The Mysterious Sticky Notes and Where to Find Them

Have you ever used the Windows built-in accessory the Sticky Notes? It enables you to plaster notes all over your Windows desktop. You can add, write, move around the notes or even change the colors to help you stay organized. 

The sticky note you post will stay on screen until you decide to (or accidentally) delete it. When you delete a sticky note, it will be gone straight away - no route to the Recycle Bin or is there any undelete option. 

How to Avoid Accidental Deletion

By default, when you click on the x to delete a sticky note, you are prompted for confirmation. If you check the Don’t display this message again check box, you will not be prompted again the next time you delete a sticky note. It is too easy to delete a note without any prompt. We recommend that you keep the prompt-on-delete feature on to avoid any accidental deletion.

If you disabled the prompt and later decide that you’d rather have it back, you’ll have to do some registry editing. Open the Registry Editor and navigate to the following entry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\StickyNotes

Set the value of PROMPT_ON_DELETE to 1. Click OK and exit.

How to recover deleted sticky notes?

If you deleted some sticky notes with useful information on it, fret not, there are ways to get it back.

The extension for Sticky Notes is .snt. You can create as many sticky notes as you wish but there is only one .snt file, which is called StickyNotes.snt. You can locate this file by copying the following into the File Explorer address bar:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Sticky Notes\StickyNotes.snt

This file is not associated with the Sticky Notes program. You can open it with Notepad or Word to view its content. It can be a little messy because the .snt file is never designed to be read by programs other than Sticky Notes. However, previously created notes, including the ones you deleted, can be found amongst the sea of gibberish.

If you lost both your notes and the StickyNotes.snt file due to various reasons (accidental deletion, formatting, etc.), you can try a data recovery software to save the day. We recommend Hdata Recovery Software, a fully featured software designed to handle all kinds of data-loss situations, retrieving the missing StickyNotes included!  All you have to do is launch the program, scan your C: drive and located the .snt file.

If you regularly use Sticky Notes and create many notes, it is wise to back up your file and store it someplace else. You can rename the StickyNotes.snt and move it away. Windows will automatically create a new one if it finds the .snt file is missing.