Restore Notes from Time Machine (El Capitan)

If you recently deleted notes, they should go to a folder called Recently Deleted. If your sidebar isn't shown in Notes, enable it to see the folder. Deleted notes should be in that folder for 30 days.

I wish I knew how to tell you to restore the notes, but I haven't found a way to do that. Notes are contained in your user Library/Containers folder.

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes

From that location:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/ -- 3 files containing the databases

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/CoreData/ExternalRecords/ --- several folders containing the records.

I've had no success restoring notes, but I've seen where others have in the past. I use iCloud for notes. One thing I've seen was to make sure your computer is offline from the internet before restoring notes. I haven't tested any of this.

You could just try restoring the whole com.apple.Notes folder from Time Machine and see what happens. Guess success may depend on who is the provider of notes, or is it just local notes on the Mac.

I'd like to know the answer to this myself. I've even tried testing this yesterday with On My Mac notes and can't seem to restore those either. Others said in the past they had success, but maybe I can't seem to duplicate that.

As you said, it would seem that storing notes locally would have a hard backup copy in TM, but doesn't seem to be that way.

For the 30 day feature for Recently Deleted, I'm not really sure when that started. The folder only shows up when you have notes in it for 30 days or less from deletion.

If I find any new info, I will post back.

I have figured out how to restore my notes. Seems my note database is updated in the Groups container folder. Trying restoring the 3 files in that folder:

The files to restore are:

~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes

NoteStore.sqlite

NoteStore.sqlite-shm

NoteStore.sqlite-wal

Others have success with these files:

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

Notes/NotesV6.storedata

NotesV6.storedata-shm

Notes/NotesV6.storedata-wal

Hey All I just SUCCESSFULLY RESTORED NOTES ON el capitan 10.11.4

and i gotta tell you it's super super dooper easy

go and do this exactly as I say and you will love it!

>>

1. closing the Notes app

2. then moving/cutting out to another blank folder all three / 3 NoteStore.sqlite.* files from ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/,

3. and putting the files from the backup in their place

4. then opening Notes

you should see all your past notes.

THEN: backup asap that container and also the normal container here : ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/ just to be safe. keep all your backups done regularly...

this really did the trick!!!

Hello! I have the same problem here... I deleted my iCloud backup accidentally but have my time machine backups. I already found in an old TM backup the files with the names of my old notes, so I know they're there, but still I can't figure out how to restore them even after reading your response countless times!... I restored a bunch of files and folders when I searched "notes" on the last backup and I found several files with names: NoteStore.sqlite, NoteStore.sqlite-shm, NoteStore.sqlite-wal, but when I follow your steps it doesn't happen anything! Am I doing this right? First I recovered the files/folders from my backup, and now what do I have to do exactly?

Can you please, please help me on this? It's very important to me.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Have you tried quitting and reopening Notes?

Yes, that was the first thing I did.