I would like to restore my notes by restoring Obsidian to the previous 1.6.7 version. After the update to the 1.12.7, all my notes are mystically gone. I am using a Windows 11 laptop.
Things I have tried
I have tried to follow several instructions I have found here and elsewhere. It seems that I have not enabled the sync function, as I only now created this account (to post this), so retrieving files from a cloud is not possible. I am certainly a novice at using this program, so please bare with me!
Hi, sorry to hear that. But please, can you give more information?
If your notes truly disappeared, then downgrading the installer is not going to make them appear again. Your vault of notes is stored separately from the installation files. (At least, it should be. Hopefully you didn’t store any notes inside the app’s installation folder.)
Do you know what folder you had your notes stored in? Have you looked there? Have you searched your computer for .md files? (The Markdown files that Obsidian uses.)
Are you sure you weren’t using a syncing tool, like OneDrive or iCloud, or Google Drive, etc.?
1.6.7 to 1.12.7 is a very large upgrade. Can you say more about how you updated? Did you use the auto-updater in the app? Or did you download the new installer from the web and install?
When you updated, did you take any steps to “uninstall” the old version? That wouldn’t be necessary to do, but if you used any software that uninstalls or “cleans” old software, maybe it deleted the files. Please try to explain the specific steps you took when you updated the software, with as much detail as you can remember.
I did not know which folder I stored my files. I will search for the .md-files though, thanks.
I am pretty sure I didn’t, at least I have not come up with any evidence of that.
It was an automatic update. I just opened Obsidian one day las week, I everything seemed gone and a welcome to a new update. I did not have the time to get into solving the problem until today.
Thus I did not uninstall the old version (myself).
Thanks again! (I am very ignorant when it comes to software and apps, so apologies for stupid questions.)
A vault is a folder of your chosing where your notes and configuration are stored.
So when you open Obsidian you should look for “Open vault” and then point to the folder where your notes most probably are.
Also beware: A backup is not optional (not only for Obsidian: any valuable data should be backed up) and a cloud sync is NOT a backup (virus and corruption spread instantly with cloud sync whereas a backup gives some more latency)
Shit happens with computers. Better safe than sorry.
Ok, well I’ll just say that it is 99% likely that updating Obsidian had nothing to do with the notes disappearing. It’s probably just a coincidence.
You can try searching in the app directory, in case you accidentally stored your vault there. But if you did, you should move it somewhere in your User folder where you keep regular files. \\Users\\YourUsername\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\obsidian\\
Did you use Obsidian very much? Is there a chance you just opened it to test, and were writing in the Sandbox help vault? It’s an example vault with some tutorial files. Does this screenshot look familiar?
One other thing. This won’t help restore your notes, but:
Occasionally, major Obsidian versions require you to download and reinstall from the website. The auto-updater can’t update all of the internal components. So whether you find your notes or not, I highly recommend you download a fresh installer from the website, and run it to install to the latest updater.
1.6.7 is very old now and will be missing some key features, and maybe even some security patches.
I managed to find most of my notes by searching for .md-files from my computer. I then dropped the .md-files to the new obsidian vault.
I am still not sure what happened, but it did happen due to the update. Anyways, thank you for your help, and I hope that this helps someone else as well.
I’ll just say again that is almost certainly not from the update. If you only found some of the files, than it is more likely that you had your notes stored in a cloud-syncing tool, or that some kind of filesystem cleaning tool or anti-virus removed them.
Updating Obsidian would not possibly delete some of your notes. If you had an extreme jump from a very old version, maybe it’s possible the settings were not compatible and the list of open vaults got lost (maybe). but your files would not partially disappear from Obsidian alone. Something else is or was at play.
That’s great to hear! I managed to recover like 90% of my notes, which is good for my situation. I have no idea what caused it, but I will be wiser this time and make sure that I take the necessary precautions if anything like this would happen again (for whatsoever reason).
It may be possible to lose your notes in an update if you store your vault in the app’s system folder (an unusual thing to do, but a few people have done it). If that were the case, tho, you wouldn’t have found them.
