The iPhone Notes application lets you type, store and email small text documents.
The main screen will list the notes you have stored, and the last time you edited them. Press on a note to edit it. Press the + button to create a new note.
When viewing a note, you have a few buttons at the bottom of the screen. You can use the arrows to move from note to note. You can use the letter-shaped button to email your note. You can use the trash can to delete the note.
Click on the body of the note to enter edit mode. This will bring up the keyboard. You can type on the keyboard to enter text. You can roll your finger over the text in the note to reposition the cursor. To enter non-letter characters, press the the .?123 button at the bottom left. You can press, hold, roll and release to enter a single special character, or tap on the .?123 button once, and then tap on a key to type multiple characters.
Related: To Do Items Inside of Mail Notes, Notes with Differerent Categories – iPhone and Computer, Syncing contacts and Notes b/w I4 and MB13., Autocomplete Anywhere, MobileMe – Notes Syncing to MacBook Pro Mail Inbox.
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Hi
I am loving my iPhone, but I am really disappointed that the Notes feature does not sync. Do you know of any work-arounds? Is there any other app that will work just like Notes on the Mac? I have seen a few like EverNote, but am concerned about storing my notes externally and some products don’t sort the list alphabetically. Any suggestions?
BTW, thanks for your Podcasts – I love them.
Cheers
Kelvin
I hear you. It is disappointing that Notes still don’t sync. But the solution is 3rd-part apps. I use EverNote. But there are plenty of others that vary by feature. I’d just look through them and find the ones that fit your needs best.
Hi,
Do you know how to sort the Iphone notes in an alphabetical order?
Thanks,
Simcha
No, not on the iPhone anyway. I don’t think the app was even meant to be used for so many note that they would need to be sorted. There are lots of 3rd-party notes applications available and I’m sure some of them allow for sorting.
3rd party note apps will not sync with outlook. Any other ideas?
I too am disappointed that notes cannot be put in alphabetical order, especially when mine are synchronized from Notes in Outlook which are in alphabetical order. Does MAC purposefully change the order! As so many people wnat an alphabetical listing, shouldn’t MAC do something about it rather than us all buy apps. It can’t be rocket science!
Is there any way to increase the size of the typeface in the notes application. It is so tiny!!
No. But there are dozens (hundreds) of 3rd-party apps that allow you to take notes. So you may want to find one that works better for you.
My mistate I deleted a “note” which had important data; is there a way to recover or undelete this note file.
I have iPhone 3GS and have not upgraded to OS 4.x version
The only thing I can think of is to go to your iPhone backup data in iTunes on your Mac (~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup and open it in some sort of programming tool to try to find the older Notes data. But I don’t know your experience level with such things. If it was to work, there would be a lot of steps involved. I’d take the computer with your backup data to a data recovery expert and explain the situation very carefully. But I’d only do that if the data was really critical — it might get expensive. On the other hand if you are a programmer type, and have some tools to look through the files, you might get lucky.
I am editing notes on my iphone 3GS and it will not save the changes! Any advice?
Just experiment. Create notes on you Mac and sync and then try editing those. Create a new note on your iPhone. Try things. Maybe switch to Evernote?
Does anyone know how to recover notes that you have put in the trash? Recently when I create a new note a double copy appears. When I deleted the extra copy, both notes get deleted. anyway to recover the deleted notes?
It depends what system you are using. For instance, if the note was created attached to a Gmail account, then it might be in your Gmail trash. But if it was created elsewhere, you might not be able to recover it.
On Apple Notes, I noted that for a reason that I do not know, the whole screen would be blank and seemed to be completely erased but when I pressed the screen to bring up the magnifying glass the notes are under the magniflying glass and therefore seemingly hidden. How do I get entire notes back onto the screen? Pls advise.
Not sure. Sounds like a bug. It is pretty extreme, but restoring your iPhone from a backup may be the next thing to try. Not sure if the problem is big enough to warrant such a measure. If you use notes a lot, you may want to use a third-party program like Evernote anyway, as the Notes app is pretty basic.
Once I have created a note and hit done, I am having trouble bringing the keyboard up to edit the note. It keeps bringing up the magnifying glass if I hold too long, or the select all feature if I tap once, or the copy feature if I tap twice. What do you think I can do to quickly and consistently bring up the keyboard when editing a Note in the iPhone notes App?
Tap once, quickly, to bring up the keyboard again. It sounds like you are holding the tap too long.
Thanks Gary, you were right!
i subscribe to and enjoy all your newsletters and find them very informative and helpful.
i am having an issue with i was hoping you might be able to shed some light on for me.
i use the notes app frequently on my iphone 3GS and lately when i go to make a change or addition to an existing note, the keyboard will not pop up.
i will only get the select/copy/paste menu. it happens sporadically and i tried shutting down the app, restarting the phone and doing a hard reset. nothing seems to
have helped and i was wondering why all of a sudden it was happening and if any other readers might have had the same issue.
i took the iphone software update yesterday hoping this might have been addressed but to no avail.
it started approximately two months ago and seems to be an increasing occurrence.
any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
lauren
Have you tried it in a new note, or only existing ones? I wonder if the notes may have gotten “locked” in some way. Perhaps starting a new one will work.
I use the notes all the time but I’m not able to return to the main notes page that list all my notes anymore. I can search for a note and edit it. My wife have the exact same iPhone 4 and no issues. Any ideas? Tks.
Not sure. Is the “Notes” button at the top left just missing?
Yes. Just the date and time at the top.
Interesting…I turned off my iPhone and restarted it. It works. I should have done this weeks ago. I usually never turn it off so the problem just never went away. Thanks for the interest.
When I write a note and hit done it immediately emails the note to my email address and deletes the note. Amy suggestions??
Thank you,
Notes can be part of email accounts like MobileMe and Gmail. IMAP accounts, basically. When you create a new note using one of these accounts, then they appear in your “Inbox” as Notes. They aren’t really emails at all, just notes. Try creating a note under a different account (look for the Accounts button at the top). I can create “From My Mac” notes that aren’t synced to my email account.
The lines and words in all my notes disappeared. When I go to start a new one same thing lines and words start to disappear. I have an iPhone 4. Thanks.
I’m having the same problem now. Did you ever solve yours?
Notes app is great, and it is syncing well with outlook. However, need to sort alphabetically and need to pword protect. Is there an app that can do all of this, while taking all my current notes and still syncing?
I just bought a new iPhone 4. I just realized all my notes are on my old phone. Now that that phone is no longer “active”, can I sync this phone to my laptop to save all my notes?
So you didn’t upgrade to the new iPhone 4 by restoring from the backup of your old one? If you didn’t do that, then it will be hard to get those notes. I would just email them from the Notes app on the old iPhone.
Why are my notes on my iphone4 syncing with my husband’s phone? He thought that I had been in his phone and posted the note myself. How can I stop this from happening?
Go through the account/Mail settings on both phones. Most likely you are creating notes under an account (MobileMe, perhaps) and that account is also set to sync with the other iPhone.
Hi Gary
Is there a way I can hylight words in Notes?
Not that I know of. Probably best to use a more sophisticated note-taking app if you need something like that. Plenty of those.
I have the Iphone 4G and in the utilities I have notes from my friend’s Iphone. We don’t share any computer, any account on Itunes or anything. The only thing is that we work in the same place. We have there wireless internet. I haven’t even see her in over a month and I have notes from her from 2 days ago. How is this possible? Thanks!
Impossible to say without being there to analyze it. Something, some account, must be shared or have crossed over at some point.
Maybe because the email account of our work? We both have it in our iphones.
If it is the same account, then yes. Notes are an element of email accounts, usually.
Ok! Thanks a lot for your help!!!!
I love Notes. Having just bought an iPad I have discovered notes automatically update to my iPhone. This is great meaning any notes I make or lists are already on my phone when I take it out in the morning without the hassle of syncing to a main computer. Wish there was a calendar that did this!
Calendars do this too. But it is important to distinguish between calendars that only update when you sync and calendars that update through “the cloud.” A cloud-based calendar will update over the network, without syncing. Examples are Google calendars and iCloud calendars.
My Notes sent important information to the trash can on its own! I had been using the Notes app a lot and had about 20 pages on my iPhone 4. I was adding a new page and all of my other pages went to the trash can at once. I’ve searched, but I cannot find a way to bring them back. I had all of my passwords, safe combinations, propietary info. etc. in the Notes app. I really need this stuff. It will take me days to reconstruct this data. Please help.
Perhaps you are simply not subscribed to that account anymore? What type of account was it?
It’s the Notes app that came with the iPhone. I’m a newbie to iStuff. I don’t understand what “subscribed to that account” means.
Notes usually come attached to an email account. I don’t know if that is the case with you. But, for instance, a Gmail account can include messages, notes, events, etc. So check in your Mail settings to see what accounts you have and make sure notes are turned on.
I have the old iPhone 3 (I think that’s what it’s called) and I had 1200 (twelve hundred) notes and I found this was too many for the phone to handle. I noticed I could only scroll down a very short way before it slipped out of notes and returned to the home screen. Soon after, I guess I had added a few more notes, I could not reenter notes at all, it would open a blank note and then slip out altogether. I tried turning it on and off but no remedy.I was thrown into panic for a bit but thought to iPhone search under a word I might have had in notes, and this found a particular note and opened it. I was then able to go forward and backward. I deleted about 200 notes yet wasn’t able to reenter notes from the home screen. A few days later however I could.
I heard that Apple Cloud might be able to transfer notes, but I also heard this contradicted. So I am now patiently manually transferring 1200 notes!
You should really look into using a more sophisticated Notes app if you are going to be using it that heavily. Try Evernote.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
I opened my Notes app and found that all my information was gone – it said No Notes! Don’t know when this happened since I don’t use it that often, but what I had been collecting over the last few years is gone. Have you heard of this problem? If so, is there a way to find the data? I stopped by the Apple store and they suggested that the Notes app would have sent me emails regularly, but I can not seem to find that information anywhere in my email inbox. Thanks.
Just recently, text from some of my Notes has disappeared either when I reopen them to add to them or once, while I was entering info. I know the text is there because I can email it, but cannot see or edit it on my iPod. Even using the magnifying glass, I cannot see it (as someone who posted a question earlier on your page could.) Do you know why it might be happening to some notes and not others and do you have any suggestions for resolving it? Thanks!!
Hard to say what might be happening. But keep in mind that Notes are either part of your email account (iCloud, MobileMe, Gmail) or things synced to your Mac (“on my Mac”). So figure out what these notes are and then track them down that way. Perhaps they are with one of your email accounts and you’ve got an email settings to archive new messages and it is doing that to your notes.
I keep losing recently added “notes” on my iphone4 when I sync my phone with itunes (on my iMac). It keeps reverting back to my notes from 3 months ago. I don’t even know where these notes are on my computer, nor do I know where to change the setting to allow the changes I make on my phone take precedence.
Any help would be greatly appreciated…Thanks!