[Access4All]

Here is an unusual situation, which I was never able to resolve. Let me try the DG. It’s too convoluted for the radio show, but you said you were going to answer every question today. Maybe the Forum can help.

On 11/27/18, in order to use my new Apple Watch, I upgraded my iPhone 6s to iOS 12, from iOS 11, Then I updated Apple WatchOS. I did not use Notes for about 7 days after that. But when I first did, I discovered that all of my Notes were effectively cut off at the date 7/20/18. Any edits or new notes after that date were gone. Thus, older notes remained, but did not reflect any of my changes since 7/20/18. Everything else that I checked looked fine.

The Geniuses at the Bar were mystified, not understanding what happened or how to recover. They put me in contact were higher grade tech support by phone. They were also mystified.

I had done both an iCloud backup just before I did the iOS update. Alas, since I had not noticed the problem for 7 days, all of my current iOS devices has already been synced by then. The Notes had reverted to the 7/20/18 state on each device.

I suggested several options to recover my Notes, which Apple thought would work.

1. I have iDrive and the iOS app. [I started using iDrive ven when you were still advertising Carbonite. I used Carbonite before that, The product was fine did not like some of the company’s behaviors. And iDrive supported Macs.] The iDrive app is not very good. In particular, it does not back up Notes.
2. I had an old iPad it and iPhone that had not been synced on iCloud for 1 or 2 months. I thought I could find so of the Notes there. Even though I got the message that I had not backed up for that long period, that did not work.
3. I was down to my last chance. I had also done an iTunes backup just before I did the iOS update. I updated my iPad from iTunes, but still got the truncated Notes. I decided that might have been because the process automiatically connected to my WiFi and resynced with the truncated data. I then tried to turn of WiFi and update again. But ITunes no longer recognized that backup to my iDevices. I could see the backup file, but have not figured out how to use.

So do you have any explanation as to what might have happened, or advise as to how to proceed?

A topic for you show might be to discuss Apple’s confounded notion of backup, which, I think, stems partly because Apple wants to control the file system without showing any of it to users. Discussions of backup by web experts typically begin with “It confuses me a bit, too, and it is hard to explain, but let’s see if I can help.” iCloud backup really is designed to sync not provide persistent or versioned backup. Apple never indicates what is actually in a backup or what there is any sort of recovery to a prior state. iTunes backup is more real. But even there I get different renditions as what how far back or incremental it is, And all of the “backups” are “all or nothing” is terms of recovery. The Geniuses have never suggested a way to get true backups.

[Komando Community]

Sorry for the delay in our response! This is a tough one. It looks like other users have experienced this issue when updating iOS on their device. Some reasons I found this may occur:

If you had multiple accounts on your device and for some reason you are no longer signed into the email account they were synced to.
If sync for Notes got turned off inadvertently in the iCloud settings sometime on or around 7/20.

I found information that indicates the data (if present in the backup you made before the update) may be recoverable using 3rd-party software. Were the notes there just prior to the update & backup? If so, that may be a way to go. We do not have any specific software to recommend, and they can be quite expensive. One we came across was called dr.fone Recover iOS. Please note we have not tested or verified this software.

I found a few other links that may help you out. Otherwise, you may try reaching out to Apple again. Perhaps the next person who helps you will have seen this type of issue before and know some other suggestions.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203768
https://support.apple.com/kb/ph21257?locale=en_US

[Author]

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