Gospel 4.0 update lost all notes

I saw my notes in the "recent" tab but the entries were NOT in my "journal" notebook. I don't have a "journal" notebook anymore. Do I need to create a notebook called "journal" and move all my recent notes to the notebook that I create called "journal"? I have hundreds of entries that I put into the journal on the old version. I have already signed out and signed back in. I was asked if I want to keep my entries on this device. I chose to "keep" those entries but I wonder if I should have chosen "delete" so the entries from my lds.org account could be used? I don't want to lose my entire "journal".

In the old version of Gospel Library, "Journal" was a separate section of Notes that was kind of like a combination of a notebook and an "all notes" area. A lot of users were confused by the feature and how it worked (mainly the fact that creating notes in other notebooks also showed up in the Journal). To align more closely with iOS (which never had the Journal feature) and future version of the LDS.org study tools, the Journal section of Notes was removed.

However, as you discovered, we did not delete your notes. Here's how to get Journal back (as a regular notebook now, instead of as a pseudo-notebook):
1) Open the Notes area of the app.
2) Tap the overflow (three dots) menu, and choose "Restore Journal."
This will create a regular notebook called "Journal" and migrate your notes (all those that aren't associated with a notebook or a highlight) into it.

That did restore the "journal" entries but it made the date for all my Journal entries today's date. It would have been nice to preserve the date. Is there any way to get the date restored?

trwilkerst wrote:That did restore the "journal" entries but it made the date for all my Journal entries today's date. It would have been nice to preserve the date. Is there any way to get the date restored?

This is the reason we didn't make the transition automatic – it updates the date modified of all the annotations, because they were moved to a new notebook. All of the dates created are still there, it's just the date modified that was updated. The designers chose to show the date modified instead of the date created on the notes... I'm hoping that the date created will be visible and sortable in the future. In short, no, there's no way for the previous date modified to be restored.

sbradshaw wrote:P.S. For the forum moderators: This message and the previous 3 are referring to the Journal feature in Android Gospel Library, not iOS – it'd be helpful if you could move them to the Gospel Library for Android section of the forum. Thanks!

Thanks for the clarification. This separate Android-oriented discussion is now in the Android Gospel Library forum section, split from its original topic in the iPad/iPhone Gospel Library forum section.

We're encouraged to keep journals. Of all the possible journal providers out there, I thought that the LDS Scriptures app, which integrated journal-keeping with scripture study, was the LEAST likely to destroy my data.

I was wrong.

The app destroyed my data. Specifically, it destroyed the meta-data—the dates of my entries. I now have an unsorted journal full of thoughts on things that I cannot put in order. It's like having a paper journal fed into a shredder, except in THAT case the journal could still be reassambled correctly from the torn edges of the paper. It's a disaster, and it's truly thoughtless work on the part of the development team.

I decided to buy a proper journaling app. In fact, I bought it from my device IN CHURCH because that's much of my journaling happens.

I trust the Church on matters of salvation, but I can't trust them with my data.

I also saw this issue with my journal entries.
I have also ran into another problem. All of my Notebooks (about 8,000 notes in different gospel topic folders) as of last week disappeared from their respective folders and ended up in 1 folder labeled "unassigned." I cannot see any of my notes from any of my mobile devices (android and iOS) although I can see all my notes in the unassigned folder from a web browser on my PC. I have uninstalled Gospel Library and re-installed it in 2 mobile devices but I still can't see my notes. Has anyone run into this issue? Thanks.

ulloara wrote:I also saw this issue with my journal entries.
I have also ran into another problem. All of my Notebooks (about 8,000 notes in different gospel topic folders) as of last week disappeared from their respective folders and ended up in 1 folder labeled "unassigned." I cannot see any of my notes from any of my mobile devices (android and iOS) although I can see all my notes in the unassigned folder from a web browser on my PC. I have uninstalled Gospel Library and re-installed it in 2 mobile devices but I still can't see my notes. Has anyone run into this issue? Thanks.

This sounds like an issue you may need to talk to the support team about. You can contact them using the "Send Feedback" button under Settings.

Have you found a solution to this problem? I am having the same issue. One day, notes were nicely sorted...and then, on the next day, the notes had become "unassigned". Those unassigned notes are not visible on the phone app, but I can view them in the unassigned folder online on PC. The Gospel Library app on my Android phone is version 4.2.3.2.

yegan wrote:Have you found a solution to this problem? I am having the same issue. One day, notes were nicely sorted...and then, on the next day, the notes had become "unassigned". Those unassigned notes are not visible on the phone app, but I can view them in the unassigned folder online on PC. The Gospel Library app on my Android phone is version 4.2.3.2.

Do you only use the Android app, or do you also use the iOS app, Windows app, or LDS.org?

sbradshaw wrote:

trwilkerst wrote:That did restore the "journal" entries but it made the date for all my Journal entries today's date. It would have been nice to preserve the date. Is there any way to get the date restored?

This is the reason we didn't make the transition automatic – it updates the date modified of all the annotations, because they were moved to a new notebook. All of the dates created are still there, it's just the date modified that was updated. The designers chose to show the date modified instead of the date created on the notes... I'm hoping that the date created will be visible and sortable in the future. In short, no, there's no way for the previous date modified to be restored.

So why is there not a warning in the UI? Seems like really poor UX to me. It is really sad that I lost all of my meta data. Is there any way to get a back up of the proper dates?

I too have found that all the stuff in my many notebooks is all unsorted now in one Unassigned folder. I can access it online or on the app, but there's no way I'll find what I'm looking for among over 1800 items. I sure hope the folks messing with millions of Saints' scriptures have a way to fix this. It's a huge deal.

tslemke wrote:

sbradshaw wrote:

trwilkerst wrote:That did restore the "journal" entries but it made the date for all my Journal entries today's date. It would have been nice to preserve the date. Is there any way to get the date restored?

This is the reason we didn't make the transition automatic – it updates the date modified of all the annotations, because they were moved to a new notebook. All of the dates created are still there, it's just the date modified that was updated. The designers chose to show the date modified instead of the date created on the notes... I'm hoping that the date created will be visible and sortable in the future. In short, no, there's no way for the previous date modified to be restored.

So why is there not a warning in the UI? Seems like really poor UX to me. It is really sad that I lost all of my meta data. Is there any way to get a back up of the proper dates?

So it seems that there is still no solution. I think that the metadata is gone and there is no date created data associated with the entries and so there will never be a good solution. Sad and unfortunate

I just submitted feedback on the Android app. But I have been having these problems and have lost hours and hours of notebooks I have added to. I use all apps except iOS. I use Windows 10 app, online and the Android app.