All of my notebooks and notes are automatically deleted

Operating system

Linux

Joplin version

3.1.24

Desktop version info

Joplin 3.1.24 (prod, linux)

Client ID: 7fd3aebc21b1417e9dca0caf0d05b0fb
Sync Version: 3
Profile Version: 47
Keychain Supported: No

Revision: d58126484

Backup: 1.4.2

Sync target

OneDrive

What issue do you have?

I'm using the desktop app on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. I had installed it from the App Center (Joplin by James Carroll). I had some very important notes related to my studies and programming. A few days ago, after updating one of my note and and saving it, the sync began but then I don't know how a "conflict" sidebar appeared below the trash and my note was moved there. I then moved it back to my notebook from there.

Today, the same thing happened. But this time, suddenly every notebook of mine got disappeared and only a few notes appeared in the conflicts section. I hadn't updated all of them and I could not move them back as there is no such notebook. I thought there was some bug in the app and thought of reinstalling it. I reinstalled it from the app center and this time even the conflict section disappeared. Only Welcome! and a hello world notebooks are appearing.

I really want my notebooks and notes back. Please help.

Since you've reinstalled via the appcenter, it's deleted the previous backups, but they're not gone just yet, they're kept for 30 days for situations like this.

I'd suggest running snap saved in a terminal, you'll see a list of ID's, one of which should be associated with the Joplin that was removed. Something similar to e.g.,:

$ snap saved
Set  Snap              Age    Version               Rev   Size   Notes
30   go                25d5h  1.10.7                3092   387B  -
30   vlc               25d0h  3.0.6                 770   882kB  -
31   vlc               529ms  3.0.6                 770   882kB  auto

With the Set/ID, you can run sudo snap restore $ID and it'll restore the content of the older installation. The correct ID will likely have auto as a note, because that's something snap has made for you as a last resort, most people don't make sets manually and would rarely see manual package manager level backups.

Once that's done, go into $HOME/snap/joplin-desktop/common and take a copy of the backups that run daily before the conflict corruption spreads into those too. With the JEX's, you'd be able to restore your notes, assuming they didn't restore anyway from the snap command above (which should in theory return you to the exact point before you uninstalled, which would unfortunately still be with the conflicts).

Whilst I don't expect the conflict issue is caused by the snap itself, with those JEX files, you can reimport the data into e.g., the AppImage or Flatpak releases if you'd rather avoid the snap for now.

I wouldn't be able to help diagnose the underlying cause of the conflict issues, but a good place to start would be acquiring the Joplin log files and seeing what they've got to say, I'd not assume the snap to be causing conflicts by virtue of being a snap itself, so if there's an underlying issue, that issue is probably still there in your other devices and needs sorting.

Ultimately deleting everything and reimporting can be a good if heavy handed solution, but it'd be across all your devices, whereas hopefully some experts on the sync logic here might be able to offer a more precise approach. But your immediate concern should be grabbing the JEX files whilst they're still usable.

There would have been a second level of backup of the previous version of the snap (likely 3.1.23) and I'm unsure whether this snap restore will unfortunately bring you that one back, purely as I've never tried; but, if the restored version 3.1.24 is unusable and the common folder doesn't help, you could finally try sudo snap revert joplin-desktop to try get 3.1.23 back, which reverts not just the app version but the entireity of its database to the point just before the upgrade process began (3.1.24 was released Monday, so these backups could be up to 5 days old). If that doesn't work, you can take a look in $HOME/snap/joplin-desktop/ anyway. The numbered folders represent revisions, the lower number will be the older release, and if it's there, you can browse it, peek at hidden files, and copy the raw Joplin config folder and paste it separately. (snap revert essentially repoints back to this older folder automatically).

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