Notes from my iPhone disappeared post accepting new iCloud Terms and Condition.

DO NOT FOLLOW the fixes people have provided here unless you KNOW for sure your notes are backed up on the cloud. I’ve spent lots of time on the phone with Apple recently… and if you do this, there’s NO WAY they can recover them because it resyncs your phone with whatever is most currently in your iCloud.

Also learned that Apple doesn’t monitor these communities and conversations, so if you haven’t reported your issue directly to Apple, they likely are collected all the data needed to prevent this from

happening in the future. It’s important everyone call them and report this so they can see it wasn’t just a couple people this happened too. More than one of them told me “hmmm changing terms and conditions shouldn’t do that though. It shouldn’t delete data…” Well, it DID!!!! To lots of people.

I also learned i didn’t have the option of “on my iPhone” checked… it must not be a default or else some of my notes would have been saved directly to my device instead of pulling from the cloud to sync. :(

Super frustrating. Sorry to everyone who experienced the panic :/

After downloading an update on 12/01/2024 I lost all my notes too. This forum was really helpful tho, and I got them all back after the first method I attempted.

I simply went to Settings > Notes > Toggled On the “On My iPhone” switch, then toggled it off.

My linked Notes accounts and emails came back immediately, and I went back to my notes app and they were all starting to sync again already. Thankfully I got all of them back!

I hope this is helpful to others too.

I had originally posted about my notes disappearing after update, a rep tried all avenues w/ me over the phone, eventually had me restore my phone to a backup. That worked. But then, about a week later, my iPhone was wanting me to enter password for an email address, it wouldn't let me not' do it/skip it. Screen kept flashing to different things and taking me to enter my password. After I did enter the email password on google that iPhone was making me do, then, once again, my notes were all removed/messed up. There is something' ( I'm not sure what) related to how email addresss are tied' to notes. However, I don't really understand the connection or why' notes are linked to some email address. I'm guessing I'll have to restore my phone again, however, the issue is that I might not have the option to restore it to a date from before the new update, which will my notes gone forever. Horrible update in my opinion. I say this because I rely heavily on notes I have.

I updated my phone last night. I lost notes for October, November, and December. I tried all steps suggested. My iCloud was on for notes and stays on, but for some reason I cannot retrieve the notes. This happened with my iPhone 7 I lost almost all of my notes back then and I thought they would make sure this would not happen again in 2024. There is no way a phone update should wipe out all your notes from your phone.

I totally agree, this shouldn’t have happened! Why they tied my notes to my email accounts is beyond me! I was able to re-sync my notes from the cloud based on the support group instructions! A lot of folks did not get their notes back!!! Unacceptable because of terms and software updates!

Do not press delete because I did and I don’t know how to get my notes back now. I followed the directions given to a T and now I can’t access my notes on my current phone. I can only access them on my old phone. I genuinely don’t know what to do to get them back and I’m frustrated.

the1usingthisiphone wrote:

did Your notes reappear yet? This just happened to me, I’ve tried everything but calling them, which I feel may be a waste of time. I lost everything in those notes.

Do you see the notes when viewing them in iCloud?

View notes and locked notes on iCloud.com - Apple Support

If so, the can be resynced to your phone using the steps from the posts here.

Thank you for this post!!!! It worked… I was panicked

Yay notes are back!

IPHONE 11 PRO MAX

Go to settings -> Go to notes -> Click sync this phone -> Should update after that!

Hope this helps somone!

Why oh why does Apple do this?? Every time they do updates it causes problems for the whole community of apple owners!!!

Thank you so much. This worked for me!

THANK YOU SO MUCH.

This just fixed it for me. Really appreciate your note!

Thank you so much!! That did the trick.

The exact thing has happened to me. Agreed to the terms last night. This morning I’ve gone into notes to find important information I keep for work and it’s all gone, apart from notes I made in 2016? I have course work notes in there and tax return notes all all kinds of log in details etc.

That’s what I did as it’s only the iCloud notes that it says will be deleted (which are already missing!)

The notes should still be stored in your iCloud so when you switch it back on the Notes App sorts itself out and downloads the missing notes again.

This worked for me and my partner so I hope it works for you 👍