TIFU By uninstalling then reinstalling OneNote

This is a story of one of those small things that in reality doesn’t matter that much but in the moment you feel like your entire world has just crumbled to the ground. Also this did actually happen today so the emotions are still a little high.

Quick context I have two phones but only one of them actually functions as a phone. I’m a sentimental idiot so when my mom had upgraded our phones to save money I wasn’t ready to switch from my fully functional phone yet. That was multiple years ago and that phone (phone 1) still functions perfectly so I just use the other (phone 2) as a sort of game console/mini tablet.

At around 2:30pm today I was messing around on YouTube on my phone and I had made a clip of a funny moment in a video i was watching. Then I remembered that I had a note in my OneNote app that listed a bunch of funny moments from videos I had previously watched so I thought why not just make em into clips? I opened the OneNote app on phone 2 to find the note but couldn’t find it. I figured the syncing problem I had been having meant that it would be on phone 1 so I checked and found it almost instantly. This is where I should’ve stopped and just went on with my plan to make the clips. However, I had the thought, it’d be nice to fix that syncing problem I’ve been having for a few years so why not do that while I’m thinking of it.

Now my notes app on phone 1 and 2 had a vast delta in the amount of notes they had in the app. Phone 1 had a bunch of different notes divided into different sections like writing, poems, quick notes, etc. and phone 2 only had a quick notes section with about 15 notes (most all of which were different from the ones on phone 1).

I had tried a couple things to fix the problem with no success so I figured might as well try the tried an true turn it off and on again aka uninstalling and reinstalling the app. I did this on phone 1. As soon as I reopened the app suddenly the syncing problem was fixed…but it had brought over all the notes from phone 2 and deleted all of the notes from phone 1.

I had so many memories in those notes. Poetry I had written, notes about gift options for my friends, fun little interactions I had had over the years, a list of jokes that made me chuckle. So many things that were suddenly just vanished.

It’s now 10:50 pm and I have been trying to retrieve those files all day with absolutely no success. The worst part was when I opened OneNote on some of my other devices like my tablet, laptop, and desktop seeing all the files I was looking for clear as day when suddenly the device would sync and they would all vanish before my eyes.

Part of me thinks I’ve cried too much about this and another part of me thinks I haven’t cried nearly enough.

TL;DR: I tried to fix a syncing issue with my OneNote app and I was successful but at the cost of at least 6 years worth of notes that I’ll never get back. Don’t trust the cloud kids.