Please help restore part of a note missing
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Hello, this morning I added a block of text to a larger note on my iphone app. I then used the app / note again several times. At 2:25 pm I opened the app and noticed that the block of text I created in the morning was missing. In the history, the marks are 9:07am and 2:25pm. I tried that on both the iphone and imac. There are no history marks between these 2 but that’s exactly the time frame when this block of text would have gone missing. Could you please help?
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AI assistant advised me to include my email in this post, so here it is (email visible only to moderators and staff)
Thank you very much!
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The note title is Poetry, created a few days ago. This particular block of text was created this morning around 9-10 am.
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I also added a block of text to the same note later in the morning and that is also missing now. It appears that there was a period of time this morning when the app was not saving or syncing. Is there a way to help restore these missing blocks of text all from today?
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Hi @valeriebakerphd,
I’m really sorry to hear what happened. Losing writing you cared about, especially poetry, is genuinely frustrating, and I want to help you get as much of it back as possible.
First, one time-sensitive thing: if any device or app still shows even a glimpse of the missing text, copy it out into another app right away (and ideally put that device into Airplane Mode first), before it has a chance to sync and overwrite. Protecting a surviving copy is the surest fix.
Next, let’s dig into version history properly, because it’s worth checking in more than one place:
- Open the note in the web app at app.simplenote.com and also on your Mac. In the note editor, click the History (clock) icon at the top, then drag the slider to the left to step back through earlier versions. The web app often shows the fullest history, so please check there even if the Mac didn’t help.
- Scrub back to versions from that morning (roughly 9:00–10:00 AM and the later block you mentioned). If you find a version containing the missing text, you can either click Restore Note or, to avoid overwriting anything you have now, simply copy the missing passage from that version and paste it back into your current note.
- Check the Trash as well. A sync conflict sometimes creates a second copy of a note, which can end up there. Trashed notes keep their history, so restore any duplicate “Poetry” note you find and check its history too.
If none of the versions contain the text, it likely means the edits were lost to a sync issue before they were saved to a stored version. In that case, I’d like to take a closer look from our side. You’ve already shared your account email with our team privately, so with your permission I’ll have us check whether anything recoverable exists on the server for that note.
To help me investigate, could you confirm:
- Which device you were typing on that morning (iPhone, I believe?), and whether the note ever appeared correct on your Mac afterward.
- The Simplenote app versions on your iPhone and Mac.
- Roughly how long the two missing blocks were.
I can’t promise the text is recoverable, but let’s exhaust every option. I’ll keep working this with you. Speak soon!
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Hello, thank you so much for working with me on this! I’ve tried these steps but they sadly didn’t result in finding the missing text. To answer your questions,
- iPhone and no the text didn’t appear on my iMac afterwards
- 4.55 on my iPhone. I’m not sure what version of the app is on the iMac. On iMac I logged in to check the notes at Simplenote.com
- I’d say approximately 40 lines of text each, one block of text created between 9 and 10 am the other a little bit later maybe at 10:30 am
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Hi there, @valeriebakerphd,
Thanks for the fast follow-up and for trying out our options! To bad they didn’t help at all :(
Appreciate you sharing the additional info I requested; I passed to our tech team on top of the previous info. We hope they can work out a happy ending for your case
We’ll circle back to you as soon as we have updates; let us know if there’s anything else we can do to help meanwhile!
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Hi @valeriebakerphd,
Thank you for your patience while I looked into this with our tech team.
I’m sorry to share that the missing text isn’t recoverable. Simplenote’s Version History (the clock icon and slider) already shows every version that reached our servers, so there’s no hidden backup on our end beyond what you can already see, and the two blocks of text never made it to the server to be saved.
One last thing worth trying, just to rule everything out:
– open a private/incognito browser window
– go to **app.simplenote.com**
– sign in fresh.
This gives the most complete, uncached view of your notes and their history. If the text isn’t there, it unfortunately confirms it didn’t sync.
As for what happened: when Simplenote overwrites a note because two devices make conflicting edits, it always records a history entry, and there’s no such entry here. That points to the text never syncing off your iPhone in the first place.
The two most common causes we see are:
– The phone briefly had no network connection (or it was blocked), the note didn’t sync, and the text was then changed or replaced before a connection came back.
– If you used dictation/speech-to-text, the text can appear on screen while it’s still waiting at a confirmation step, and if that step is interrupted, the edit is never actually written to the note.
To help avoid this in the future, we have some suggestions:
– Give notes a moment to sync (watch for the sync to settle) before switching apps or devices, especially on mobile.
– For longer or important writing sessions, confirm the note appears updated on a second device or in the web app before relying on it.
Hope that helps all in all. I’m genuinely sorry we couldn’t recover this one.
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