Notes data from external drive

backuphard drivenotes.app

I recently replaced the HDD in my mid-2012 MacBook Pro with an SSD. After doing a clean install of OS X Sierra, I wanted to get my old notes from the backup copy of my old HDD. After some research I found that the data is stored in "/Library/Containers/com.apple.notes….". I've tried to copy this data to my current ssd, but notes doesn't recognise this data when I open the application.

I just want to access the text in the notes and transfer it. I'm not fussed about preserving the original structure of the notes.

Please someone help me! those notes are really important to me!

Best Answer

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.

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