Jump to content

HELP: Need to restore text deleted from a note


Recommended Posts

Hello,

this is my first time on any forum, but I have a question. Somehow I deleted the text from one of my notes (must have absent mindedly selected it the accidentally hit enter). Of course, it synched (i.e. eliminated!) everywhere! At any rate, I want that text. As I deleted text, not the note, it is not in the trash anywhere. I tried to search/follow other web searches, and "found" the evernote data back up from a day ago (no easy task!!). But even going back in time does not seem to recover the text from that note. Is synch retroactive? Is there no way to restore the state of that note to a prior time when the text was present?? If there is a way, can you give me a step by step broken down for a 3rd grader? Remember, the note still exists, it is just blank. Thank you for any help/insight you can provide. If I am SOL then give me the bad news, and I can start to try to rebuild, however, this really panics me as I have some critical information on some notes that could be catastrophic is I cannot go back in time. (should I go to manual synch?). Help.

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Welcome to the forum (and to the world of internet forums), mactease! I think:

—If you're a premium user, and this note was synced, with the text you're looking for, sometime in the past, you should be able to recover it. Go to "Note" in the menu bar, then "Note History..." and you'll see options of past versions that you can recover.

—If you're a free user, you're SOL, since note history is a feature offered only to premium users.

But if I'm wrong I know someone will come by soon to correct me.

Also, when you say you "'found' the evernote data back up from a day ago (no easy task!!). But even going back in time does not seem to recover the text from that note," how are you trying to open the note/access the data? If you truly backed this up before deleting the text, I don't understand how the contents of the note at the time of the backup are deleted or otherwise inaccessible.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • Level 5*

Hello,

this is my first time on any forum, but I have a question. Somehow I deleted the text from one of my notes (must have absent mindedly selected it the accidentally hit enter). Of course, it synched (i.e. eliminated!) everywhere! At any rate, I want that text. As I deleted text, not the note, it is not in the trash anywhere. I tried to search/follow other web searches, and "found" the evernote data back up from a day ago (no easy task!!). But even going back in time does not seem to recover the text from that note. Is synch retroactive? Is there no way to restore the state of that note to a prior time when the text was present?? If there is a way, can you give me a step by step broken down for a 3rd grader? Remember, the note still exists, it is just blank. Thank you for any help/insight you can provide. If I am SOL then give me the bad news, and I can start to try to rebuild, however, this really panics me as I have some critical information on some notes that could be catastrophic is I cannot go back in time. (should I go to manual synch?). Help.

hi. welcome to the forums!

as i understand it, all notes are backed up every few hours (8?) and there are note histories (assuming your note is more than 8 hours old). if you are a premium user, you can see the old versions. if you are not, you can upgrade ($5 per month / $45 per year) or contact support and see what they can do for you. it is entirely possible that they have a backup and can get it to you.

if you have been doing time machine backups (i think you ought to be doing this at least daily -- storage is so inexpensive these days, and all you have to do is plug it in) then you can easily go back and find the note content on your own. just do a spotlight search (i prefer the app houdahspot) using the keywords you know are present in the note.

Link to comment

Thank you both for the prompt response.

First, I am a free user so no note history.:(

Second, when I go to the evernote library in finder (user/content/) there are lots of folders.

Third, further complication: I screwed up on my laptop, but it is my desktop that has time machine.

Sooo. I painstakingly looked through content at the "Pxxx" folders by date and "did a quick look"on the laptop. I copied the appropriate folders into dropbox and added them to the desktop content. Found the appropriate one and went back to yesterday in time machine, clicked on the folder to restore (kept both files). VOILA! Success!! *whew* steep learning curve and a wasted day, but maybe this will help someone else. BTW, spotlight only shows the current version of that file. Haven't tried the other but will make a note. Also, will consider the upgrade. Thanks to you both!!

  • Like 2
Link to comment
  • Level 5*

Thank you both for the prompt response.

First, I am a free user so no note history. :(

Second, when I go to the evernote library in finder (user/content/) there are lots of folders.

Third, further complication: I screwed up on my laptop, but it is my desktop that has time machine.

Sooo. I painstakingly looked through content at the "Pxxx" folders by date and "did a quick look"on the laptop. I copied the appropriate folders into dropbox and added them to the desktop content. Found the appropriate one and went back to yesterday in time machine, clicked on the folder to restore (kept both files). VOILA! Success!! *whew* steep learning curve and a wasted day, but maybe this will help someone else. BTW, spotlight only shows the current version of that file. Haven't tried the other but will make a note. Also, will consider the upgrade. Thanks to you both!!

Glad we could help :)

Link to comment
  • 4 months later...

Hello,

this is my first time on any forum, but I have a question. Somehow I deleted the text from one of my notes (must have absent mindedly selected it the accidentally hit enter). Of course, it synched (i.e. eliminated!) everywhere! At any rate, I want that text. As I deleted text, not the note, it is not in the trash anywhere. I tried to search/follow other web searches, and "found" the evernote data back up from a day ago (no easy task!!). But even going back in time does not seem to recover the text from that note. Is synch retroactive? Is there no way to restore the state of that note to a prior time when the text was present?? If there is a way, can you give me a step by step broken down for a 3rd grader? Remember, the note still exists, it is just blank. Thank you for any help/insight you can provide. If I am SOL then give me the bad news, and I can start to try to rebuild, however, this really panics me as I have some critical information on some notes that could be catastrophic is I cannot go back in time. (should I go to manual synch?). Help.

Dear mactease,

I must thank you because with your post you have exactly formulated my same issue. I agree as well with you that is not a easy task to move through data back up.

I think that handling certaing note formats has some troubles: I mean that when I try to modify a PDF note, sometimes it happens that the note doesn't change but it suddenly disappear. Better: not the note, but the text inside that. That is what happened to me and required me to restore the text note. Just to use your precise query words.

Said this, I must point out that I'm a premium user and note history is an explained feature for my profile.... so I've been careless and EverNote clearly offered the way to solve the problem.

Thanks for you post. I'm sorry for your problem.

Guido

Link to comment
  • 3 weeks later...

I am a premium user, note history is pretty much useless it only backs up once every couple days not after every sync, which is what you need in these types of situation

It would at least be nice to have something like last 10 syncs and then do it daily or weekly or something...

Link to comment

Note history creates a snapshot of your not on our server every 8 hours. If you have synced multiple times in the same 8 hour period, then we will only have one version for that session.

Link to comment
  • 2 months later...

Note history creates a snapshot of your not on our server every 8 hours. If you have synced multiple times in the same 8 hour period, then we will only have one version for that session.

So if I upgrade to Premium now, will I have access to Note History for an existing note that was created on the free version? I have a similar issue where note content somehow disappeared. Or wil Note History only work moving forward from the time of Premium activation?

Link to comment
  • 2 months later...

—If you're a premium user, and this note was synced, with the text you're looking for, sometime in the past, you should be able to recover it. Go to "Note" in the menu bar, then "Note History..." and you'll see options of past versions that you can recover.

 

What if my note wasn't synced yet, but was only just created locally? 

 

I don't find the option mentioned by you. I just see a "Restore" line, which is greyed out though for me, even though I'm a Premium user.

 

 

Note history creates a snapshot of your not on our server every 8 hours. If you have synced multiple times in the same 8 hour period, then we will only have one version for that session.

 

What? Every 8 hours only? -.- That is no note/version history functionality! That is just a "backup" function, but it won't allow me to gradually roll back items I made within the last five or one minute. I fell for your deceptive marketing. -.- I can't understand why you cannot include true note history functionality for 40 € / year, when the volume of data is much smaller than what people throw into Dropbox etc. Because Dropbox, Box, Google Drive sync every individual change, why can't Evernote do so too? (At least locally, if not via Sync)

 

Finally: Why does "Edit > Undo" simply not work?! It almost never works when I try it! It's like that since at least one year...

It's an absolute disgrace that this still isn't fixed or working properly. (Like in every other PC software since 1997!) But it's probably just your way to lure people into Premium...

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

—If you're a premium user, and this note was synced, with the text you're looking for, sometime in the past, you should be able to recover it. Go to "Note" in the menu bar, then "Note History..." and you'll see options of past versions that you can recover.

 

What if my note wasn't synced yet, but was only just created locally? 

 

I don't find the option mentioned by you. I just see a "Restore" line, which is greyed out though for me, even though I'm a Premium user.

 

 

>Note history creates a snapshot of your not on our server every 8 hours. If you have synced multiple times in the same 8 hour period, then we will only have one version for that session.

 

What? Every 8 hours only? -.- That is no note/version history functionality! That is just a "backup" function, but it won't allow me to gradually roll back items I made within the last five or one minute. I fell for your deceptive marketing. -.- I can't understand why you cannot include true note history functionality for 40 € / year, when the volume of data is much smaller than what people throw into Dropbox etc. Because Dropbox, Box, Google Drive sync every individual change, why can't Evernote do so too? (At least locally, if not via Sync)

 

Finally: Why does "Edit > Undo" simply not work?! It almost never works when I try it! It's like that since at least one year...

It's an absolute disgrace that this still isn't fixed or working properly. (Like in every other PC software since 1997!) But it's probably just your way to lure people into Premium...

 

 

Hi Philipp. Sorry to hear that the features are not meeting your needs. I don't think they are trying to trick you into purchasing Premium, though. If you contact support (see the link in my signature below) they will probably offer you a refund on the remaining amount of your Premium subscription. 

Link to comment
  • 6 months later...
  • 10 months later...
  • 3 months later...

I realize this won't help the first user (from 2012), but this may help future users.

 

If the content you accidentally deleted was on an iOS device (iPhone, iPad or iPod touch) *and* is old enough to have been in your last backup of your device in iTunes, then you can use a desktop/laptop computer application called iBackupBot to recover the lost data.  iBackupBot for iTunes on Windows or Mac costs US$34.95, but you can download and install the trial version for free (but it's so good, after I used it to recover my lost partial content today, I just purchased it).

iBackupBot allows you to access the latest iTunes backup of your iOS device and access individual files in that backup.  Once you've installed iBackupBot, open it and go to the Evernote documents (User App Files > Evernote > Library > Private Documents > www.evernote.com > (some number: mine is 49355362) > content).  You will see a list of all Note documents.  But the filenames are a long string of what looks like hexadecimal digits and therefore for all intents and purposes are encrypted to you (e.g. ed279ba8-29d1-4d0f-a038-e16f1b326939):  they are actually folders, because each Evernote document is a combination of the Note file plus all embedded images stored externally as individual JPG, etc. files.

So you will have to select the folders one at a time and use the Modified date on each file in there to help you find your file (that's the fastest way I could figure out at this point to find your document).  Double-click any image file to view it or any Note file to view it.  Note files are just text files containing HTML code--the language of the world wide web, which is how Evernote implements its documents I guess.  So you may have to scroll down any Note document you open in order to find any actual text to look at to see if it is your document.  If not, close it and go to the next folder.  It may be a long a tedious process, but it's worth it.

When you find your document, select all the content (e.g. Ctrl-A, i.e. select all the HTML code in that document, from the top to the bottom), copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl-C), create a new text file in your favorite text editor on your computer, and paste (Ctrl-V) and save the contents of the clipboard into that new text file.  Then rename the text file, changing the extention from ".txt" to ".htm" (a web file).  Then just open it in a web browser (e.g. in Windows you can either double-click it or right click the file and choose to open it in Firefox).  Then select the text you want to recover, paste it into a new email message, and email it to yourself.

Back on your iOS device, copy that email's contents and paste it into the Evernote document you lost it in.

Good luck,
Gary

Link to comment
  • 5 months later...
  • Level 5*

 

How to recover deleted notes on iphone? You can restore iTunes backups to your iPhone at any time. Follow these steps to choose a backup and sync the data to your iPhone.

 

I would NOT recommend doing an iTunes restore of your iPhone/iPad just to recover a few lost Evernote Notes.

The restore process overwrites your entire iPhone, and you will lose all changes/data to you iPhone since the iTunes backup.

 

There are a number of iOS utilities for Mac/PC that will allow you to read/recover data from your iPhone, without any changes to your iPhone.  Several of these are mentioned in the above posts.

Link to comment
  • 4 months later...

I go through this ***** all the time and it's from hard pressing the text for copying elsewhere. ITS GLITCHY POPS UP FOR A SPLIT SECOND AND GOES AWAY. How the hell is there no shake to undo feature or a stupid undo button like a computer has?! drives me freaking nuts and I've had enough!!!! SERIOUSLY IM FREAKING DONE WITH YOU EVERNOTE. YOU AND YOUR ELEPHANT CAN PISS OFF. DID YOU FORGET THAT PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES?! Elephants never drop peanuts!! YEAH ***** YOU ELEPHANT YOU CAN'T PICK THAT UP. YOURE NOT ALLOWED TO ACCIDENTALLY DROP YOUR FOOD YOU STARVE!! IF YOU WERE IN SCHOOL YOUD FAIL BEVAUSE OF IMPORTANT THINGS YOU SPENT A LOT OF TIME TYPING YOU DUMBASS BIG EARED IDIOT.

Link to comment
  • 3 weeks later...

Where is Note History? How do I get there? I'm running iOS 9.1 on my iPad Air 3. After I encrypted several notes, one of them disappeared entirely, one of them is blank but the title is still there, and one of them is green with 3 copies of the note, one following another, and this last, the green note, can't be edited.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

Where is Note History? How do I get there? I'm running iOS 9.1 on my iPad Air 3. 

 

I don't believe you have access to Note History using EN iOS.

You need to have a Premium account, and use either EN Mac or EN Win.

In EN Mac, select the Note, then goto Note > Note History...

Link to comment
  • Ex Employees

@JMichael is correct, Note History is only available on the PC/Mac desktop app, or from the web client. See here for the exact steps.

 

Also, in the case of accidental deletions on iOS, 'shake to undo' on iPhone absolutely works with Evernote. There is an actual undo button on iPad, on the keyboard toolbar.

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 5 months later...

Good day people i really need your help,i need basic and simple step on recovering important information on my note,the note is not deleted only that i deleted something from the note am not a premium user,i think my situation is the same as the one of mactease.Please i need simple steps i can follow.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*
6 hours ago, GAONE said:

Good day people i really need your help,i need basic and simple step on recovering important information on my note,the note is not deleted only that i deleted something from the note am not a premium user,i think my situation is the same as the one of mactease.Please i need simple steps i can follow.

Since you put an emphasis on "simple", the easiest, simplest method to recover a prior version of your note is a temp, 1-month, upgrade to Evernote Premium, so you can access the Note History.

Link to comment
  • 2 months later...

@BSR and @evernote, I also had the same problem. I scrolled to the bottom of my note and clicked enter to go to the next line, but the whole note got deleted. Now I have lost the content on that note alrhough the note still exists. Pkease help as this is very distressing and I don't have access to my note history. If you could give me temporary access, that would be appreciated as the information on the note is very important to me. There should be an 'undo' button or the need to press 'save changes' before finalising as this would help the content being lost.

My ticket number is 1703408. Please resolve asap as it is a cery stressful thing.

Link to comment
  • 2 months later...

I found this thread because I had a similar occurrence.  I also employed an easy fix, which may not work for everyone, but if it does, you're home free. 

Here's what happened to me:

This morning I updated my Weekend To-Do note in Evernote on my desktop PC.  It's a long note, probably the first I ever created.  I synced it, then shut down my PC.  At lunch I wanted to show a friend how cool Evernote is.  So I pulled up my Weekend note and to my chagrin, it appeared it hadn't synced, or perhaps that my iPhone wasn't syncing with Evernote.  Then I recalled how Evernote sometimes fumbles the sync and scrolled down . . . down . . . down.  Sure enough, there was the "Conflicting changes" notice, with my updated note (just a long below it).  This is a royal pain to fix on an iPhone, so I put my phone away until this evening.  I tried using iOS' select and delete feature and managed to delete the entire note, how I'm not sure (no, I did not choose "select all").  I opened my iPad, and of course it synced right away to my iPhone -- Poof!  Weekend note gone.

Here's the simple solution:  Recalling that the note was last updated on my desktop PC, and hadn't been changed since then (apart from the inadvertent deletion of all text on the iOS devices), I went downstairs, disconnected my network cable from my desktop PC so it could not sync, fired up the PC, and opened Evernote.  My local copy of my Weekend note was, of course, still there, and going nowhere.  I simply chose the "Duplicate Note" feature, gave the duplicate a new name ("Weekend (new")), plugged the network connection back in, and synced Evernote.  The old Weekend Note went Poof! again, but it didn't matter since the entire content was now preserved in a new identical (except for the note's title) note.  So I deleted the old note, synced again. exited Evernote, and then opened it on my iPhone and iPad, where they sync worked, leaving the new note with the old text, and deleting the old note with the text deleted.  Problem solved!

I realize you have to be a little lucky for this to work for you, but since from reading posts this often happens because the iOS is so kludgey with its select and delete text, it may help someone out who hasn't thought to do this.

I agree, Evernote needs to build in an undelete feature that can easily revert the last 10 changes.  It's easy code, and the premium "Note History" feature doesn't do this, and really isn't worth the price. 

 

Link to comment
  • Level 5*
6 hours ago, Buff Flyer said:

Evernote needs to build in an undelete feature that can easily revert the last 10 changes.  It's easy code, and the premium "Note History" feature doesn't do this, and really isn't worth the price. 

Without going into your skills at estimating "easy code", if EN added this feature, would you then consider it "worth the price"

Personally, I consider the "Note History" a valuable feature. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • Level 5*
8 hours ago, Buff Flyer said:

I realize you have to be a little lucky for this to work for you, but since from reading posts this often happens because the iOS is so kludgey with its select and delete text, it may help someone out who hasn't thought to do this.

Safest bet is still to sync when you enter/exit a device.  Sounds like EN may not have synced the last time you used the phone.  One way to be sure is to press the sync and see the sync completed message prior to starting or leaving, particularly with a long note.  FWIW. 

Link to comment
13 hours ago, DTLow said:

Without going into your skills at estimating "easy code", if EN added this feature, would you then consider it "worth the price"

Personally, I consider the "Note History" a valuable feature. 

I didn't say Note History is a worthless feature, only that it doesn't come close to serving as an auto-save feature.  Note History, by itself, would not justify the price of EN premium.

As for the coding, basic auto-save has been around as long as DOS, and it would be an easy feature to implement.  Every word processor since the original Word Perfect (pre-Corel) has had it.

Link to comment
11 hours ago, csihilling said:

Safest bet is still to sync when you enter/exit a device.  Sounds like EN may not have synced the last time you used the phone.  One way to be sure is to press the sync and see the sync completed message prior to starting or leaving, particularly with a long note.  FWIW. 

I agree, and EN has gotten much better at auto-sync in the last couple of versions.  Here, however, I did sync it when I exited my Desktop, but EN fumbled the sync on my iPhone, tagging it onto the old note with the "conflict" warning.  As a cloud app, it's not possible to run around to every device and make sure sure a sync from one client has effectively synced to all.  EN is, in large measure, a one-trick-pony; it needs to perform that trick flawlessly every time.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*
12 hours ago, Buff Flyer said:

I agree, and EN has gotten much better at auto-sync in the last couple of versions.  Here, however, I did sync it when I exited my Desktop, but EN fumbled the sync on my iPhone, tagging it onto the old note with the "conflict" warning.  As a cloud app, it's not possible to run around to every device and make sure sure a sync from one client has effectively synced to all.  EN is, in large measure, a one-trick-pony; it needs to perform that trick flawlessly every time.

Yeah, I was referring more to the iPhone.  If you had opened EN on the iPhone and made a change before a sync occurred that could cause the issue.  Not saying there isn't a bug with what happened to you nor that conflict resolution could be more robust, just my experience has been if I am sure to complete a sync first/last thing with the iPhone or PCs I don't get any conflicts.  FWIW.

Link to comment
  • 1 month later...
  • Level 5*
On 2016-10-19 at 오후 8시 39분, Mffhyt said:

The fastest way to recover iPhone data  from iTunes backup .If not , need one recovery app to recover iphone data.

Not sure exactly what you're referring to - you're posting in the Mac forum

Evernote doesn't maintain much of a database on the iPhone (exception for offline notebooks).  When a note is looked at, the data is retrieved from the Evernote servers

Link to comment
  • 2 years later...

I ran into similar issues today. I cut a big chunk of text and formatting, and before I could paste it Evernote crashed, taking with it all the data. Perhaps I could have quickly pasted it into a word document, but I foolishly didn't think of that at the time (and, I'm not certain it was stored in the clipboard cache). But, I thought of this workaround, which might help others with a second device.

  1. If you have a second device, go into it and find the old note. If Evernote properly crashed, it should still be there. Rename the title slightly so it comes as a new note. Sync.
  2. As an extra precaution, I also emailed myself the note from my second device (a feature I'd never really noticed before).
  3. Then, go into your first device and you should have both version of notes - the original (now re-named) and the newer one you were working on. Cut and paste (and cross fingers...) between the notes to get it to how it was meant to be.

It was probably a bit easier for me because I've set it so Evernote only syncs when I shut it down, or when I manually tell it to do so. This might not work if Evernote syncs on start-up, in which case it may over-write the note on the second device before you can access the original note.

Link to comment
  • 1 year later...

I'm not sure if this is helpful for anyone...however I just had the issue where I accidenty overwrote my note. I keep my data for work on this account and it was imperative I recover it. Evernote keeps backups of histories of notes every .....15 minutes or so now. I deleted the note at 12:51, and I was able to access the history at 12:36...after I started the session but before overwriting the note. I was a free user and did not have access....however, unlike other programs who only keep back-ups for premium users, evernote stores back-ups for all users. So, when I upgraded, I was able to see the backups and fix my own issue. I'm keeping the premium because I believe in supporting things that save my bacon. 

 

Hope that helps! May the force be with you!

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...