jackoloki

Q: Is there any way to open or view contents of a notesexternalrecord file?

I had a note in the Notes app synced via iCloud. It was titled "Hera Don't Hate Me". I have no memory of deleting this note, but it is no longer on my iPhone,  desktop, or iCloud.

 

I entered a phrase that I knew the note contained into Spotlight on my Yosemite desktop system... "succulence I had to taste". Spotlight revealed the note by name, "Hera Don't Hate Me" under TOP HIT, but it said the note was inside an External Notes Record, the path of which was deep inside com.apple.Notes Container in my User Library on another system drive (Mountain Lion).

 

The note obviously contains my writing—it wouldn't have shown up in Spotlight if it didn't—but when I try to open it in notes, the note isn't displayed.

 

Is there any way to get at the information that I know is inside this “p274.notesexternalrecord” file? I tried opening it with TextWrangler, but there didn't appear to be anything there. I tried moving the file into the Notes Container on my Yosemite system, but that didn't seem to do anything. I tried booting from the Mountain Lion system to view it, but with no luck. This is beyond my abilities, any help in getting at the info in this file would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

rob

 

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Notes, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Aug 13, 2016 9:00 AM

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Q: Is there any way to open or view contents of a notesexternalrecord file?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Eric Root,Helpful

    Eric Root Eric Root Aug 15, 2016 5:54 AM in response to jackoloki
    Level 9 (72,619 points)
    iTunes
    Aug 15, 2016 5:54 AM in response to jackoloki

    Have you tried Notes/File/Import Notes?

  • by jackoloki,

    jackoloki jackoloki Aug 13, 2016 11:39 AM in response to jackoloki
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 13, 2016 11:39 AM in response to jackoloki

    Thanks for your response Eric.

     

    I'm using Notes v 3.3 (353) and I don't see any option to Import under the File menu or any other menu.

  • by jackoloki,

    jackoloki jackoloki Aug 15, 2016 5:53 AM in response to Eric Root
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 15, 2016 5:53 AM in response to Eric Root

    Eric,

     

    My daughter's laptop (El Capitan) was running a version of Notes that let me choose 'Import Notes'. However, I was not able to select the “p274.notesexternalrecord" file in the dialog box as it was greyed out. Any other ideas?

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root Aug 15, 2016 6:04 AM in response to jackoloki
    Level 9 (72,619 points)
    iTunes
    Aug 15, 2016 6:04 AM in response to jackoloki

    Will it open in Preview or any other application? Since TextWrangler won't open it, I'm not sure what to try.

  • by jackoloki,

    jackoloki jackoloki Aug 15, 2016 6:38 AM in response to Eric Root
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 15, 2016 6:38 AM in response to Eric Root

    Not Preview. I can change the extension to .txt, but that gives me same result as TextWrangler. It opens and just shows me some of the note headers:

     

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

    <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

    <plist version="1.0">

    <dict/>

    </plist>

     

    ...and that's it. The file size is very small, btw, 181 bytes. As a test, I just copied the above contents over and saved them into a plain text file, and it was 180 bytes. It's as if that's all this file contains. And yet, it shows up in the Spotlight search mentioned in my original post. Maybe this file points to another.

     

    ?

     

    I sure wish there was someone who knew how this worked. My writing is somewhere on my system.

  • by crazy love,

    crazy love crazy love Oct 2, 2016 3:11 PM in response to jackoloki
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 2, 2016 3:11 PM in response to jackoloki

    I had this trouble too. I did not find a solution to let me copy or paste the info, did you? I was however able to view all the pages of my missing note (by pressing the space bar when the item is selected in Finder). When the preview pops up I took screenshots (⌘⇧4) of each page. Next I opened Acrobat imported the images as PDF then did the OCR text finder. This resulted in much of the text restored but I did need to go through and edit weird mistakes from Adobe.