Notes won't open - ideas?

[borderheeler]

I can't get Notes to open on my new Mac Mini M2 Pro (Ventura 13.3.1). It hasn't opened since I got the M2 Pro, including with earlier versions of Ventura. It tries to open and then crashes immediately. Notes works fine on my iPhone, and on the Mac I can get to it via iCloud on Safari. But it's a no-go with the Mac Notes app.

So, I went thru the laborious process of diagnostics with Apple support - restart in safe mode, restart in test mode (as a new user), disable open-at-login items, reinstall Ventura. Yada Yada. Clearly they just have an accelerating list of things to try but don't really have a genuine idea of what might be wrong. None of these things worked at all. So what I am wondering is if anyone can read my crash report and tell me what is really wrong. Below is a small part of the crash report, but I can copy the whole thing if it will help a real tech-minded person decode what the heck is making it crash. (I could really use this app right now as I am scanning a bunch of things with my phone that need to be edited on the Mac - it would save me a big set of steps to have Notes just work.)

From the crash report:
System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread: 2 Dispatch queue: NSManagedObjectContext 0x600000601110

Exception Type: EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x00000001850c4bd0

Termination Reason: Namespace SIGNAL, Code 5 Trace/BPT trap: 5
Terminating Process: exc handler [1193]

As I said, I can copy more of the crash report here if it would help. (It's looooong.) Or if anyone has any other ideas, I'd be grateful! Thanks!

 

[iStorm]

What happens if you disable syncing notes with iCloud (and choosing to delete the local copy if prompted)...does Notes still crash? If not, there's probably some note in the cloud it's not liking for whatever reason.

Also, we'll probably need more of the crash report. I don't think the above is telling us much. Put it inside a spoiler tag to hide it so that we don't have to scroll endlessly all the time (or attach it as a text file).

 

[borderheeler]

Here is the complete crash report (in an attached text file). If anyone can get clues from this, I'd be grateful!

OK, so in terms of not syncing with iCloud: if I go to System Settings>me>iCloud>Apps Using iCloud>Notes and turn off Sync this Mac, do my Notes on iCloud stay intact? I don't want to delete them.

Here's a weird thing: Notes on my 10 year old iMac works perfectly and syncs with iCloud just fine. Whatever is going on is specific to this Mac Mini M2 Pro and/or Ventura. (The old iMac isn't running Ventura.)

 

[ivanwi11iams]

Add another user account on your Mac, then RESTART the Mac. Now log in as that user, do not log into Apple ID. Now test Notes, does it open?

If so, the issue is with your user profile on Mac OS…

 

[borderheeler]

Add another user account on your Mac, then RESTART the Mac. Now log in as that user, do not log into Apple ID. Now test Notes, does it open?

If so, the issue is with your user profile on Mac OS…

Tried that already as part of the diagnostics that Apple walked me through. Notes behaves exactly the same with that second user. It opens up for an instant, literally for about a quarter of a second, and then crashes. Every time.

 

[HDFan]

1. Do your notes appear correctly if you access them via iCloud web?

2. Can you create a different iCloud account, login to that other user account using that new iCloud login on your Mac, and bring up notes?

Make sure you have good backups before making that change.

I'm wondering if there is some sort of note corruption that is causing the app to crash.

 

[Ruggy]

Do a search about plist files.
You have to find the notes plist file in the library, trash it, reboot the machine, it'll create a new one and it will load.
The plist file or preferences list file is what the OS refers to when it opens a program and it sounds like yours is corrupted.