MacOS – notes stored in Mountain Lion

This is not a direct answer to the question "What is Notes.app's iCloud notes database location(s)" but it might be useful information for others who need to recover an iCloud-synchronized note.

Given my lack of success with everything I tried I called Apple support. They were very helpful and after a few unsuccessful attempts replacing folders they looked into my iCloud account and found that on their end there was "one recoverable item" that showed up. After verifying my identity they could then "recover" that item and, voila, the missing note popped up in the notes app under Recently deleted items. It had been deleted beginning of September. Had I only known it was that easy ...

So it seems that deleted iCloud notes are not permanently deleted after 30 days and still recoverable by Apple. I forgot to ask if forever, or for how long ...

In any case, while I've resolved my problem I'd still be interested in the actual location of the iCloud-notes database. So if anyone comes across this at some point and finds the answer it'd be highly appreciated.

You should be able to recover your notes data from a Time Machine backup as follows:

• Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine menu
• Use the timeline (it's on the edge of the screen) to locate a version of the Notes storage folder from before your clean installation of macOS Sierra. (The location should be ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/ where the '~' indicates your user account home folder)
• Select the folder and click on Restore to restore it

If you haven't got a TM backup or want to try recovering the data from your HDD, see below.

Extracting notes data from your HDD

If you haven't got a TM backup or can't get it to restore from one, you can manually extract the data using a web browser (e.g. Safari, Etc).

To do this:

1. Go to the location on your HDD that is equivalent to the following path: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/

2. Inside this folder you'll see files with names such as NotesV6.storedata

3. Copy these files to another location on your SSD

4. Add a .html extension to each of them. (Note: You will be prompted as to whether you're sure you want to use the .html extension - click on the Use .html button).

5. Use Safari or another web browser to open the NotesV6.storedata.html file first (it may not be 'V6' in your case, but it will be 'V' followed by a number)

6. You should now see your missing notes

7. Now go through the process of copying and pasting the data into new notes and saving them

If any of your notes are missing after going through the above steps, repeat Step 5 and open the other files you copied across at step 3 to see if your missing notes are there.

Let me know if you run into problems.