Hello,
Epesi is extremely careful when it comes to removing any database entries. We don't permanently remove records nor notes, unless the developer of said module decided the deletion should be permanent (not the case in contacts).
There are 4 things I can think of that may cause behavior like this.
The first one is a duplicate contact. Someone adds a note to contacts John Doe (ID:5), someone creates new John Doe (ID: 140), might even go as bad as realizing he/she created a duplicate and remove one of them (the wrong one, ID 5). Another user searches for John Doe and find the new contact, with notes "missing".
To track this issue, check the date the record was created on. If it's very recent, something's amiss. Also check contacts in Administrator->RecordSet, display only inactive records. This will allow you to check the original record.
The other option is restoration of the database. However unlikely, if the server is going through more busy period, there is a chance the hosting provider decided they must restore the databases and websites to an older state. One would expect to notify the users of such need, but I've seen many weird, bad practices when it comes to online services.
There's a fairly reliable way to check this scenario. Head over to Menu->Admin->Login Audit and check the dates when you added the notes. If the whole days are missing, it means that there was a forced restore.
The third option is that notes had their permissions changed, disabling users from viewing the notes. The fastest way to check it is to run query:
SELECT * FROM utils_attachment_link WHERE permission=2
If the result is not empty, someone was using the Private notes feature. It doesn't necessarily mean that these particular notes were made private, so please read on the last cause/method to find the particular note you need.
Last option is that someone cut and pasted the note somewhere else. The place to check is the table utils_attachment_note. Assuming you're sure of at lest one word from the note you've made, you can run this query:
SELECT * FROM utils_attachment_note WHERE text LIKE '%Keyword%'
Replacing
Keyword with your word. If you don't find it at first search, try some other words - it's possible there was a typo in the word after all. You can check for parts of the words as well (like
eywor, will still match Keyword).
I know that's quite a lot of scenarios to check, some of them not very user friendly, but the one thing I know I won't have to tell you is "well, some notes might vanish sometimes" - in epesi data doesn't simply vanish. Some users could go to some lengths to obscure a note: first edit the note contents, then move it to another record, mark it as private and finally delete - and as an admin you will still be able to recover that note, using the last method of tracking (utils_attachment_note table) will still pinpoint such note just using a keyword, right away.
Kind regards,
Arek
