Boost Note frozen at Loading data, how to recover my notes?

[nroig]

I'm on Windows 10 and it has been like a week or two since I cannot load my notes (and don't even know where they are stored). I used the offline version of Boost Note and from night to morning it stopped working. I tried checking for updates but nothing changed.

I heard that there might be some clues on the developer tools. This is what I see:

At this point, I am mostly willing to restore my notes and only then get boost note back. Is there any file that store them? What's the file name/location?

THank you in advance,
Nico

[Komediruzecki]

Hi, Nico,

I am not sure which version of the boost note next are you using, can you look into Windows installed programs and let me know?

Also, the notes are stored in different ways, if you used local storage or legacy cloud they are no longer supported but there should be no problems loading the storages in previous application versions (newer ones will not allow you to use the storage and provide the option to migrate to file system local storage).

For file system local storage, notes should be stored on the location you chose when creating storage/space.

Try looking for items such as:

bosotnote.json,
attachments (folder with attachments inside)
notes (folder with *.JSON notes inside)

The most recent boost note will skip storages that it cannot load, so I suppose you are not running the latest version, you can get the latest boost note local desktop application from here: https://github.com/BoostIO/BoostNote.next-local/releases/tag/v0.21.1

And if you want to pass the loading screen i.e. unload all storages from the app, it is possible (either with clean reinstall or from dev console), please contact me on slack as it is delicate process and I would suggest creating backup of the notes (if possible) before doing it.

Also, did you import the notes from legacy boost note, since boost note next cannot simply import those storages/notes, they are in different format (*.CSON), you can try looking for those on the disk as well. And the correct repository for boost note next, and its issues is here: https://github.com/BoostIO/BoostNote.next/issues

[nroig]

Hi Komediruzecki,

Thank you for your prompt reply! First of all, I was able to find the json files with my notes. I am unaware at which would be the best way to recover the information (just opened those in Notepad++).

I installed the app almost six months ago (0.12.4 almost surely) and when started having issues loading my notes I upgraded it to 0.21.1 (just ran an executable). I have seen some commands/scripts to run in cmd but I didn't know how (electron related things / npr). Also, thank you for the offer to connect in slack, whenever I find some time I will for sure. If you think there is a tutorial on how to install/update the program properly or to restore to the version when it worked, please let me know.

Nico

[Komediruzecki]

Hi, Nico,

did you install separated local spaces only desktop app or the boost note cloud desktop app?

For local spaces you need this application from now on: https://github.com/BoostIO/BoostNote.next-local/releases/tag/v0.21.1
Please install and try to load your storage in that application, the application will not load any previous storages as we want users to move the storage to local space only app.

If you still encounter problems and you already did load the storage in new application (local space only), I can provide procedure to remove the storage from application and load it again or at least debug what is wrong with it.

The logging in the application console should let you know what happened, the invalid storages should be skipped, but for further analysis I would need your boostnote.json etc. to see if it corrupted or something (as the error in above console portrays)

Please backup your data before doing the following procedure.
The procedure to remove local storage from already installed application:

Look at the image and find the Application local storage key: 'note.boostio.co:storageDataList', it will be a bit different key for local space application (including word 'local'):

If there are storages inside (as a value), carefully find your file system storage and remove it from the list, just exit the console and reload the application. It should no longer load the corrutped storage and you can load the app, see app version, check out other storages etc.

you can repeat this process and test what makes the storage corrupted (by removing some notes/attachments etc. from the storage which fails to load into application).

Be sure to not remove any other storages from the app if there are any, for example local storage or legacy cloud pouchDB based storages if removed will not be easy to get back (if not impossible).

If there is only one storage and it is being loaded and cannot be loaded, you can just completely remove the key and value from the application local storage and on reload the boostnote will recreate with empty key/value pair.

I can also suggest to incrementaly update the application rather than jump from 0.12.4 -> latest.
So for example jump to 0.15 then 0.16, then 0.19 and then latest. This should not matter but it might work better if there were some changes and features which were deprecated and if you needed to transfer deprecated storages to other types.

I am assuming you are not trying to load the legacy boost note storage into boost note next, this will not work out of the box and there exists migration procedure (legacy boost note *.CSON notes, new boost note next *.JSON type notes)