I did not delete any files. I decided to ask the senior engineer before doing so. She told me not to delete any files.
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No, no, no, no, no. The ONLY person who is allowed to talk to you is your currently assigned Senior Advisor. And if you ring them and they are not available, the only thing you can do is get assigned to a new Senior Advisor which then cuts the previous SA out of the loop. I lost contact with a couple of really good ones because of this.
Good to know, thanks!
I have NEVER, despite days of trying, successfully restored a TM backup of my Apple Notes. The restored DB is always overwritten with the unwanted edits/deletes. And this was on separate occasions for different issues, a year or two apart.
If you’ve done this, successfuly, can you please post your procedure?
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I’m currently having the same issues with OneDrive and OneNote on all my Apple devices. I tested it for you 
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Thanks, I appreciate you saving me the effort! 
@Bmosbacker My Apple Notes haven’t synced for 3 days now 
It is so frustrating! It’s probably partly my own fault - I like to use the “scan documents” function in Apple Notes and I had a pile of things I’d not attended to so I created maybe 30 PDFs at once. But come on Apple, get it together.
I wish that was my problem but in my case I only renamed a few folders and moved some notes and folders to different locations. After do that all syncing stopped and is still not resolved. As I wrote previously, this is unfortunate because AN has a lot to offer but I can no longer trust it.
If you have iCloud turned on (checkmark in Settings) for the Apple Notes app on all your devices, haven’t you told Apple that “the Source of Truth” for Apple Notes is now in iCloud? That’s my guess as to why restoring a local backup does not “stick.”
Yes. That’s what the online advice also says.
Have you done this, successfully, yourself?
Nope. Because of the way apps like Notes work with Apple sync, I put as little data in them as possible.
If it were me, I would turn off iCloud for Notes on my iOS devices first. And last I would turn it off on my Mac. Seems to me you’ll be warned about losing the data and given the choice to keep a copy on your Mac. Then you should be able to restore your Notes backup and have it stick. But it is the uncertainty of this process that keeps me from using Notes or iCloud sync. Best of luck!
Yes, that is how any sane person would expect it to work. But it doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. In fact, I don’t know if there is any way to restore from Time Machine (or other) any iCloud-hosted data and have it stick. In all of my restores (I’m wrestling with bookmarks.plist at the moment), iCloud overwrites my locally restored data/files.
You can sych with Dropbox and webdav if you dont want top use icloud. I use both for two different notebooks
I have used Notebooks for years. It has been reliable rather than a great innovative app - but I do love it. However, the documentaton is woeful
Nick
thanks, good to know
Update as of Jan. 9, 2022.
After waiting over two weeks for a return call from an Apple senior engineer after I’d sent them diagnostic log files and a screen recording, I spent another 1.5 hours on the phone with a senior engineer.
The suggested solution given to this senior engineer from the engineers who looked at the logs I sent?
“Turn off iCloud on all devices and turn it back on.”
I’m not trying to be snarly, but seriously? Three weeks and the solution is turn off iCloud? I’d already done that. I did it again today. Nothing has changed and nothing fixed.
Now, I expect another call back on Thursday.
I’m not hopeful.
This will, some how, some day, be fixed but never again will I trust important information to Apple Notes.
I am not iCloud internal expert but that makes some kind of sense. You ar restoring a snapshot of what was when you did the backup. iCloud senses that and updates your devices with what it has on its servers.
I think the best way would be nuking the existing iCloud info and then restore the backup.
And, if Apple gave you file-level access to the DB in iCloud, that might work.
But, they don’t. So, it doesn’t.
I’m baffled. Apple Notes is now working perfectly—in fact, the sync between all of my devices is nearly instantaneous. It just “started working.”
What is odd about this is that based on conversations with tech support, the issue is still being investigated. In fact, I have a scheduled call with tech support (again) this coming Thursday. No one at Apple has called or emailed saying they fixed the problem but something has been fixed. I have done nothing on my end.
I’m grateful to have AN working but I’m baffled.
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The guy(s) working to fix your problem put fixing the problem ahead of letting you know it’s fixed. Plus how do they know? Cloud problems are extremely hard to debug. And then, “it works for me” or “it works on the development machine” but how do they know for sure it will work for you?
And finally, we each are only a tiny twinkling star in Apple’s firmament. Many of those “stars” call in each day with problems. So, if your problem is fixed, but they haven’t gotten gotten around to calling you, or never call you, be happy! You could always call them back and say, “Thanks!” 
(Perhaps you can tell that I spent much of my career fixing bugs for clients.)
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