Text missing from Notes

This happened yesterday when a huge text from a note went missing. The note looked completely blank. I didn’t understand why and how.

And it happened again today. I created a new note yesterday and added some text. Now I open it and I see that the text is gone. In fact, this happened with 2 notes.

I don’t know what’s happening? Did anything like this happen to anyone?

Are you using third-party plugins? If so, which ones? There have been reports of one causing similar issues, though I can’t recall which.

Are you using the files in your vault anywhere else—another app and/or another device? Are they being synced with anything (cloud services)?

Here is my system details:

I am using Macbook. My Obsidian folder is in my iCloud folder (synced). All files are in that folder/vault only. The files (or notes) are there. But the text in them is gone completely.
The 3rd Party plugin I enabled (last week) are: Reading time and Sliding Panes (Andy Matuschak Mode).

I think Reading Time was the issue, sadly: Content of open files erased when restarting

If you update the plugin I don’t think it’s suffering those issues anymore.

Sorry to hear about the lost work! :broken_heart:

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I can confirm that an older version of “reading time” was causing some strange behaviour, but hopefully it doesn’t cause issues any more

@aakarsh try updating it, but if you feel like uninstalling it that’s in:

settings > Third Party Plugins
Scroll down to Installed plugins
and click on the x (next to toggle icon) on the plug in to uninstall it

Toggling it off would still leave the plugin in the vault, which might still cause issues, so uninstalling it might be a better idea if updating it still causes issues

Hope that helps

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I am now scared to update the plugin. I uninstalled the plugin. I had imported a book summary and made notes (which I lost). I think I should be glad that overall, the loss is of text in 2 files/notes only and not of all the files/notes in my vault.

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Yes Santi. The moment Ryan asked about plugins here, I immediately uninstalled both the plugins. Thanks for the suggestion.

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sounds good, I personally would think it’s safe to install andy mode back, but if you feel more comfortable, maybe wait until they are updated and more stable, but andy mode should be fine

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Just as a general tip; I you use macOS enable the build in TimeMachine backup of your computer (this saved me on this occasion because I could restore a copy that was a bit older). On a Windows computer you could use the build in Shadow Copy function. Two quick links:

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Fascinating. Thanks a lot for this tip.

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I faced the same issue today. All the text from yesterday’s daily note disappeared.

I had just copied some of the open to-dos from yesterday’s note to today’s note. Then in today’s note I clicked on Yesterday’s note link (I have set up each of my daily notes to have a <<Yesterday | Tomorrow>> links at the top).
Instead of going to yesterday’s note (which was pinned) It opened another note for yesterday, and this note was was blank. So for a while I could see 2 notes with yesterday’s date - one with content and another without any content.
I thought it was a random issue, and closed and restarted Obsidian. Now there is no content in yesterday’s note.

I am not using “reading time” plugin. However I do use “Andy Sliding Panes” and also “Templater” which I use to create the headers and the <<Yesterday | Tomorrow>> links in the daily pages. And yesterday I also enabled “headers sync” plugin.

Could it be a clash with Header Sync and Templater? Even of it is, why should the note content vanish?

And is there a way to recover the content? I have a lot of content in the daily notes.

I am in the process of moving from Roam to Obsidian, and had thought that I would never lose content in Obsidian (which some people have lost in Roam - though I have not) and this kind of defeats the purpose…

Thanks in advance for your help.

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Ok, an update. I managed to recover the content via the “File recovery” core plugin - (amazing plugin, thank you).

For now I have disabled the “header sync” and “Andy Sliding Panes” plugins.

If you have any ideas why this could have happened, do let me know.

Thanks

This solution is only for OS data recovery option. Do you know, Obsidian has its own data recovery system? Here is a step by step guide. How to recover Missing Text In Obsidian?

Tex missing problem in notes is not a problem anymore. Here is a step-by-step guide to recover missing text.

Just in case it helps anyone in the future: I had the ‘text missing’ issue this morning (Sept 22). What fixed it for me was under the Community Plugins menu turning Restricted Mode on (which restored the text), restarting Obsidian then turning restricted mode off again.