iPadOS 26 data corruption when exporting notes

[mystery hill]

iPadOS 26 has an option to export multiple notes in Markdown format.

Many of the notes that I've exported have files that are corrupt. Some have the same lines repeated multiple times, while others have been exported as blank files.

To test this select all notes in the Notes app, then from the Menubar choose File > Export as Markdown.
Save to Files.

Check if the notes have been correctly exported by choosing Quick Look in the Files app.

Are your notes being exported correctly?

 

[It’s always something]

Apparently and disappointingly there doesn’t appear to be a way to export notes except through the menu item, which is not available in full screen mode. So I am unable to test this.😕

 

[BigBlur]

I exported a few of my notes and they appear to be correct.

Apparently and disappointingly there doesn’t appear to be a way to export notes except through the menu item, which is not available in full screen mode. So I am unable to test this.😕

You can export from the Share Sheet too.

 

[It’s always something]

I exported a few of my notes and they appear to be correct.


You can export from the Share Sheet too.

View attachment 2564909

You’re right and I stand corrected. That’s the one place I didn’t look. Thanks.

 

[mystery hill]

Apparently and disappointingly there doesn’t appear to be a way to export notes except through the menu item, which is not available in full screen mode. So I am unable to test this.😕

You can select multiple notes, and then touch and hold to grab them. Use another finger to go back to the home screen, and then drag the files onto the Files app icon, and then to a folder in the app. It should save them as ‘.rtfd’ text files. It seems to only copy around 10 files, even if you select more. This method would take very long if you have thousands of notes.

You can also use the Share Sheet to export a single note to Markdown, as mentioned above.

 

[mystery hill]

I exported a few of my notes and they appear to be correct.

I have some that export correctly, while others have multiple lines repeated, or are blank. It’s not the same files that are being corrupted, but each time an export is done a different set of random files are corrupted.

This happens when exporting over 100 notes on iPadOS 26.0.1. I’ve tried restarting the iPad but that hasn’t fixed it.

 

[folium]

I have MacBook. Tahoe 26.2 OS. I just discovered major note corruption today, by a grep command (rg) that produced a lot of noise from duplicates. I exported 1190 Notes on 27.des 2025. If the command I got from Claude.ai is correct 300 of those files have duplicate lines. But some incorrect countes if headers repeat.

I did a new export today of 2 of those notes. 1 of the note has the exact same problem. But amazingly.. the other note has a completely different result! 9 duplicate lines in first export vs. 3 duplicate lines in second export. Retries gives 3 duplicate lines today. I asked Claude to give me command to see the original. And I used tidy -e command to check for errors. Nothing serious fault in the original note.

⚠️ NOTES ARE OVERWRITTEN IF DUPLICATE TITLES

Conclusion: ⚠️ MARKDOWN EXPORT IS CORRUPT! AND MULTIPLE EXPORTS ARE NOT CONSISTENT.

(edited.. first one incorrectly counted blank lines as duplicates. use only for rough esstimate, or ask ai for improved version)
Claude.ai: Suggested code to find # files with duplicate lines:
for f in *; do [ -f "$f" ] && [ $(grep -v '^[[:space:]]*$' "$f" | sort | uniq -d | wc -l) -gt 0 ] && echo "$f"; done | wc -l

Claude.ai: Suggested code to output Apple Notes raw original body
osascript -e 'tell application "Notes" to return body of note "Note Name"'

Claude.ai: Suggested code to check html of original apple note:
tidy -e original_note.html

As a side note: Some years ago I imported .enex from Evernote. Failed import. On MacBook. Notes format all wrong. HTML not correctly mapped to Apple Notes standard formatting. However: When copying the enex to my iPhone. Voila! All notes correctly imported! Impressive. But this time, the behaviour is the same on both platforms it seems.