Syncing iPhone to Outlook DELETED AN ENTIRE YEAR’S WORTH OF NOTES; will my plan to get them back work?

qfcbv3 0 Reputation points
2026-09-06T00:02:39.2966667+00:00

On my iPhone 16’s Notes App, I often use the Outlook folder of notes that I had connected a long long time ago. There are a lot of important notes there that I write on my phone. My phone keeps annoying me whenever I open my Notes app telling me to go to Settings and log in to my Outlook email account to sync it with my phone. Today, I finally did so, and for some reason, ALL of my notes created after early 2025 have disappeared. A journal that I had in that folder erased EVERY entry written after January 2025. I am shell-shocked and in disbelief that a year and a half‘s worth of work can just disappear… in seconds. I find it unbelievable and disgusting that there is somehow a completely unknown mechanism on my Apple device that begged me for who knows how long to (re)sync Outlook, after stupidly unsyncing itself at some point in the past year, only to destroy a year’s worth of my journals and notes out of nowhere. Who could have designed technology this foolish?? I blame both Microsoft and Apple. I have contacted Apple support, and they also have no answers.

I have backups from about a month ago that I can restore my phone to. I can try doing this to see if my notes can be retrieved. However I am afraid that the syncing would do the same thing and automatically remove all my notes again before I even get to see if they were ever on the backup. Therefore I would like to disrupt the syncing. How can this be done? One way is to return to the “limbo” state the syncing was in when it kept bothering me with popups. How can I return to that?The Apple Support person told me on call that changing my Microsoft Account password may allow me to return to the "limbo" unsynced state. I thought it didn't work and it was still syncing afterward, but just today, the popup asking me to sync to log in to my Outlook email appeared on my phone again. I want to continue with my plan of erasing my phone and using my backup. Should I proceed?

Outlook | Outlook for mobile | Outlook for iOS | For home
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  1. Chloe-V 12,610 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-09-06T04:32:18.2433333+00:00

    Hi @qfcbv3

    I’m very sorry to hear that so many important notes disappeared after you signed back into your Outlook account. I understand why you are hesitant to restore the backup while synchronization may still be active.

    Please note that this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators, contributors including external Microsoft employees cannot directly intervene in Microsoft product features or access back-end systems. Our role is limited to providing technical guidance on reported issues, requests, or ideas only.

    Before erasing the iPhone, please first check the following:

    • Sign in to Outlook.com with the same account and check the Notes, Deleted Items, and Recover items deleted from this folder sections. You can also search for a distinctive phrase from one of the missing notes.
    • In the iPhone Notes app, check Recently Deleted, On My iPhone, iCloud, and all folders under the Outlook account.
    • Make sure the backup from before the notes disappeared is preserved and will not be replaced by a newer backup.

    If the notes were created while the Outlook account was disconnected and never uploaded to the mailbox, Outlook.com may not contain them. In that situation, a backup created before the notes disappeared may be the remaining recovery option. However, recovery cannot be guaranteed because account-synchronized data may not be stored in the device backup.

    I would not rely on changing the Microsoft account password as a permanent way to stop synchronization. If you decide to restore the backup, avoid signing back into the Outlook account during setup. After the restore, check the Notes app first. If the missing notes appear, immediately copy or move them to On My iPhone or iCloud before reconnecting Outlook.

    Please note that restoring the iPhone will return the device to the state of the selected backup and may replace data created afterward. Since the restore process and iPhone backup contents are managed by Apple, I recommend completing it with Apple Support’s guidance.

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

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