Is there any way to recover iPhone notes on my PC?

I made the huge mistake of letting my son play with my iPhone and when I went back to check a note a few days later was horrified to find that they were all gone. Really not good! Is there any way to recover notes from my iPhone or from within iTunes? If it makes a difference, I'm running Windows 7 on a Dell laptop.

Dave's Answer:

Before you panic and think of disowning your child :-) the good news is that the answer is probably yes, there is a way you can recover your notes. There are two big "if"s in this, however: first, that you're been doing regular syncs of your Apple iPhone to your PC and second, that the notes you want to recover were created before your most recent backup. Both of those true? Great!

What you are going to need to do is dig into the actual backup file created by iTunes when you synchronize your phone: remember how each time before it does that it says "backing up..."? Now's when that's going to prove beneficial to you!

Turns out that there are a number of different solutions for wading through the complex data that comprises your backup file, but I'll show you how I pulled a Note out of my iPhone backup by using iBackupBot.

The hardest part is figuring out where your backup is stored on your computer. Digging around probably won't find it, but if you go here:

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\MobileSync\Backup

You'll be looking at a lot of very weird folder names (like "29d40b64fa240e6d02df25abf61ccd4e9"), sort them by date and remember the most recent of the batch.

Download the free demo of iBackupBot, launch it, then choose "Open..." from the "File" menu and pick the most recent backup folder. Then you'll see:

It can take a while, especially if you have as many photos, videos, music files and app data as I do: my backups are over 900MB in size! Once it's done you'll see list of every file in the backup, which is a bit intimidating:

Don't panic, though, because you don't have to wade through this. The list of icons along the top, that's the easy way to have the iBackupBot do the work. Find the Notes icon:

Click on it and voila! All of your notes show show up like magic:

Again, pay attention to that icon ribbon. Choose the Note you want to save, and you can instantly copy all of its content to your Clipboard (as shown above), easily then emailed to someone, saved to a Word doc, whatever, by using Edit --> Paste in that application.

Hope that helps you recover what you've lost!

Note: iBackupBot is a pretty slick app, but we want to disclose that the vendor paid for visibility on this site. Still, if it didn't work, and work well, we wouldn't have chosen to write about it in the first place. Now ya know.

Categorized: Windows PC Help , iPhone and Cell Phone Help (Article 9310, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: apple iphone, iphone backup recover, iphone backups, privacy, security
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Comments

I went through a similar process trying to recover a deleted text message. What a hassle. Data needs to be backed up, regardless of where it's created. If data can be easily lost (especially on a mobile device), shouldn't it be equally easy to back it up?

Posted by: bill richardson at February 18, 2010 9:09 AM

Hi, Dave. Now can you tell me where to find the backup file for my iPod Touch? I'm using Windows XP. I should be able to copy it to my portable drive, just in case, right? Thanks. Judy

Posted by: Judy Olson at February 19, 2010 4:06 PM

Hi, I hope you can help. I got a virus on my PC and lost everything. I have a new hard drive. Luckily, most of my iTunes library was saved on my iPhone. Is there a way to recover this music - transfer it from my iPhone to my PC. I have downloaded iTunes again but it is empty of music.I saw that there's Senuti, but that appears to only work for MAC. My operating system is Windows Vista. I also have an iPod that I would like to recover music from as well. I hope you can assist with this query. Thanks for your time. Cheers, Nadia

Posted by: Nadia at June 19, 2010 5:09 PM

Thank you for this helpful information. I had some notes accidentally deleted on my iphone recently and was looking for some information on how I can recover them back. This pretty much cleared it up for me

Posted by: Adam at August 18, 2010 4:27 AM

Handy Application Dave. One question though, is there a way to put any of those back up files back on my iPhone? I'm trying to get my contacts back. Apple has once again updated their OS and screwed up my iPhone. This is starting to get old Dave :)

Posted by: TLW at September 16, 2010 4:06 PM

Thanks. I used the software and I didn't need to open the file manually, It immediatelly opened a backup of my ipod and then I clicked on the "notes" icon. It displays a message and you have to click "ok" then you have your notes.

Posted by: jlio at November 21, 2010 9:40 PM

You sir...are a life saver.
Thank-you very much for your time in posting this solution.

tony c.
Toronto, Canada

Posted by: tony at December 1, 2010 8:45 PM

I spent over an hour trying to get through all the steps and no luck.

Posted by: sandra at December 15, 2010 6:29 PM

Thanks for the post! After searching for a week trying to figure out how to restore only notes (and not using my ipod), I came across this. The program is just what I was looking for. I was able to get the note that I needed. Thanks again :)

Posted by: TJ at February 4, 2011 11:29 AM

I just want to express my sincere gratitude for your post. Someone stole my cell phone from work today... And I desperately needed my notes, as they had ideas and thoughts about the novel I am writing (among other things, including notes about a pattern we are creating for my friend who died). I am so relieved the it worked, I can not even express it to you. Thank you SO much!!

Posted by: jEN at March 3, 2011 10:49 PM

Dave - stumbled across your solution here while weeping over a series of deleted notes thanks to my 3 yr old. You have quite literally saved 3 years of my life collecting memories in notes. THANK YOU!!!

Posted by: RAS at March 6, 2011 10:47 AM

I could kiss you for this help. Literally. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I found the notes I thought were lost forever. Bless you.

Posted by: Beth at March 31, 2011 5:47 PM

Hi, Dave.
This was very helpful in recovering my accidentally, deleted important iPhone Notes.

Thank you very much!

Marvin

Posted by: Marvin at June 10, 2011 9:11 PM

Dave, I deleted a note on my iphone.I found the backup file with the weird folder names on my computer. Then I downloaded the ibackupbot.When I double click on the icon,a message comes up saying found a backup in (a bunch of words, symbols) but the backup not complete. I press ok and it says status plist not found. I exit and a message says error: can't load device info.

Do you have any suggestions.

The note was lost a week ago. I did a synch (stuidly before reading anything) a couple of days ago.

Posted by: Sue at July 5, 2011 9:10 PM

Hey Dave. I just deleted a note on my iphone. Checked my gmail because it syncs to that but I wasn't fast enough. The deletion also synced! So I downloaded that software, found the backup folder on my mac, copied it to my pc folder and ran the software on the pc, clicked the notes tab and there was my lost note!!! You're awesome bro! Definitely buying you a coffee for that ;)

Thanks a ton!!

Posted by: Dan at July 12, 2011 7:47 PM

Thanks a lot! I managed to save a deleted note with an old friend's contact, with this method! We lost contact with each other for some years and after we bumped into each other earlier, I got her info in Notes but then deleted it by accident!

Posted by: MT at August 6, 2011 1:57 AM

I downloaded iBackupBot but every time I try to open it, it tells me I need to have iTunes version 8.0 or later. I'm running v. 10.0.

Posted by: Lindsay at August 20, 2011 6:24 PM

I love you, man...this is exactly what I needed after soaking my ipod and fearing my essentials were gone forever!

Posted by: Julie at October 21, 2011 9:47 PM

Thank you very much...you saved my day.

Posted by: sever at November 21, 2011 1:47 PM

THANK YOU! i had lost all of my detailed notes and text messages. Now they are back.

Posted by: Leora at November 25, 2011 10:53 AM

I've been searching for an answer to my question for the last 2 hours. I wish I would have found this sooner. This was so easy and solved my problem exactly. I can not thank you enough for posting this!

Posted by: Navah at December 4, 2011 7:30 PM

Thanks! You saved me big time :o)

Posted by: john at December 6, 2011 10:28 PM

THANK YOU !!! I was able to retrieve deleted notes and i wanted to say you are my hero.

Posted by: shei at December 7, 2011 7:45 PM

I found the backup files, unfortunatly i did a backup since the deletion of the data. Is there any way to go back and find a previous backup or does the latest backup overwrite the previous backups??

Posted by: Peter at December 17, 2011 3:15 PM

Thank you so much! I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't found this. You literally saved me!

Posted by: Lilly at December 21, 2011 8:17 AM

Not sure how this happened but all my notes on my iphone 3gs were saved to a file in my g-mail account. Somehow g-mail was pulling contact info off of my phone and my notes. Pretty much saved me a lot of time by going to itunes for find it. It was just sitting there in a g-mail folder titled "notes" of all things.

Posted by: Eugene at January 5, 2012 6:37 PM

After scouring the web for a solution, this proved quick and easy. Many thanks!

Posted by: Sam at January 28, 2012 11:01 AM

I tried your solution and it works fine. But, allways are a but (no pun intended). If you synced your iphone after you lost your file, then you got stuck. I know that Apple say that one backup overwrite the previous one. That's part bullsheet, as one backup only overwrite control informations as .plist and . mdb files. The data is still there organised by date. Then you cannot recover it from iBackupbot as it require all this files. I try to cheat it creating a new folder as a new backup with only the data of the date I want, and coping the .plist and .mdb files from the last backup. Then iBackupBot can find the files (notes) I want but can't save or export they.

Posted by: Luiz Braga at January 28, 2012 7:36 PM

Luiz, did you manage to export any files? I am trying to recover some notes I had in a previous backup (they will not show in the iBackupbot program).

Posted by: felix at January 29, 2012 3:48 PM

I always knew my notes were backed up somewhere but it was becoming so frustrating not knowing how to decode them and use them. Dave you came to the rescue and have busted my stress bubble.

Diolch yn fawr

Posted by: David at February 1, 2012 3:41 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!