Recover notes from the Sidebar Gadget

One of the few really useful Windows Sidebar Gadgets I often used is the "Notes" gadget: just great to paste snippets of text or to keep a short to-do list. Unfortunately, if you close the gadget by mistake, you'll also lose all the notes you were keeping!

There is a simple solution that works as long as you leave the "shadow copies" enabled on your OS. You'll have to access the folder where all gadgets settings are stored:

C:\Users\<userprofile>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar

Open up the folder's "previous versions" dialog and cross fingers. If you're lucky you'll find a version of the Settings.ini file of before you closed the notes gadget. Search for a line that contains the "Notes.gadget" string. Just a couple of lines below you should find something like:

0=Note one.
1=Note two...

Copy the contents of the notes to your current Settings.ini or restore the file completely.

Windows 7 includes an improved version of "Notes", which now has been promoted to a full blown application instead of being a simple gadget. That should also prevent the loss of notes due to accidental closing.