Sticky Notes, first introduced with Windows Vista, is an amazing utility to quickly write down ideas or everything else that comes to your mind. The native Sticky Notes program Windows 10/8/7 doesn’t offer features available in some third-party programs but it’s a good solution to quickly jot down a contact number, email address or write a to-do list.
Deleting a Sticky Notes on the desktop is easier than creating it! You just need to click the close (X) button located upper-right corner of a Note. With default settings, Sticky Notes does ask for the confirmation when click the close button but if you have turned off the feature, it will simply delete the note instead of closing when you click the X button.
If you have accidently deleted a Sticky Note in Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10, here is how to recover the deleted note without the help of third-party tools.
Recovering deleted notes
Step 1: Open Run command box by simultaneously pressing Windows and R keys.
Step 2: In the Run box, paste the following path and then press Enter key.
%AppData%\Microsoft\Sticky Notes\
Step 3: Under Sticky Notes folder, you should see StickyNotes (.SNT) file. Double-clicking on the file will not give you any results because Windows doesn’t associate .SNT extension to Sticky Notes or any other program with default settings.
Now, right-click on that StickyNotes(.SNT) file and then open it with a good text editing program. For the best results, we recommend you open the file with Microsoft Office Word program.
Once the file is opened in Word, the actual contents of the Note will appear towards the end of the document.
NOTE 1: We did try to open the file with Notepad but we were unable to locate the actual notes. Opening the file with Office Word is the best solution to recover the content. If Word isn’t installed on your PC, you can try opening the StickyNotes.SNT file in a program equivalent to Office Word.
NOTE 2: If required content is not present, you could try to restore the file to a previous version by try right-clicking on StickyNotes.SNT and then clicking Restore previous versions. If there are no previous versions of the file available, that is because File History feature is turned off.
Bonus: Enable delete confirmation for Sticky Notes
If you have turned off delete confirmation prompt for Sticky Notes, we recommend you turn on the same to avoid going through the above steps again in future. Complete the given below steps to enable delete confirmation box for Sticky Notes.
Step 1: Open Registry Editor by tying Regedit in Start menu, Start screen or Run box and then pressing Enter key.
Step 2: Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\StickyNotes
Step 3: On the right-side, double-click on PROMPT_ON_Delete value and change its value from 0 to 1 (one) to enable the delete confirmation. From now onwards whenever you click the X button on a note, you’ll see ‘’Delete Note: Are you sure you want to delete this Note” warning message on the screen with Yes and No buttons.
Good luck!
Jane says
Brilliant! A sneaky someone in the office deleted my notes from my desktop but with this help I got them back. Thank you :)
Steve Romero says
I have Windows 10 Home… with the explanation given by Shankys on Jan 29, 2019…. I was able to recovered it all!!!!!!
BTW the link guides to bunch of different comments of possibles (links – locations) the link below was the one that worked for me…
%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftStickyNotes_8wekyb3d8bbwe
Tom says
I had no luck whatsoever. I got the same error message as some as some of you above. This is the 3rd time my sticky notes have disappeared. Why can’t Windows give a warning that there will be an update and you may lose the following. I tried so many different ways to retrieve them, but I had no luck.
Shanky says
In case you don’t find %AppData%\Microsoft\Sticky Notes\
1) follow this link – https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38823336/where-sticky-notes-are-saved-in-windows-10-1607
2) Copy paste ‘plum.sqlite’ to anywhere you want (I pasted it on the desktop), right-click on ‘plum.sqlite’ file and open using a text editor (I used notepad ++). You’ll see a ton of crap in there, yet in all of that you’ll find English text, there are the important notes you thought you lost :)
Vince says
I managed to open the file in Wordpad, but it only partially contains what was in the sticky note I deleted. Oddly enough, the most recent entries (past couple months) are not there, while the older stuff is. Does any one have an explanaion?
Raychel says
tried it n could only recover the most current one. I lost the ones from the last years. I think I have lost them forever. thanks anyway.
Anthony says
Worked Perfectly! Thank You!
Jo Val says
Hello I tried this method and when I put in the %AppData%Microsoft\Sticky Notes it says location Not Available.
Ella says
Thanks a lot for this. I was very distressed and confused when my file was deleted but you saved me the stress. I was able to recover every bit of it. It really worked for me. Thanks once again. Keep up the good work and have a nice day.
Jitu says
Thanks for this. Cheers
klaudya says
i tried that and the sticky notes that open were from last year, i update them monthly, yet i could not retrieve the newer ones neither restore them. how can i enable file history?
also under Applets i don’t have a file called sticky notes, yet i do have the app on my PC. weird? i use windows10
thank you for your help.
Cynthia K. says
didn’t work for me. :-(
Julie says
HELP1
I tried this and got this:
Windows cannot find ‘C:\Users\Julie\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Stcky’. Make sure you typed the name correctly and try again.
I’ve tried and retried with the same result.
arlene says
recovering my sticky notes was successful.. I also tried to Enable delete confirmation for Sticky Notes, however this didn’t work for me. is there any other way? thanks.
mary says
i don’t usually comment on things but this saved my ass, thank you so much!!!!!
Anthony says
thanks i recovered it all.. GODBLESS xD
Laura says
Thank you! Very helpful. I actually found that wordpad gave me back more information that opening it in word! Go figure :)
Lee says
Am i the only one who wasn’t successful?
Ana says
Thanks a lot .. I found my important information.
Chetna says
Thank you so much, I was able to retrieve my data with the help of these instructions. Great work. Thanks :)
Joe says
I cant seem to find sticky notes under applets when using regedit. I managed to do this with my office computers but no luck with my home PC’s running windows 10 anniversary updates.
TOMAS says
You’re a god
Alexander says
Thank you very much. It worked. God bless you
Sherrie says
We have one sticky note that won’t move, delete or edit. Do you know how to resolve this?
K9 says
AMAZING … MANY THANKS!!!
Pepe says
Excellent!!!!
Random Stranger says
It’s not giving me the note that I need but an older one. Any ideas how I can get a different note?
Also, the “Enable delete confirmation” didn’t work.
Pulkit says
Hey man,
First of all, you are a big time savior. You just didn’t saved my day but also made believe that all the information available on the sites are not void. Some people are there for real help.
Simple and precise instructions.
Followed it.
Loved it.
It Worked.
Kidos.
Shaun says
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
I was in tears until I found this. You saved me.
Anj says
Thank you very much for the very useful information. I was close to tears when my Sticky Note containing all my work-related activities and assessment since 2010 was accidentally deleted. I was able to recover it with your help. I am not a techie, but your step-step-guide with photos walked me through the “recovery process”. And, I learned another important lesson – not to rely so much on Sticky Notes when storing important data.
Sophai says
Thanks for sharing such a useful information. However, for me, I used a great tool to recover my all deleted data: file, music, photo…etc. It’s called Advanced Disk Recovery; you should try it.
A Potato says
Everytime I search things like this because im not good with computers i never find anything that can help me this was so perfectly explained with images just PERFECT
THANK YOU
Kayla Isaacs says
Hi, Thank you for your clean instructions!
After recovering my sticky note, i followed the instructions through for ‘ Enable delete confirmation for Sticky Notes’ and then tried it out. when trying it out it didn’t work. it didn’t ask me if i was ok with deleting the sticky note it just deleted it…
Sandrina says
Thank you! This was very helpful!!
A. Cole says
I have Sticky Notes 8 on Windows 10 and when I followed the directions using %AppData%\Microsoft\Sticky Notes\ I got the error message “Windows cannot find ‘C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Sticky’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.” I then tried it as %AppData%\Microsoft\Sticky Notes 8\ and got the same error message. Do you have any ideas?