Locks, history and getting things back

Three separate safety nets sit under Notes. They solve different problems, and knowing which one you need saves a lot of worry.

Locking a note

The note dropdown offers Lock Note, and once a note is locked it also offers Unlock Note, Change Password and Remove Lock. A lock is for content that should stay private even from people who otherwise have access — the obvious cases are anything personal or anything to do with credentials.

A lock also survives sharing. If a notebook has been made public with Anyone with the link, locked notes remain private. In a shared notebook, the lock password is set by the owner.

Treat the password seriously. It is protecting the note from people who can already open the notebook, so an easily guessed one is not protecting much.

Version history

Notes keeps earlier versions of each note, and you can restore one. This is available to anyone who can edit the note, which is worth remembering in a shared notebook — if a colleague rewrites a section you needed, you do not have to ask them to remember what it said.

Version history is the answer to “this note used to say something useful”. It is not a backup of a note that has been deleted.

Trash

Deleting a note from its dropdown does not destroy it immediately. Trash is permanently in the sidebar, alongside All Notes, Favorites and Shared Notes, so a deleted note has somewhere to be found.

Trash is also worth a look when storage is tight, because attachments in deleted notes are still your files until the notes are properly cleared out.

Frozen notebooks

One more thing that looks like a fault and is not. If you have more Personal and Shared notebooks than your plan allows, the excess become locked. The oldest notebooks you created stay free permanently, so this never takes away the notebook you have been using for a year. Nothing is deleted — consolidating a few notebooks into folders, or upgrading, brings them back.