Syncing and backup up iPhone Notes

Q: I store lots of personal and useful information in “NOTES” on my iPhone. Can you please advise me if it is possible to do a backup or copy the content to my PC?

– Colin

A: By default all of the content on your iPhone gets backed up to iTunes each time you sync your computer. Should you need to erase and restore your iPhone, you can easily restore this backup to put your notes and all other content back on as it was prior to your last backup.

Note that the iTunes backup is not easily accessible however, so if you’re looking to do a backup or transfer of your Notes that you’ll actually be able to read you’ll want to look at third-party tools such as TouchCopy which can be used to transfer notes and a multitude of other information from your iPhone back to your computer.

Alternatively, you may want to consider using a third-party notes application for your iPhone. There are numerous applications on the App Store that can sync to third-party web services or sync via Wi-Fi with an application on your computer.

For a basic, free note-taking app that provides a good replacement for the built-in Notes app check out SimpleNote, which syncs with a web-based service and a number of desktop applications. There are numerous other more advanced apps that are available as well, such as Evernote which syncs with its own web service of the same name, and Awesome Note which can be synchronized with Google Docs. A search for “notes” on the App Store will easily turn up dozens of others with varying ranges of sophistication.

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