How to retrieve missing iPad notes after iCloud Sync

Apple I am very sad and disappointed. I noticed that Notes were not on icloud and I turned icloud on and it erased all my notes from my phone. 2 years worth of notes and important info all gone all because I turned iCloud on. I figured it would just sync my icloud with the ones on my phone because that’s what makes sense. But no it deleted every single note I had for 2 years. Can you explain why this happened?

Hey there ktlasersIE,

Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities. For the best steps that can help with locating your missing notes, check out the steps listed in this link here: If you're missing notes on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

You may also be able to recover your notes with the steps in this next link here: Delete and recover notes on iCloud.com - Apple Support

Recover recently deleted notes

You can recover and edit notes you deleted in the last 30 days on iCloud.com or on your devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID. However, you can’t recover notes you permanently removed.

1. In Notes on iCloud.com, select Recently Deleted in the folder list on the left.

If you don’t see Recently Deleted, you don’t have any notes in that folder, and there’s nothing to be recovered.

2. Select a note, then click Recover in the Notes toolbar.

The note moves to the Notes folder.

If you want to move a recovered note directly to a folder you created, drag the note from the Recently Deleted folder to another folder.

Let us know if that's able to help.

Best regards.

After updating my desktop to Big Sur, I lost my all my notes going back to 2017, I did not have Notes backed up on iCloud, previous posts led me to this resolution to retrieve them, try the following steps:

-must be on a desktop, not iPhone or other device

-log into iCloud on Chrome, not Safari

-select Notes

Your Notes should appear now. Unfortunately you might have to screen should, copy/paste, or save images individually, but at least you can see each note.

For anyone finding this in 2024, this just happened to me as well when trying to sync my mac notes. Absolutely terrible. I have lost notes from over a year and a half. Lesson learned in trusting apple software. To anyone else experiencing this, I am very sorry, this is truly egregious and poor software design.

turned on iCloud sync for notes on my iPad when I realized it wasn't on. All of my iPhone notes showed up on my iPad, but my iPad notes DISAPPEARED. Months of work GONE. PLEASE HELP!

I turned on iCloud sync for notes on my iPad when I realized it wasn't on. Like others, all of my iPhone notes showed up on my iPad, but my iPad notes DISAPPEARED after syncing. I need those notes. How can I get them restored?

This is what caused the notes to disappear. :-(

This just happened to me, is there any fix for this? Absolutely ridiculous. All I done was switch on iCloud synch for Notes and I lost all the notes stored on my IPhone

I just had the issue on my iPad mini,

I scanned documents on my IPad notes app and turned on sync, just see all the notes I created on the IPad before the sync disappeared!!! it seems this bug has not been fixed and it is annoying. Please how do I get my notes with scanned documents back??

This just happened to me as well and I’m devastated.

YEARS and YEARS of notes for my work and even about six years of rough writings for a book I had been working on amongst countless other important things that I check in on daily and add to. This is absolutely F*CKED.

They were synced to iCloud and Gmail and they’re nowhere to be found. No ‘recently deleted’ folders anywhere and my phone was just backed up a little over twenty four hours ago so in theory they should be SOMEWHERE.

Please help!!

Hey so what your going to do is your going to have to rest the device and choose from one of the previous backups when re setting up the device I just had 5 versions of back up praise God thought I lost everything years of work

Thank you for the reply ktlasersIE!

To confirm, the notes are currently on your iPhone, just not on your iPad? If the notes are on your iPhone and not your iPad, make sure that you are using the same iCloud account on both devices and make sure that iCloud is set up for Notes on your iPad:

Set up iCloud for Notes on all your devices - Apple Support

Otherwise, is it possible these notes are stored in a third-party account such as Yahoo or Google? Follow the actions under the "Check your account settings" section of the article we provided you and see if Notes are turned on for that account:

If you're missing notes on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Keep us posted.

Hi ktlasersIE,

Thanks for that information. Contacting Apple Support is the best path forward to resolve this issue. They will be best equipped to address this:

Contact - Official Apple Support

Cheers!

This happened to me on my Macbook Air - to sync your Notes from your iCloud:

1. Click on Notes -> Accounts
2. iCloud -> Show more apps -> Notes
3. Toggle the sync button
4. Wait for Notes app to respond and upload your notes from the could.

Hope this helps.