Notes vanished from my iPhone - help

[njmdude]

Hey all, first time post

The last 2 or so years of notes just completely disappeared on me. Nothing was manually deleted, nothing was linked to any iCloud or email account. Just, simply gone. It happened sometime between a failed MacBook Pro backup, and a successful iCloud iPhone backup. They are not in said iCloud.

I've troubleshoot all the common issues given from Apple. I had no recent backup, nothing was connected to mail, nothing was recently deleted, etc. I even connected my phone to the highest rated Data Recovery programs, and somehow deleted notes from a decade ago are there, but none of the new notes that have vanished.

Does anyone have a similar experience that they might know where they could be?

PLEASE HELP! These notes are essentially my livelihood with so much work information stored on there. Thanks!

 

[IWT]

A warm welcome to Mac-Forums, and thank you for your post.

You must be feeling pretty miserable just now, but let's see if we can help you

How were you backing up your iPhone? To your MacBook Pro via iTunes - or more recently via Music?

Or did you prefer to back it up to iCloud via Settings > Your Name > iCloud > iCloud Backup?

When you said "I had no recent backup", to what are you referring? The iPhone and/or the MacBook Pro?

If you never backed up the iPhone at all - well that is not so good news.

Have you tried Force Booting your iPhone? I don't know which iPhone you have and the Force Booting varies. See here for all the rebooting options for the whole range of iPhones.

Force restart iPhone

If iPhone isn’t responding, try forcing it to restart.

support.apple.com

Choose yours and give it a try.

Good fortune

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

I would just power off the iPhone and then power it back on to see if the Notes reappear. I'd do that before any forced restart.

 

[ferrarr]

Did you see this?

Delete and recover notes on iCloud.com

In Notes on iCloud.com, delete notes and recover notes you recently deleted.

support.apple.com

 

[Rod]

I'd really like a time line of what exactly was done. "It happened sometime between a failed MacBook Pro backup, and a successful iCloud iPhone backup. They are not in said iCloud." At this point we still don't know if the iPhone was backed up to the MBP.
You also say you performed, "a successful iCloud iPhone backup." but then say, "I had no recent backup".

So, what I can say is that assuming you are logged into iCloud on both your MBP and your iPhone and the default settings in System Preferences > iCloud were unchanged then all of your notes should appear on both devices.

I would suggest that you switch off and switch back on both devices as has already been suggested and I would like to know more about this, "failed MacBook Pro backup",

Lastly if you did perform a successful iCloud backup of you iPhone then your notes should be on the iCloud web site iCloud
Have you checked this?