Why My Notes Disappeared After iOS 11 Update? How to Find Back?

The iOS 11 brings some new changes people would like to try on notes, like the new added text formatting, documents scanning and paper styles. After updating to iOS 11 final version, you can start enjoying these new notes features. However, you may also get some notes issues and lose all of your notes contents after iOS 11 update, just like the below example.

I got iOS 11 installed on my iPhone 7 today but after the upgrade, all my notes disappeared. I never got this problem before in previous updates. Apple please fix this bug.

Actually, this issue also happened to previous iOS update like iOS 10.3.3 and iOS 10.3.2. In this post, we’ll tell you why sometimes the notes is easy to lost after iOS 11 update and offer some tips to help you recovery all missing notes in iOS 11 or recent iOS iOS 11.1.2.

Why Your Notes Missing After iOS 11 Update

Usually, the notes that you created on your iPhone or iPad is not only stored on your device itself, but also uploaded to cloud server, or saved to iOS backups via iTunes/iCloud.

In the process of updating to iOS 11 final version this September, your device will erase all data and setting on your device and then load data from cloud and restore from backups to get the notes data. If all works well, the notes will disappear on your iPhone. If something goes wrong when restoring, all or part of your notes disappear after iOS update.

How to Restore Missing Notes to Your iPhone [3 Methods]

Just like what we’ve said on the first part, your notes content may be stored on email servers or backups. Therefore you can try to get back your notes from Cloud server, or the backups you created in iTunes or iCloud. Besides, you can also use some data recovery apps to recover those notes from iPhone directly because these lost data may still exist on your iPhone even through you deleted them.

Method 1. How to Recover Lost Notes from Cloud Server

Most of iOS users are used to sync notes to iCloud. And some users use other email account to save notes. Go to Settings > Notes > Accounts and tap each account to see whether you turn on Notes.

Your notes may be saved to the server of this email account. Once you turn on the Notes sync, all notes will come back. Besides, if you ever enabled Notes sync feature on other account that now you don’t use. You should tap Add Account to add it to sync Notes.

Tip: You can also use browser to login these accounts and view notes content. For example, you can login iCloud.com to see the notes you synced to iCloud.

Method 2. How to Restore Notes from Backups

If you have saved notes to some backups in iTunes/iCloud before, you may get your disappeared notes back by restoring from iTunes or iCloud. But you should make sure it is an recent backup. Because you can’t preview content in backups before restore so you may accidentally get another data loss, which is risky.

Don’t Miss: How to Restore iPhone without iTunes/iCloud

Method 3. How to Restore iPhone Notes without Backups

What if you have no backup files? So you can’t get back disappeared notes? Yes, you can. Some iOS Data Recovery Software can scan your device and analysis whether there are some lost notes you can find back. If there are, surely you can recover them back to your device. Below we’ll show you how to use this kind of app to scan deleted data on iPhone.

Step 1. Firstly, download and install iOS data recovery on computer.

Step 2. Connect iPhone and start scan your lost data.

Run iOS Data Recovery on computer and connect your iPhone to computer using USB cable. After this app shows “iPhone connected”,  you can click “Recover from iOS device ”

Step 3.  Preview lost notes and choose whether to recover.

This app will scan and analysis your iPhone to find your lost data. After the scan, it will list all categories on the left side. Just select Notes to preview whether there are some deleted notes, and choose whether to restore the content to your device.

In conclusion, I would like to say to all iPhone users: backup your iPhone before any iOS update. Because next time you may accidentally lose not only notes on your iPhone.