Updates in Notes don't get saved iOS 4.0.1

Question

I have an iPhone 4 with iOS 4.0.1. Some of the time when I make updates in Notes the changes don't get saved while sometimes they do. I did a "restore" in iTunes this morning and magically the changes that had disappeared from Notes before were there again - as if it "remembered" the newest version. But as I continue to use notes - some of the changes stay in the notes - and some disappear. Anyone else have this happening? Any way to fix it?

Answer 1

My brother had this same issue. He would add text to a note and tap Done. He would go out to the list of notes and then reopen the note he just edited to find that the newly added text was not there.
We solved his problem. Hopefully this will help you, too.
We found that after updating his iPhone from OS 3.1.2 to iOS 4, the Notes setting in his Yahoo account in Mail, Contacts, Calendars was enabled. Also, notes were set so they were not stored locally on the phone any longer.
He never stored or synched his notes with his Yahoo account and did not want to begin to do so. In other words, he wanted to keep all his notes stored on his iPhone.
(Notes which existed before he updated the phone's operating system were stored on the phone. For any new notes created after the update, the iPhone was trying to store/sync with his Yahoo account. Apparently, since he did not set up his account to sync notes, the sync was unsuccessful and the iPhone rolled back his change to the notes, thus deleting the text he added. At least, this is my guess as to why this problem suddenly started and why it affected some notes but not others.)
He did not care about preserving the modification date of the problem notes that wouldn't keep their updates, so this is what he did. On his iPhone, he went to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. At the bottom of the screen in the Notes section, he changed the default note location from his Yahoo account to On My iPhone. He quit the Settings app.
In Notes, he tapped the Accounts button and selected his Yahoo account. This displayed nine notes -- the same notes that would not keep their updates. One at a time he copied each note's contents, switched accounts to On My iPhone, pasted the contents into a new note, saved it, and switched back to his Yahoo account to copy another note.
Once he was satisfied that all his content was in new notes and he could save changes in these notes, he switched to his Yahoo account and deleted the nine notes "stored" with that account.
Finally, he went back to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. He tapped his Yahoo account. Then he switched the Notes switch to Off so that notes would not be synched to his Yahoo account. Since doing this procedure, he has not had any problems with notes.
I hope this helps you to at least understand what's going on. The solution was easier to implement than to write out! And, I'm doing this from memory, since this was his iPhone not mine.