Notes gone after an app update, reinstall or restore
Your notes vanished after updating, reinstalling or signing in again. What to do first, what not to do, and how to get them back without losing anything you've written since.
Opening JW Library after an update to find your notes gone is alarming, and in the great majority of cases they are recoverable. What matters is what you do in the next few minutes — specifically, not doing the one thing that turns a recoverable situation into a permanent loss.
It's an unpleasant moment: JW Library opens, and the notes aren't there. Before anything else, one piece of advice — don't rush. Most of what makes this situation unrecoverable is done in the first ten minutes, by overwriting the very backup that still contains the missing notes.
Work through the steps below in order. The goal is to end up with one file containing both the old notes and anything you've written since.
Step by step
Don't overwrite your backups yet
Resist creating a fresh backup on top of an old one, and don't restore anything blindly. An older backup file is the most likely place your notes still exist.
Hunt for the newest backup you have
Check email attachments, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, your computer's downloads folder and any other device you have restored to. Backups are small, so people often have more copies than they remember.
Look inside the file before restoring it
Load the candidate at jwsync.org and see what's actually in it — how many notes, from which publications, up to what date. That tells you whether it's the right file to use, before you commit to a restore.
Back up the current device too
Even if it looks empty, back it up. If you've written anything since the notes disappeared, this file is the only copy of it.
Merge the two, then restore
Merge the old backup with the current one at jwsync.org. The result contains the recovered notes and everything written since, with duplicates kept once. Restore that merged file — never the old backup on its own.
Why restoring the old backup on its own is the wrong move
A restore replaces the device's library outright. If you restore an old backup directly, you get the missing notes back and lose everything written after that backup was made. Merging first is what makes the recovery lossless.
If the backup itself won't restore
A file that errors out during restore isn't necessarily lost. Run the health check on it — damage from interrupted downloads, cloud sync or a renamed extension is often repairable, and a cleaned copy will restore normally.
First: do not create a new backup yet
If notes have vanished, resist the reflex to back up immediately. A backup captures the current state, and if the current state is the empty one you risk overwriting the good file you already had. Find out what backups exist first — in Downloads, Files, email, or cloud storage — and only then decide what to do. Nothing on the device is improved by a fresh backup taken in a panic.
Why an update can appear to lose notes
The usual cause is not deletion. An update can leave the app pointing at a fresh, empty database while the old one is still on disk; a reinstall — including one performed automatically by a store update that failed midway — starts the app from scratch; and on shared or multi-profile devices the app can end up running under a different profile than before. In each case the notes are not gone so much as not currently loaded, which is also why a restore from backup usually brings everything back cleanly.
Recovering an old backup without discarding new work
If you have studied since the backup was made, a plain restore trades one loss for another: it brings the old notes back and removes anything newer. The way around it is to back up the current state to a separate file, merge that with the older backup so both sets of notes exist in one file, and restore the merged result. You end up with the recovered notes and the recent ones together rather than choosing between them.
If the app reinstalled itself
A reinstall clears app-private storage, so anything not in a backup is unrecoverable — there is no cloud copy to fall back on. Check every place a .jwlibrary file might have been saved before concluding there is none, including your email sent folder and any cloud storage you have ever saved to. Once you find one, restore it, and thereafter keep backups outside the device.
Once everything is back
When your notes are restored, take one more backup and store it off the device — the episode you have just been through is the argument for it. If you had to merge an old backup with the current state to get here, keep both source files as well: they are dated snapshots, and having more of them is what made the recovery possible in the first place.
Frequently asked questions
- Are the notes still on the device somewhere?
- Not in a form you can get at from outside the app. Recovery realistically means an earlier backup file — which is why keeping old ones matters so much.
- Does signing in again bring notes back?
- No. Personal study data isn't held in an account; it lives on the device and travels only through backup files.
- What if the only backup I have is months old?
- Merge it with a backup of the device as it is now. You'll recover everything the old file has, and keep everything the device still has, without choosing between them.
- Are my notes really gone?
- Not necessarily. If a backup exists anywhere, everything in it is fully recoverable. What is unrecoverable is only work done after the most recent backup was taken.
- Can I combine an old backup with what is on the device now?
- Yes — back up the current state first, then merge that file with the older one and restore the result. Both sets of notes end up in the same library.
- Will restoring an old backup delete my recent notes?
- On its own, yes, because a restore replaces the device's data. Merge the current backup with the old one first and restore the merged file instead.
- Should I reinstall the app to fix it?
- No — reinstalling clears app-private storage and removes any chance of recovering what is still on the device. Look for an existing backup first, and treat reinstalling as a last resort after you have one.