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Deleted Notes? Not All Is Lost!

By Ryszard Gold | Published February 12, 2016

If you are at all like me, you make heavy use of the Notes app and it’s wonderful cross platform via iCloud syncing ability. You may have also had a bloody heart attack when you discover something amiss! Deleted Notes? I’ve also come to find a note has been replaced with an ancient version. It’s happened to the best of us… BUT THERE IS A SOLUTION! Unfortunately, that solution has a couple prerequisites… one.. you have to have syncing turned on through iCloud. Two.. you need to have a Time Machine back up of some sort.

Sorry?

What?

Please repeat that loud enough for the class to hear.

You don’t have a time machine backup?

Deleted Notes

Dead serious. If you don’t have one.. stop anything you are doing.. even CPR.. and get buy an external drive, plug it in, say “Yes, use this as Time Machine Backup” then slap yourself for not doing something so damn simple sooner.

Recovering Deleted Notes

This is actually just as simple as recovering any file with Time Machine… it’s a matter of getting to where the files are. Go to your Finder, yes, the cute little blue smiley face on the left hand side of your dock, and click. Go back all the way up to the menu bar and look for the “Go” menu.. click.. go down to “Go to folder…”. Type or copy and past this in:

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

Deleted Notes

You’ve Entered The Chamber Of Secrets – beware the Basilisk!

You should see something similar to this:

deleted notes

These are the files the form your Notes App

Now you can enter Time Machine, hit the icon in your dock or up on your menu bar. Use the navigation tools to go back in time to where you think the problem may have happened. Recover all those files and make sure to choose to replace the files.

Open up Notes and ta-daa! Your notes should be back the way they were! If you need to, you can certainly go back in and choose an earlier or later version of the files to get the one you need.

Best of luck, but in case you feel you need a hand, contact us and we’ll book you in!

Ryszard Gold
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Ryszard Gold
Owner at The Stem Group
Ryszard (Rick) Gold, From Calgary, Alberta, Canada has over 20 years of experience working with Apple products in a technical capacity. Passionate about technology in general, his natural troubleshooting abilities, curiosity and appreciation of good design lead him into working exclusively with Apple Computer products.
Ryszard Gold
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