook v01.jpg

    This option is gone from my iOS 9 devices.

     

    If your Outlook notes data looks OK, I recommend backing up your notes *.pst file as a precaution.  I wish I had backed up my data.

  • by ChrisJ4203,

    ChrisJ4203 ChrisJ4203 Sep 19, 2015 8:44 AM in response to golfgrouch
    Level 9 (57,902 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 19, 2015 8:44 AM in response to golfgrouch

    I still see that in my iTunes. As far as Outlook, I always auto archive Outlook, and my Outlook.pst file and the archive file are part of my daily computer backup as well.

  • by golfgrouch,

    golfgrouch golfgrouch Sep 19, 2015 9:05 AM in response to ChrisJ4203
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 19, 2015 9:05 AM in response to ChrisJ4203

    Do you still have that option for all of your iOS 9 devices?  What is your version of Outlook?  Mine is 2013.

     

    Here's a related discussion of the issue some of us are experiencing:

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7223922

  • by ChrisJ4203,

    ChrisJ4203 ChrisJ4203 Sep 19, 2015 9:18 AM in response to golfgrouch
    Level 9 (57,902 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 19, 2015 9:18 AM in response to golfgrouch

    I'm still on Outlook 2010. And I am still using Windows 7, I see many of the posters there are using Windows 10. One other thing I noticed with one of the posters was they referenced iCloud Notes. I do not use iCloud, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it.

  • by golfgrouch,

    golfgrouch golfgrouch Sep 19, 2015 9:46 AM in response to ChrisJ4203
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 19, 2015 9:46 AM in response to ChrisJ4203

    Thanks for your help.  I am still on Windows 7 too.  I do not use iCloud notes either.  My iTunes version is 12.3.0.44.

     

    This is what iTunes looks like  my iPhone 5 with iOS 9 with the new notes app not upgraded yet:

    Missing Sync Notes with Outlook v01.jpg

    As you can see, there is an option to sync calendars with Outlook, but not notes.  So strange.

  • by ChrisJ4203,

    ChrisJ4203 ChrisJ4203 Sep 19, 2015 10:12 AM in response to golfgrouch
    Level 9 (57,902 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 19, 2015 10:12 AM in response to golfgrouch

    I know it was there last night when I looked, but I'm not in a position to look right now. I'll check back later, but I know it was there as I was searching something last night about notes for someone else, regarding the iPad and the new sketch function.

  • by cubanastarn,

    cubanastarn cubanastarn Sep 19, 2015 3:15 PM in response to MrGoodHammer
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 19, 2015 3:15 PM in response to MrGoodHammer

    I've been trying to resolve this same issue on my iPad AIR and IPhone 6 wirh Apple since 10 am EST this morning. I've restores the iPad from the device itself once and once from iTunes and the iPhone from the devise itself once. I'm currently waiting for them both to be fully restored from my iCloud backup, however, the rep who's been helping me contacted tier two who indicated that I should try to

     

    1. Log out of iCloud from my devices simultaneously

    2 Answer yes when it asks if I want to delete the information on my phone after signing out of iCloud

    3. Sign in to iCloud again

    4. Answer yes when it asks if I want to merge the information.

     

    Let me know if those steps work!

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