MacOS Sierra deleted my local Notes on my MBP. How to recover them?

Am not able to read this Notestore.sqlite file directly.

How to use this file to restore Notes content.Any help here is appreciated.

Wow, thank God for nerds. 😀

I recovered my text! Thanks dude!

Why was it deleted in the first place though? Ugh.

E

I followed these instructions but when I try to open the .html notes files in Google Chrome, nothing happens. Thoughts?

Similar problem.

I have a note that somehow has a PDF where years of text used to be, leaving just a few lines at the top of the note, then everything else gone.

Every time I restore from Time Machine, the Notes app shows me the current data, whether I'm connected to the internet or not.

I restored from Time Machine of 5 days ago, the PDF that was only created last night, is still in the same place.

I've opened the files with Safari - the note in question isn't in any of the data files. And the Last Modified dates on the files are all October last year.

Is the User folder location of Notes data folder shown in the Solved My Problem post correct?

I tried following your advice several times. However, after everything is done, I re-open Notes and find the latest version again (it won't recover the older version from time-machine).

I am using iOs Sierra.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

U.Sa.

These locations seem to store only old notes that were saved to Mac, before enabling Notes syncing (and creating) in iCloud.

Is there a different location where Sierra stores local copies on notes stored in iCloud? I need to use Time Machne to restore a note that disappeared and is not in the files noted above.

There is one other location you can look:

~/Library/CoreData/ExternalRecords

I believe the iCloud notes are stored in: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/

Problem with trying to restore iCloud notes is they get deleted once you restore them. I've seen where others have said you need to do this offline, then save the notes elsewhere.

Actually, you should also look here:

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

This will produce different results than the first I gave you and probably will actually contain the iCloud data.

Thanks, I'll give the first and third suggestions a try.

The second location seems to only store notes made before the app was changed to move to iCloud storage. Only very old notes there.

I've seen the warning about being off-line when restoring. I actually just added a suffix to see and read the Note files in Safari.

Appreciate the response.

I didn't think you would get anything out of them. The 2 locations I gave first are where the database files are kept for iCloud and Local notes. I don't know why you can't get anything from them, but then iCloud notes seem to be hard to recover. There are many conversations on this on the discussion site. Maybe keep looking and someone might have a solution that will work for you.

For my iCloud notes, they are located:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/NotesV6.storedata-wal

I can open that file and see all my notes in iCloud. That location should be where you need to retrieve them from TM. But there doesn't appear to be an easy way to accomplish this.

I managed to restore the missing note! For the benefit of others, here's how.

I had the foresight to archive the iTunes backup made days before the disappearance. Made a fresh backup. Turned AirPlane Mode on and restored my iPhone from the older backup. The missing note reappeared in Notes app. Apple says that backups do not include files that are otherwise synced via iCloud, but that, apparently, is not true. All 500 of my notes were recoverable from the backup.

Didn't work for me on this High Sierra instal, if i used time machine it garbled something about you cannot delete or change notes, if i press the ctrl+click and save it, it then errors when

attempting to open it. Second option, just spews out a load of gobbledygook characters resembling nothing i wrote in my notes. So lost a load of passwords i needed because Apple once again goes below the levels of Microsoft! Poor poor poor. Utter shitness!

By restore, you mean they had to have been backed up (icloud or time machine) in order to recover them? I hadn't done that when I upgraded to High Sierra, and now I think I may have permanently lost the files. 😢

I found these files, but they don't seem to have the notes in them.

Guys, did you tried the simplest thing first? Dont get me wrong here, for those who didnt solved the problem yet... maybe this will help:

Open notes, then go to the "view" option, click "show folders". You will see your notes sorted through folders. You will see iCloud - Notes, On My Mac - Notes and if you have a google acc, you will see Google - Notes, etc...

The thing is, that Apple made some changes through some update, that default location for "notes" is on iCloud.

Just hit the notes On My Mac and voila!

Hi Edmund,

If you unfortunately have lost important notes after you upgrade, you have 2 options:

Get them back from a Time Machine backup:

To do so, choose Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine menu, or click Time Machine in the Dock. And use the timeline on the edge of the screen to locate a version of the Notes storage folder that just precedes your deletion. Click Restore to restore the selected file, or Control-click the file for other options. When you next launch the Notes app, your missing notes should reappear.

Get them back from the Storage file:

To recover your lost or deleted notes from storage on Mac, at first, you need to find Notes’ storage location at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/. Enter the path string in the Finder’s window. And you will see the Notes folder, inside this folder, you should see a small assortment of similarly named files with names such as NotesV2.storedata.

Copy these files to a separation location, and add an .html extension to them. Then, open one of the files in a web browser, and you will see your current and the deleted or missing notes. At last, copy and save deleted notes to a separate location. And done !

Hope this helps you,

Cheers !