Can't seem to recover lost reminder list

[Silly John Fatty]

A personal nightmare just happened … I was working on my Mac (on Ventura 13.5.) when suddenly one of my reminder lists in Reminders disappeared – literally in front of my eyes!

I am not sure how, but I may have accidentally deleted it with a random finger move. It happened so fast that I can't tell for sure.
The first thing I intuitively went to do was to press Command + Z (undo). I did it multiple times, but I could observe no reaction from pressing it (that's why I doubt I've caused the issue in the first place).

So when I saw I couldn't undo it, I immediately went to disconnect my iPad and my iPhone from mobile data and wifi. Thankfully, my iPhone hadn't synced yet, so the reminder list was still there.

That list is of high importance to me and contains many reminders from the past that I need to keep for documentation. I never thought of backing it up because it's in iCloud, and that's where the backups are supposed to be done by Apple.

So on my iPhone (still disconnected from the internet), I thought I could try to add a new reminder to that list, and also change the lists name, then maybe this would "update" the list in some way and hopefully make it reappear on my Mac and iPad, but sadly it didn't work out. As soon as my iPhone connected to the internet, the list disappeared from it, and of course it never appeared on the Mac or iPad.

(I took screenshots of the list before connecting the iPhone back to the internet. A mistake, now I need to type it all. And I forgot to screenshot the checked reminders on top of that.)

I tried restoring data multiple times on iCloud.com with various backups Apple offers you, but the reminder list was never restored. Even though it existed at the date of all backups.

In fact, this data restoring feature has created an even bigger mess. I believe more reminders are now missing, and some checked reminders from months ago are now unchecked, even though they definitely weren't unchecked at the time of these backups. And the individual order of all reminders is lost as well, making it hard to orient oneself.

Something else I noticed (maybe linked) is that I still have the option to upgrade Reminders to a new version in all Reminders apps (on Mac, iPhone and iPad). The new reminders are then not compatible with old reminders, Apple says. I have an old Mac Pro I've used until a month ago or so that wouldn't be able to upgrade. I removed it from my devices now.

When I press those "Upgrade" buttons in the Reminders apps (which I've done plenty of times on all devices), it would re-load all reminders in the app, and it almost seems like for a second, all lost reminders would be back, this time including the lost reminder list. At this point, all lists would have 0 reminders and you could slowly observed how they're being loaded and the numbers increase.

At the end however, the lost list would have disappeared again, and the displayed total number of reminders would have decreased from maybe ~650 to 550, so basically it would go back to the same state as when I'd restore data on iCloud.com

I thought my issue with the lost reminder list may be linked to this "upgrading" (as they call it) of the Reminders app.

Who thinks there's still a chance to save this reminder list + all its checked reminders? Who knows how? Has someone else had or seen this issue?

Is that list maybe stored somewhere on my Mac? (I sadly don't have any backups)

Thanks for reading. This is so important for me to fix. Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[richmlow]

I'm sorry to hear of your difficulties.

Primary steps:

I do not have any experience with the "Reminders" app. However, I can give you some general advice on how you might proceed at this point in time.

1. Disconnect (from the internet) each of computing devices (phones, tablets, laptop computers, desktop computers) which utilizes the "Reminders" app.

2. Individually check each device (still disconnected from the internet) to see if anything worthwhile can be salvaged from its "Reminders" app.

3. Make electronic/physical of whatever you can find (while still disconnected from the internet).

4. Reconstruct (as best you can) a master "Reminders" list.

Secondary steps:

5. See if there are any "backups" (such as Time Machine, storage backups, etc.) which may contain much (if not all) of the "Reminders" list

What you experienced was a catastrophic data loss involving your "Reminders" list. From your general description, it sounds like you didn't have a backup(s) of this important "Reminders" list. Unfortunately, the way the "Reminders" app works is NOT a backup solution, but rather, a synchronization solution. So when something went wrong (software bug, upgrade bug, human error, or whatever), the data loss cascaded to each of your electronic devices.

I am very sympathetic to your situation because I had the same thing happen to me when I migrated to a new 2023 Mac mini. The cascading catastrophe involved Backblaze, Google Drive, Dropbox, Sync.com. If it weren't for Time Machine / Carbon Copy Clone backups, I would have completely lost 73.2GB of research files/data....a catastrophic loss for me.

Good luck on your data recovery! Let us know of any positive outcomes.


All the best,
richmlow

 

[NoBoMac]

See if there are any "backups" (such as Time Machine, storage backups, etc.) which may contain much (if not all) of the "Reminders" list

A couple of things OP needs to be aware of: a backup restore will not automatically repopulate Reminders since they switched to new Reminders app/format by hitting “Upgrade” (new uses a SQLite database).

There are several Reminders related folders under Library, so need might need to restore multiple items. And don’t want to restore in a manner that will overwrite what you currently have because “new” Reminders do not backup in iCloud like Contacts, bookmarks. You wipe out what you have now, you will have nothing. So backup NOW what you do have to have something to get back to.

And if you do manage to track down the information, will need to key it back in as there is not any method iirc in Reminders program to import single Reminders (not at Mac right now and seem to recall not even a mass import).

 

[Silly John Fatty]

I'm sorry to hear of your difficulties.

Primary steps:

I do not have any experience with the "Reminders" app. However, I can give you some general advice on how you might proceed at this point in time.

1. Disconnect (from the internet) each of computing devices (phones, tablets, laptop computers, desktop computers) which utilizes the "Reminders" app.

2. Individually check each device (still disconnected from the internet) to see if anything worthwhile can be salvaged from its "Reminders" app.

3. Make electronic/physical of whatever you can find (while still disconnected from the internet).

4. Reconstruct (as best you can) a master "Reminders" list.

Secondary steps:

5. See if there are any "backups" (such as Time Machine, storage backups, etc.) which may contain much (if not all) of the "Reminders" list

What you experienced was a catastrophic data loss involving your "Reminders" list. From your general description, it sounds like you didn't have a backup(s) of this important "Reminders" list. Unfortunately, the way the "Reminders" app works is NOT a backup solution, but rather, a synchronization solution. So when something went wrong (software bug, upgrade bug, human error, or whatever), the data loss cascaded to each of your electronic devices.

I am very sympathetic to your situation because I had the same thing happen to me when I migrated to a new 2023 Mac mini. The cascading catastrophe involved Backblaze, Google Drive, Dropbox, Sync.com. If it weren't for Time Machine / Carbon Copy Clone backups, I would have completely lost 73.2GB of research files/data....a catastrophic loss for me.

Good luck on your data recovery! Let us know of any positive outcomes.


All the best,
richmlow

Thanks so much for your input!

I've tried most of these sadly, but you did remind me that I still have an iPhone backup (done by cable). It's not the newest but at least some parts of my list could be salvaged. I'm not sure if I should restore the backup right now, I'd rather wait to see what Apple says tomorrow.

I haven't backed up anything else so far. You're lucky you did – losing 73+ GB sounds like an awful thing. I don't think I've ever lost something in my 25 years of using computers. But I definitely have to install time machine. I can only imagine how catastrophic it would have been for you if you would have lost all this data.

A couple of things OP needs to be aware of: a backup restore will not automatically repopulate Reminders since they switched to new Reminders app/format by hitting “Upgrade” (new uses a SQLite database).

I am actually confused about wether I did or not. I've pressed that "Upgrade" button plenty of times on all devices (for weeks now), but it keeps coming back, so I believe I haven't really upgraded yet. Maybe it's due to my old Mac Pro, which can't upgrade. So maybe it's blocking the process. I've removed it from my iCloud-devices, but I haven't tried upgrading yet. Maybe it would work now.

There are several Reminders related folders under Library, so need might need to restore multiple items. And don’t want to restore in a manner that will overwrite what you currently have because “new” Reminders do not backup in iCloud like Contacts, bookmarks. You wipe out what you have now, you will have nothing. So backup NOW what you do have to have something to get back to.

I've found some Reminders-files in the Library, but they're of no use to me, at least with the expertise that I have. They consist of encrypted files with tons of different symbols (in between them I can find fractions of some reminders, but it's a complete mess and some words using weird symbols, so "book" becomes something like "büü$k" for example, and that makes the search very hard),

And then there's files I can't open at all. Maybe Apple can do something out of that.

And if you do manage to track down the information, will need to key it back in as there is not any method iirc in Reminders program to import single Reminders (not at Mac right now and seem to recall not even a mass import).

I'm not sure about importing, but I know it was possible to export reminder lists, which now isn't possible anymore. Apple Support also confirmed this. So in order to save what was left from my reminders, I had to export them as PDFs.

Kind of a step backwards imo, because I'll eventually have to type everything down again or at least copy & paste it (still a lot of work), instead of just opening a Reminder file in the Reminder app.

 

[hepcat72]

So I just went through searching for the Reminders database because I upgraded to Sonoma and my personal scripts that I use to speak certain reminders through my stereo upon motion detection stopped working. I can't believe it took so long to find them. I was about ready to try reverting to a backup (though I'm not sure that would have gotten me back to the previous OS), when I found my notes on where the files were in High Sierra (which I think was what I was on before the upgrade (according to the System Profiler)). It was a long shot, but I searched for the exact (hash-like) filename, and it revealed where the files had moved to:

`~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.reminders/Container_v1/Stores/`

They are sqlite database files and are named like `Data-<hash>.sqlite*`.