Notes disappeared after enabling iCloud sync, consider softwareupdate?

Hi everyone,

This issue seems to be surprisingly common. I've already tried all the suggestions from Apple’s official support article "If you're missing notes on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch", and also used third-party tools like iMazing to locate my missing data, unfortunately without success.

So I wanted to give a detailed overview of what happened and what I’ve tried so far:

Situation before the issue:

• I had around 100 notes stored locally on my old iPhone running iOS 15.6.1.
• My iCloud was full (5/5GB used).
• Apparently, iCloud Notes was already enabled, because about 20 random notes had synced to iCloud. I saved and deleted those notes from iCloud, wanting a clean slate for syncing with my new device.
• After clearing my iCloud, I enabled iCloud Notes on both devices (old and new), hoping that the remaining 100 notes would sync and appear on both phones.

What happened next:

• Suddenly, all 100 local notes on the old device disappeared.
• The Notes app shows nothing at all.
• Both the “On My iPhone” section and iCloud section are empty, as is “Recently Deleted.”
• At first, Spotlight search still found the missing notes, but now not even Spotlight can see them anymore.
• However, in iPhone storage, the Notes app still shows around 50MB of data usage, which strongly suggests that the notes are still stored somewhere, but are inaccessible.

What I’ve tried:

• Created a backup with iMazing, but no notes are visible there.
• Planning to use recovery tools like PhoneRescue. So far, I haven’t been able to access the missing data with them.
• Tried deleting a new note to trigger the appearance of the “Recently Deleted” folder, but didn’t help.

I’m considering updating the device to iOS 18, as I read that this issue was resolved in iOS 16.2 and later.

But I’m very hesitant... I worry the update could permanently erase or overwrite the hidden note data.

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Has anyone experienced something similar? Is there any way to recover local notes after enabling iCloud sync? Can updating iOS help, or could it make things worse?

Any help or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much! 🙏