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My iPhone Notes Have Disappeared! Don’t Worry. The Fix!

    David Payette
  • 8 years ago
    • Categories: iPhone

When Kim opened the Notes app on her iPhone, she noticed that a lot of her notes were gone. Did she accidentally delete them? Probably not. Not knowing where to find her missing notes, Kim asked for my help in the Payette Forward Community, and I was happy to take the case. In this article, I’ll explain why your notes have disappeared from your iPhone, where they’re hiding, and how to get them back.

Understanding Where Notes Actually Live

Just like your email, contacts, and calendars, the notes you see on your iPhone are often stored “in the cloud”. In other words, the notes on your iPhone are usually stored on a server tied to your email address.

A lot of people don’t realize that the email accounts you set up on your iPhone can do a lot more than just send and receive email. Most email accounts, including the ones you get through AOL, Gmail, and Yahoo, have the ability to store contacts, calendars, and notes in addition to your email. 

When Notes disappear, they usually haven’t been deleted. The notes live on a server that is tied to your email address (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.), and there is a problem between your iPhone and the server. 

Common Reasons Why Notes Disappear From iPhones

If you recently deleted an email address from your iPhone, you probably removed the notes from your iPhone too. It doesn’t mean they were deleted. It just means your iPhone can’t access them anymore. When you set up the email account again, all of your notes will come back.

If you’ve been having trouble connecting to an email account lately, that could be another clue. Maybe you recently changed your email password online, but haven’t entered the new password on your iPhone. When you go to Settings -> Notes -> Accounts on your iPhone, tap on your email account, and update the password, everything should begin working normally again.

How Do I Know Where My iPhone Notes Are Stored?

Open the Notes app on your iPhone, and look for the yellow back arrow  in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Tap on that arrow and you’ll see a list of all the accounts that are currently syncing notes on your iPhone. You might see more than one. The first place to check for your missing notes is in each individual folder. Tap on each folder to see if your missing notes are stored inside.

Recovering Missing Notes Using Settings

If you haven’t found your notes yet, the next place we’ll check is in Settings -> Notes -> Accounts. Tap on each individual email account and make sure that Notes are turned on for each account.

If you recently removed an email account from your iPhone, add it again and turn on Notes when you set it up. Go back to the Notes app, tap the yellow back arrow , and check each new email account for the missing Notes.

Keeping Your Notes Organized

It’s certainly not necessary to sync your notes across multiple email accounts. In fact, I discourage that because it can get very confusing! Right now, we’re trying to find your missing notes – that’s why we’re turning them all on.

To stay organized moving forward, it’s important to know where you’re saving your notes. If you’re using Siri to create your notes, you can set the default account for new notes in Settings -> Notes.

Otherwise, you need to be aware of which account you’re using when you create a new note in the Notes app. Before you create a new note, tap the yellow back arrow  in the upper left-hand corner of the screen and choose a folder. The good news is that the Notes app should pick up right where you left off whenever you open it.

My recommendation is to use as few accounts as you can to sync notes. After you “take an inventory” of where your notes are stored, I recommend going back to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and disabling Notes for the accounts that you aren’t using to sync your notes.

On my iPhone, I use two accounts to sync notes. To be honest, the only reason I use two accounts is because I haven’t taken the time to switch my old Gmail notes over to iCloud yet. Ideally, most people should only use one account to sync their notes.

iPhone Notes: Found!

Kim’s question about where her iPhone notes had gone was a good one, because it’s a very common problem. The good news is that this problem usually has a happy ending. When notes disappear from an iPhone, it’s not because they were deleted — they’re just lost. I’d love to hear about your experiences with recovering lost notes on your iPhone, and if you have any other questions, feel free to do what Kim did and post them in the Payette Forward Community.

Thanks for reading, and remember to pay it forward,
David P.

View Comments (223)

  • Hello i had notes on my iphone but not synced on icloud or gmail but when i pressed to sync on icloud i think i pressed delete and i lost all my notes i had on my iphone is there a way to get them back?

  • I read your article with interest. I had email account issues and had to delete my outlook account and add it back again on account of an upgrade from outlook2013 to outlook 2019. Since then my notes files are all available but they are not the latest version. They seem to be a previous version from before I had email issues. I remember when I deleted my account from my phon, there being a warning message saying that cached data will be lost. Could this explain why the notes file isn’t the latest? And can the cached data be restored?

  • I only had 4 GB free storage so I deleted about 5 GB of photos and videos I didn't need and all my notes came back. Time to move more pics off to my computer storage disks and make some more room.

  • Its not working.. I signed out of my iCloud acc because I was having trouble with the App store - I've sign back in-n all. When I checked Notes to write about something I just didn't see any of them! Even the notes I've edited before, I only saw the original part of it-the rest are gone. Please help, I have many important things in there.

  • does anyone know how to get the notes back on my phone, not throw icloud just on my phone

  • I’ve changed my email from cableone to gmail and have been experiencing Notes missing. The list is there but when I tap on a note title it opens with a blank page. Next day They are all visible. How do I sync Notes to get them on the gmail account? If I delete the cableone account will my notes automatically sync to gmail? I currently have 3 accounts, the Cloud, Cableone and Gmail.

  • Hello, I have the same problem but no solution i've found helped me. I have 3 accounts on my phone, the main icloud and 2 others. The notes saved on the main icloud disappeared, and now i can see the folders for the two other emails in the notes app but nothing for the main icloud. I checked the settings for the 3 emails and i toggled on the note button for the 3 accounts. Would appreciate any help!

  • Still cannot find where my notes went. Your directions are not getting my notes back, for some reason or another.

  • My notes disappear, if I reboot the phone they come back. All settings are correct, very frustrating when I am at the grocery store! Any help???

  • one day i opened my notes and they suddenly disappeared. after a few days and looking for solutions, i still cant find my notes eventhough my icloud is always turned on for notes and my email is working well. i have important things stored in my notes and they are all gone! :( please help me, how else can i retrieve them

  • i tried ALL your remedys and notes are still gone. The funny thing is they will evidently will show back up after time passes? I have done no changes to any email accounts in a couple of years.

    • Same story here. I feel confident they'll show up again soon (without a hard reset), but can't know when, and in the meantime, can't access the info I need! They also disappear from my macbook and other devices. So strange.

      • yea me too, in all the devices and just like a flash. i followed every step in the manual and from apple support .... and i dont think i will get them back.

  • Hi! My problem is apple server is down. At first it didn't sink in me. I didn't know at all. That's why my alternative thing to do is to sign out and sign in my apple ID. and then later on when i need to use notes, i discovered my notes are no longer there. as in everything is gone. but when i check it is in the icloud but idunno how to bring it back to my notes app. i already tried deleting the notes app and re-install it. it even ask me to sign in to my apple id to access my notes, i did and my notes are not sync still. is it about the apple server?

  • I opened notes to check something and there was random blank note so I decided to delete it and right when I did suddenly all my notes starting disappearing and when I checked, there was no Recently Deleted folder, everything is gone and I've tried everything you have said but they're still not back. Please help :(

  • Hey so my phone was simply running put of storage and I guess it just ended up deleting all of my notes or something :( I have no folders or anything in my notes anymore and I want them back. Please help! I also did not change my email or log out or anything like that.

    • This happens often to me (once a day or more). I’m sure it’s something I’m doing (or not doing) but here’s how I get them all back. Shut off your phone. Turn it back on. Go to Notes. They reappear just as you left off. It’s annoying to have to do this but it works for a Boomer like me.

      • Same here. But why is it occurring? How can we remedy it? Happens at least daily. Shutting phone down then restarting is cumbersome at times.

  • I have also lost data from my Notes app. This particular note was linked to an email I had stopped using and deleted from my iPhone 11 several months ago. However, the same email address was still installed on my Mac Pro. I still get in-bound emails but cannot email out.
    As soon as I saw the note disappear from my phone's screen I opened Notes on my Mac Pro hoping to see a copy there but that has gone too.
    I have searched everywhere on my systems but I cannot find where the note is hiding.

  • Hi there,
    So I received a shared note, which prompted me to turn on my iCloud to view the note. After I did and viewed the note, I went back into my Notes app and all of my notes except like 20 of them were missing. They are not backed up to iCloud, I checked on the website. I can’t even search the iPhone for the missing notes, nothing appears. I haven’t deleted any accounts in the meantime and checked that all the accounts that are connected are working. Please help! I need those notes. Years of recipes, passwords, and other important information is in there.

  • In the middle of typing something my phone crashed due to the amount of storage I had. I got a new phone and everything transferred, except for the last sentence. It didn’t back up to the cloud so there’s no way to restore anything. How do I get it back if I can’t remember it?

  • I deleted an email account from my iPhone and lost all my notes. This is an email that no longer exists so I can’t just add it back. What to do?

  • Hi,
    I have notes on my iPhone and iPad. They are supposed to be the exact same, and usually they are. Twice in the past week this one note has disappeared from my iPhone but it was still available on my iPad. I forget how I got it back on my iPhone the last time it happened. I looked at all of the solutions here and no luck. Any thoughts?

  • I cannot believe how Apple is brushing this off when it has happened to so many of us. I had 250+ notes and all of the sudden I have 86 just because I turned on Sync to iCloud. There is definitely a problem in the software and servers. Unacceptable.

  • The bottom line is that if your notes disappear, there is no recovery.

    What bothers me is that is where I kept sensitive financial information. How do I know Apple is not selling it? Answer, I don’t.

    I’m going back to pen and paper.

    Apple cannot be trusted.

  • This just happened to me when I deleted an outdated exchange account. Is there a way to get those notes back without having to sign into that account again? It no longer exists.

  • I turned off notes in iCloud and it deleted all my notes! Then when I turned it back on in iCloud ONLY the notes saved in iCloud returned. My iCloud is full, but I have plenty of space on my phone to save them! How do I recover ALL notes not saved in the cloud and save them directly to my iPhone’s hard drive? Please help!

    • Hi Jessica! I'm sorry to hear that, losing any notes can be extremely frustrating. Did you happen to save a backup of your iPhone before you turned notes off in iCloud? If so, restoring to that backup might get your missing notes back on your iPhone!

    • Hi Carol! Not exactly. We suggest disabling Notes for as many email accounts you have registered on your iPhone as possible to make it harder to lose track of where your notes are stored. The fewer accounts you have set up with Notes, the easier it will be to keep your Notes app organized!

      However, if you have already created notes using a certain email address, keep that account enabled in Settings so you don't accidentally lose more notes.

      I hope this helps!

  • Help! I’ve lost the 'To-Do’ list on my iPhone. It was saved on iPhone, not on iCloud. I pressed something and it disappeared. I Haven’t been able to find them despite following your ideas.

  • My son has tried all that you suggested when losing notes and he still cannot find them! Any other suggestions??

    • Hi Cindy,

      Thanks for reading! It all depends on which account your son uses to sync his notes. You can see the default account in Settings -> Notes -> Default Account. If he's turned off the "On My iPhone Account", try turning that switch back on too.

      Bear in mind that you don't need to ask questions on behalf of "a friend" or "a son" here! We're here to help! :-)

      Best of luck,
      David P.

  • Hi. My mom was looking at one of her notes and her screen went black, and when it came back up ALL of her notes were gone. Apple and Verizon can't figure it out. She's tried every solution offered and still can't find them. Any thoughts?

  • When I had a note open, the app suddenly glitched out of nowhere and the pictures I had saved in the note suddenly weren’t appearing. When I tried exiting the note to check if others were having the same problem, the entire app crashed. Now the entire folder, including all the notes within that folder, are gone. They should be saved to my iCloud but I can’t find them anywhere. I searched the name of some of them and only two showed up, so I was able to recover those (except for the pictures within them), but none of the others showed up, and there was a lot. Any way to get them back? They’re kinda important and I’d prefer not to have to try and recreate them from memory because that’ll be a disaster :/

    • Hey Ace, sorry to hear you're going through this! Have you tried going to icloud.com to see if your notes are actually there? Sometimes the web interface can provide clues into what's going on — if they're on the website and not on your iPhone, there may be an issue with the Notes app itself. Sometimes just signing out of iCloud and signing back in again on your iPhone will fix the issue.

      • (Sorry for the late reply) Hi David. I checked the website, but it was the same as the app; only the notes I’ve tried recreating since they got lost were there.

  • The notes on my exchange account are all there but they are whited out and I can’t read them. If I look at the notes for the “on my iPhone” account those are visible. If I reboot my phone the Exchange notes are readable again. What is it that causes the notes to be whited out?

  • Hey all,

    I went to access my Notes app on my iPhone X and I saw the last note I was using was still open. Next thing I know though, all the notes disappear and I am sitting at the Folders screen with everything gone. I logged into my iCloud account hoping they were there but it was all gone as well. My iCloud storage was recently filled 100% so I am not sure if this had anything to do with it. My iPhone storage has plenty of space leftover (nearly 65% available) .

    Would could have caused this? Do I have any hope of retrieving the Notes? I tried to follow the steps above but nothing worked as a solution.

    • Hi Ian, did you try logging in on iCloud.com to see if your notes are there? That's a good place to start. Notes don't delete themselves. :-) You'll find them!

  • Hi, please help me with finding my notes. They have disappeared! Finding these notes a very important to me, I would be so grateful if you can help me find them. One morning I was adding some notes to my folders, then later that night I was checking my notes and noticed all of my recent notes that I open and use on a regular basis were gone. Old notes that I had deleted in 2019 were all there instead. I’ve spent hours with Apple Support and paid extra for more iCloud storage. My toggle is on for my email accounts and iCloud. I’ve done a back up, but unfortunately no one has been able to help me. This iPhone is a few months new to me, but everything transferred from my old iPhone to this one just fine. The only thing different that I could think of is that I changed my password to my email accounts. I still don’t understand how one morning I’m looking at my notes and everything is fine and that same day they’re just gone and replaced with old deleted notes. Please help me, thank you!

  • David/Colin PLEASE HELP!

    David/Colin, my AOL email account stopped working long ago on my iphone so I called Apple who suggested I delete then re-add my AOL account which I did. After that most of my Notes were deleted from the Note app. I had three folders: "AOL", my actual aol address, and "From My PC".
    I have 7 left from my email address folder, 105 from my AOL folder and only 430 from my PC folder. Weirdly not just the newest ones are missing but seemingly some of the oldest too.
    PLEASE Help!! My entire life and life thoughts, biz ideas, etc are missing. What can I do to find them??!!

    -bill

    • Hi Bill, I'm sorry to hear that! Losing notes unexpectedly can be very scary. Have you saved a backup of your iPhone recently? Restoring your phone to a backup from before you lost your notes might restore the ones that disappeared!

  • My notes have completely disappeared. 'i do not have e-mail set up on my IPhone7, so that doesn't help.

    The back button in the upper left corner isn't displayed,except to go to Folders, and there is nothing under Folders. so can't do that. There is a Search filed, but I cannot find anything through that way. The only hopeful news is that they are sti on my laptop notes app. IS there any way to retrive them on my phone?

    • Hi Gisele, have you saved a backup of your iPhone recently? Restoring your phone to a previous back up might get you your notes back!

  • Hi,
    I lost my notes, when I deleted an old AOL account from my XS. I didn't realize the notes were being saved to the AOL account, which has been inactive for years. Is there a way to retrieve them?
    Thanks,
    Scott B

  • Hello,
    To tonight I was looking up birthdays on my notes. The title “Birthdays” was there along with all the other titles of notes I’ve created. But when I opened my Birthdays notes... nothing was there?! I tried the next note... same thing. All my notes titles are visible under Gmail, Yahoo, NOTES but no info is attached to the notes. Can you help me? I’ve stored some very important information in my notes. HELP

    • Have you saved a backup of your iPhone's data recently? Your best bet might be to try to restore to a recent backup and hopefully the data you had saved in your Notes App will be preserved. However, if you haven't backed up your iPhone in a while, I'd hold off on trying to restore to a backup for now.

      If you don't have a recent backup saved, feel free to let me know and I can talk to the rest of the team and get back to you.

  • hi, i shut down my iphone because it was slow because of the videos and pictures stored in notes. when i turned it on again, all of my notes were gone, like permanently deleted gone. i waited about a few hours and only 3 notes had recovered, and clearly i had way more than that. what do i do?

    • Hi Marianne. Was your iPhone's storage at full capacity? It's possible all the pictures and videos on your iPhone might have overloaded your device storage, causing a malfunction.

  • Hi
    i scanned a 3 page document using notes which I then began typing up on my laptop, I went to put the phone down and caught the screen on the skin of my arm, when I went back to the document the middle page had gone? I cannot find it anywhere, could you help please?

  • My phone storage was close to full and I deleted several videos. Later last night I went to my notes to retrieve a scanned document and I discovered that many of my notes from the past several months were gone. I have them sync to cloud but cloud didn’t have enough storage. Just poof without answer or reason. Are these totally unrecoverable? To just disappear without any warning has me so devastated - I had some incredibly important information that will be very hard to get back.

  • All my notes on disappeared! I logged in to my iCloud online and I see them there but I can seem to get it back on my phone note app. What do I do?? Please someone help. ?

  • I cannot find notes on my iphone 12 plus
    I tried the suggestions in this article. The notes are turned on in all of my email addresses and still I cannot find the notes anywhere on my phone. When I search for them it refers me to download the app. Do you have any other suggestions?

  • I have just notice today my Notes have disappeared and the look and feel of my Iphone 11 notes has changed

    I have followed your article but unable to find my notes anywhere and have not deleted any of my email address either

    Need some help here

    • I have the same problem and still no folders or notes
      total different app when opened
      HELP

  • My notes are there but I can’t see them in the notes app, I can export them to text or mail, and it’s all there, but the notes page is blank.

  • Finished my work pressed done. first, it displaced the letters on the lines of the worksheet and also erased the whole page and also put it all the letters to the side of the page is there something kind back up string of hidden save files so I can find that save file before it screwed it all up .

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David Payette: I'm a former Apple employee and the founder of Payette Forward, and I'm here to help you with your iPhone.