I Can’t Unlock A Note With The Correct Password…

Question

Level 1

7 points

I Can’t Unlock A Note With The Correct Password…

I have an old MBP, (mid 2010, El Capitan) which I still use as a storage device and it contains a locked note I desperately need to access.

I know if a password is forgotten the note is lost - however, this is a different scenario… I DO know the password…

While logging into this MBP recently it started to advise me the password was wrong!

I was 100% sure the password was correct but, in the end, I decided to access the machine using the Recovery Key.

That worked. I was able to login and I found the note I needed to access.

On trying to unlock the note I was again advised the password was wrong!

When accessing the MBP with a Recovery Key I reset the password…

However, the next time I tried to login, I was advised the password was wrong again!

The machine seems to be unable to ‘remember’ my passwords?

The only way into my MBP is via the Recovery Key every time.

I am 110% sure I know the correct password for the locked note but if the machine isn’t remembering my login password could the same problem be preventing me from unlocking the note?

Is there anyway I could use the Recovery Key to unlock the note?

There is a caveat - This MBP isn’t connected in any way to the Internet.

That is because the note I need to access is long gone in my Apple iCloud. Therefore my Mac, and other devices don’t have access to these old notes.

I just used to access this information using my MBP.

Why does my MBP not seem to store passwords?

Could I back up the note locally and reinstate it into my iCloud account?

Is there anyway I can access this locked note with its password or has my MBP truly become unusable?

I am desperate for an answer… Can anyone help?

MacBook Pro 15″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Nov 14, 2024 7:09 PM

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Answer 1

steve626

Level 6

11,549 points

Nov 14, 2024 7:56 PM in response to EnEs63

Why don't you

duplicate the note in question
put it in the "On My Mac" portion of Notes
place a copy in the iCloud portion of Notes

Now you should have a duplicate of the note with one copy in "On my Mac" (local storage) and one copy in "iCloud." Just in case something goes wrong.

Now connect to the internet and activate iCloud Notes. All your other Notes in iCloud should come join the one note and vice versa, that one problem note will go into iCloud and show up on all your other devices. Then try your password on one of the other devices.

Another thing I suggest is to connect a plain USB keyboard to the laptop. Try opening things and entering passwords with that. On such an old Mac the keyboard might be wearing out, it might be entering letters twice (or not at all) when you try your passwords. Or just one of those keys is defective and you need that key for your password.

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Answer 2

EnEs63 Author

Level 1

7 points

Nov 17, 2024 1:50 AM in response to steve626

Thank you for your response Steve626,

I did try your idea of checking the keyboard early on when I couldn’t get the MBP to accept my password.

Once I had got into the machine using the Recovery Key, I used the built in keyboard to type all the keys into a note. It was faultless…

So, here’s an update following your response…

I looked to duplicate the note to the folders as you suggested.

The duplicate function was greyed out but I was able to move the note. I moved it to ‘My Mac’ and then was able to use the copy feature and copy it to ‘iCloud notes’.

That worked.

Then, when I tried the password one more time it unlocked!

The note appeared open very briefly then vanished! I noticed however, the note was empty!

I hunted everywhere for that note. No luck. (It’s not in the deleted folder).

The MBP was never connected to the internet the whole time…

So now, having spent so much time on this I have given up.

I guess I just don’t have an answer to this mystery… But thank you again for taking the time to respond to my query…

With Regards

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