CRITICAL ISSUE CAUSING PERMANENT LOSS OF NOTES
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TECH NOTES:SIMPLENOTE VERSION MAC: 2.21SIMPLENOTE VERSION IOS: 4.55MAC OS TAHOE 26.1(But the issue below has been true in 100% of all versions of Mac OS since the first day I started using Simplenote)
I’ve been using simple note for years and love it. But there’s one issue that was always a little problematic that now has become critically problematic.
As everyone knows, when you do a search it then produces a list of notes in the panel on the left, and the top note’s data will be in the panel on the right with the associated search term hi lighted.
This gives the impression that the app’s focus is on the panel on the right, so in many cases this is simply data I want to delete so I hit my delete key.
Guess what happens? Instead of deleting the hi lighted text WITHIN the note, instead the entire note gets deleted. The reason is because even though it looks to the user that the text on the right is the app’s focus, it’s actually the note on the left in the left panel that is the app’s focus, so the entire note gets deleted instead.
And many times, once I see the hi lighted words and decide to delete them I realize that something above it also needs deleting, so I hit my delete key multiple times, inadvertently deleting multiple notes.
One might think the simple thing to do is to just go restore the note, but it is just not that simple for a few reasons:
1. The notes that come up in the search results come up in relevance order, not chronological order (as it should be). Which means note #1 (the one I’m focusing on) could be from today (and therefore easy to find and restore) and the second note could have last been edited 3 months ago, so when I delete it I have to roll back 3 months to find it OR know some text form it I can search for. However, If I’m deleting quickly then I don’t even SEE which note it was so I have no idea what to even search for.
2. There is now a new issue that is been coming up: The permanent deletion of notes. Somehow, apparently, when I hit delete multiple times it first deletes the note and then permanently deletes the note.
A few weeks ago a critically important note of mine that I’ve been working on for YEARS (for a book I’m writing) got deleted this way and was unrecoverable since it had been deleted not only from the main area but somehow instantly deleted from the trash as well.
My only recourse was to put an alternate device in airplane mode to prevent simple note from updating, and then copy and paste what was there to an alternate app, then re-paste it back in after disabling airplane mode.
But even after doing that I lost a week of work because the version of the note that was in the alternate device hadn’t been updated in a while.
Today I lost 2 or 3 notes and I don’t even know which ones they were or whether they were just put in the trash or permanently missing. And I have no idea how critical they may have been. It’s possible I’ll be on site with a client trying to close a huge deal and I go to turn to a note I took about their account and that’s when I discover which note went missing and I lose the account.
To manage this problem I now find myself copying and pasting every single note into a backup note, literally every time I make a change to a note I do this. It’s incredibly annoying and time consuming. But I can’t risk losing any more notes.
There is an INCREDIBLY simple and EASY solution you could deploy that would resolve this problem INSTANTLY: Just give us a setting toggle that allows to choose if we want to be given a confirmation box when putting a note in the trash AND MOST ESPECIALLY when the deletion of a note will be permanent.
I realize not everyone is going to want to have this change, which is why doing it as a toggle would make it so that everyone can have it exactly as they want. Those who like the current way the app works can keep it that way, and those like myself who want a warning can have the warning.
If this doesn’t change in the very near future I will have no choice but to definitively switch to another note taking app permanently. Please don’t receive that as a Karen asking for a manager and demanding to get my way. It’s just a practical reality. I can’t keep managing the safety of my notes with the type of time consuming solution that has me meanullay backing them up EVERY single time I make a change.
And I’m trying to avoid exiting simple note because I LOVE simple note.
Hope you understand and hope you will address this quickly.
Simplenote Support Forums 