How to change orange text back to black in Notes?

For what it's worth, here's the respective date/time info of the four Notes folders, in case I need to selectively delete anything:

1 x container.plist + data = created 2015, modified today

1 x container.plist + data = created 2018, modified today

1 x Data = created 2020, modified today

1 x Data = created January 2025, modified today

VikingOSX, what do you mean by "to drill down into"? To find "com.apple, notes.plist" I had to do a separate search and found it - I moved it to the desktop; and here is the content of the folder with info showing "com.apple.notes":

[Edited by Moderator]

Moved the said plist onto the desktop, relaunched Notes, all font is in now black BUT all entries in Notes are now those from 2015 and the spinning wheel for iCloud is turning but doesn't seem to lead to anything...

Relaunched Notes with 2015 entries (with said .plist still on desktop), the 2015 entries are now replaced with the current ones. For a little while all writing was in black, no orange words no red error underscore, then it all reverted back to the faulty style. What now? Delete the .plist from the desktop as well as the Notes folder from 2015?

Nope. Rebooted, opened Notes, and in the Note in question, all text was black and appeared to stay black (at least for a while). Then I changed to another Note within Notes and when returning to the Note in question, the faulty style was back. How about deleting the .plist file from desktop and the 2015 com.apple.Notes folder?

It's mind-boggling...I repeated the process and noticed that the text remains black AS LONG AS I don't switch to another Note and back. After switching back to the Note in question, its text is back to the same old faulty style.

Just to let you know:

contacted Apple tech support and while the agent was friendly and helpful, hours passed spent on phone calls, waiting periods, and trying this and that, none of which resolved the issue. She finally stated that it may well be a software bug and a problem for engineering to deal with. I was asked to upload documentation (screen shot, screen recording, and a data dmg) for engineering but Apple's gigafiles uploads got stuck after 90% and emails with said attachments didn't send because they exceeded the allowable message size. All of which means that the issue remains, I can't forward documentation for Apple's engineers to consult, and I am left to my own wits and calling Apple tech support again soon. In the meantime, I will try one thing: I will save a copy of the com.apple.Notes folder to a USB drive and delete said folder from the system, then reboot and see...sigh...

Of course. But before I go to such lengths, I'll have another word with Apple tech support, and if it's only to finally find a way to get the relevant documentation to them. Since I learned that I am not the only user with chromatic issues in Notes after transferring data from an older Mac, I'll post new developments to this thread.

It's said that it could also be a Cloud sync cache problem...

Thank you for your assistance and bearing with me, VikingOSX!

Last reply to myself and whoever is affected by the issue in question:

THE CASE IS SOLVED and the solution is really simple (see below): one has to turn "Math Results" off.

So I went from note to note, selected the entire respective text, and turned it off for each note (there doesn't seem to be the possibility to disallow Math Results globally, applying to all notes at once and from the onset). Anyway, all is good now.

Thank you all for bearing with me and for your assistance!

Hi Chattanoogan,

here is the OP of the thread - I just want to let you know: YOU WERE RIGHT! After days with the support community and Apple tech support, trying this and that, thinking that all conceivable was done, and almost resigning myself to living with Notes as they were, the solution to the issue was indeed to turn "Math Results" in Notes of - if I am not mistaken, Math Results is a new feature of macOS Sequoia. But it must be done for each respective text of a note by selecting the text, then disabling the function (Notes -> Format -> Math Results (at the very bottom) -> Off). As far as I can see, there's no option to turn off Math Results globally for all notes at once.

I think the underlying problem that really led to the issue was that I use in my notes' texts sometimes math symbols in order to abbreviate which must have led the computer to treat such places as featuring actual math operations, ergo, the stylistic confusion.

Thanks again for your input. You were on the right track!