How to retrieve missing iPad notes after iCloud Sync

I talked with apple support they got me doing stuff for about an hour, told me they did something on their end and to wait 24 hours, when the notes didn't appear they told me "oh why don't you restore your backup" , what a joke!

Same happened to me, over 100 notes. I called apple and after a half hour they said they’re gone and they can’t help. I asked to talk with someone else. She said she was a senior advisor and there was nobody else for me to talk with, and there’s nothing else she could do, then hung up on me without saying anything else.

Do you know how they fixed this? I am having this same issue, but Apple Support said they couldn't do anything to help me and the notes were gone.

I have had the same issue where I made notes on my iPad with the iPencil, but when I turned on the iCloud Sync, all these notes disappeared!

Same thing happened to me and I was to advised to restore from backup, even though I had never synced them over there before. I've wiped the device and am restoring it now. This is taking a while, did they advise you to do that first? Is there a time limit on how long they can retrieve it for?

Except the same things happened to me, I did NOT remove any notes, I tried to sync my notes that were already on my IPad to my ICloud and APPLE deleted them NOT me you would think a multi-BILLION dollar company would be able to fix this problem with THEIR products. I was writing a book and lost ALL of my progress. This is something APPLE NEEDS to fix. Also it should just be a rule of thumb that syncing mean syncing and not replacing.

This same thing happened to me too. I have notes for school that I NEED back, and many notes that I’ve been adding to for months. I’m very disappointed, and there must be a solution. Apple please fix this. Everything important is gone. Just gone… I think there are too many complaints to do nothing about it…

Hello…I need help. This issue happened to me just now. And i have years of very important notes in my ipad that got overwritten by those from my phone. I have followed instructions to check on icloud but nothing is there except those from my iphone

someone please help if you know how to fix it. Badly need those notes back. I have a major event coming soon and lots of my work are stored there.

thank you so much

Was anyone able to get a resolution to this issue? Apple support basically told me to go to Gmail to see if they can help restore since my icloud account is my gmail. Not sure how to even go about this, absolutely insane to me that apple would not have a solution for this. I only intended to sync but obviously that has a different meaning for Apple, it quite literally means replace and tough luck. so disappointed, if anyone has any solutions please share. I have months work on there.

Hi, just went through the same situation and in my case apple itself turned on the sync after iPad update and now when i opened notes to continue my weeks of research ive found not a single iPad note. Did you find any solution?

This just happened to me (July 2024).

I cannot imagine how this hasn’t been fixed yet, as this original post is from over a year and a half ago (January 2023).

Some people who have commented here have lost HUNDREDS of notes, and so much work. I would be absolutely livid.

This needs to be fixed NOW, and made a priority. If your software is permanently deleting a person’s work without warning how could anyone trust your products?

The same thing happened to me a few moments ago. Apparently we were supposed to offload the notes app on your ipad to “save” the notes on there before syncing. The moment i synced the notes in my iphone to my ipad it just went poof like wth with no warning. This is honest so ridiculous and annoying since i had so many important things in there.😭

I’m super heartbroken because I was using my iPad for my school notes and other IMPORTANT notes and now I don’t have anything. My iPad just backed up after trying what someone suggested on this thread so now I really don’t have any way to get it back from what it seems. Apple needs to fix this issue, I have exams coming up and they need to at least put a warning before completely getting rid of everyone’s notes.

Apple I am very sad and disappointed. I noticed that Notes were not on icloud and I turned icloud on and it erased all my notes from my phone. 2 years worth of notes and important info all gone all because I turned iCloud on. I figured it would just sync my icloud with the ones on my phone because that’s what makes sense. But no it deleted every single note I had for 2 years. Can you explain why this happened?

Literally just happened to me, apple would have at least add a warning before enabling sync to iCloud.

Apple support only tried to recovered the notes from "Deleted Notes" that it was not actually deleted by me.

Apple should enhance this feature, in the meantime I will go back to Google Keep

This is not helpful. I did not delete anything. I did not delete my notes. I opened up my iPad and all of my notes all of my recipes. All of everything has been deleted for me. I can’t find them anywhere. They’re not in a pile they’re not in a folder. They’re not anywhere. Apple needs to recover my notes. Like now. This was not helpful.