Notes didn't save - data lost

[stevage]

I have now twice experienced a (pretty terrible) situation where I "saved" notes, and later found they were not saved. I don't know why, I'm just going to find a different product.

My setup:

• a Macbook Pro 2014 (Mojave)
• another Macbook Pro 2019 (Catalina)
• notes directory is within a Dropbox folder shared between the two.

In the first case, I had saved some notes to a file. Added some more notes (and, I assume saved, but may have just left the window open as I often do in VS Code). A few days later I came back, discovered that the later batch of notes was missing. (I'm not sure which of the two computers above this was on)

In the second case, I started a new file. Added some notes. (On the second computer). Almost certain I pressed the save button. Next day I come back (on the other computer), the notes file is there, it has the auto generated headline, no content.

I don't know what went wrong, whether this is an issue with the Notes extension, VS Code, or even Dropbox, but the end result is pretty bad. (I don't think I've ever lost data in VS Code before, even when I have taken notes in an unnamed and never-saved text file, it's still accessible even after the computer crashed and rebooted.)

[stevage]

Ok, I think I have established the problematic use case:

1. Add notes to mynotes.md on machine A. Save.
2. Add more notes to mynotes.md on machine A. Don't save. Leave it open.
3. Add more notes to mynotes.md on machine B. Save.
4. (Notes are not loaded on machine A, because there are unsaved changes)
5. Add more notes on machine A. Save.
6. (Notes written on machine B are lost forever.)

I don't know if this is something this extension can address. But solutions might look like:

• warning user at step 3 that there are unsaved changes on another machine
• warning user at step 5 that there are changes on disk that haven't been loaded

[dionmunk]

Interesting. It sounds like two things would have helped in your situation:

1. Some sort of autosave feature.
2. Periodically checking to see if a note has been changed in the background and prompting the user to save/reload/merge the note. I'll look into what I could do to possibly add these features.

[stevage]

Hmm, normally you get a warning like this:

I'm really not sure what was different to cause that behaviour not to happen. When I try to replicate it now, I get that warning at step 5.

[dionmunk]

I'm going to say this issue is resolved. It looks like VSCode has been updated to have smarter file handling.