Help: Can't access Notes Options on E61

L

LK96843

New member
For some reason when I go into Notes on my E61, I can no longer get the Options button to work at all. Whether I'm at the main notes list page, or within an actual note itself, pushing the soft key that represents "Options" just does not have any effect at all, and no menu comes up.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a fix for it, other than a hard reset? I have the latest firmware, 3.x.x.x.whatever.....
 
I backed up my phone memory to the SD card and did a hard reset. The notes options worked again. I restored my phone memory from SD card, and it stopped working again. What the hell settings could there be that get restored, that mess up the Notes options??

I am getting really, really, really sick of having to hard reset this thing every few days and start from absolute scratch again every time. I can't even back up and restore contacts or anything, because whenever I restore anything, the previously messed up settings get messed up again. And there is never any way to fix them, ever, except a total hard reset. Ridiculous.
 
Ok, if after a restore it stopped working, that tells me that one of the apps you have installed is flubbing up your phone... Try this, do a full reset, then try re-installing your apps one by one, and see which one causes the problem.

-olly
 
I have no apps installed. I mean I did, to the memory card, but none to the phone memory itself. When I hard resetted and then restored, no installed apps at all were restored. I even left the memory card completely out so as to avoid any problems related to it. But even after restoring just the phone memory and settings from PC suite, no applications whatsoever, the Notes problem still re-occurs following restore.
 
Hmmm, i'm not sure then. If I were you I'd just reset it, and then manually enter your settings back in... the same process I described with the apps, check it after each setting and see what is causing it.

Gotta do the diagnosis!

-olly
 
I didn't really have many customized settings though. Basically just selected GSM instead of dual mode, and entered a few POP email account settings. That's it. Replicating those things doesn't cause the Notes problem to happen. Whatever "setting" is apparently messed up seems to be just deep in the guts of the operating system, and nothing I can affect manually. Either I leave it as-is with Notes not working, or hard reset and start from scratch. Again.

And if I have to restart from scratch, I will lose ALL my contacts and previous text messages.
 
Paleozord, do you have any notes that are being restored during the backup/restore process? I'm wondering if somehow you have a corrupt note in there that's causing issues. I've never heard of this happening, but that doesn't mean it's not possible. Try deleting your notes, and see if you can get everything else back in there.

Also, how many texts are you restoring? I know that sometimes, if you've got 1000's of texts backed up, things can get a little wonky.

-olly
 
The problem is definitely something deep within the operating system. I have deleted all notes, and what I have found is this. With no notes at all on the main page, I can access the options button. If I go into a new note, while it's blank I can access the options button from within it. As SOON as I type even one character, I lose access to the options button. If I backspace over everything and it's blank again, I can access the options button again. If I save any typed text as a note, I once again lose access to the options button from the main notes page. If I delete the note by going into it and backspacing over everything, I can then again access the options button from the main notes page.

So I can access the options button from main notes page, only when page is totally empty. And I can access from within note editor, only when note is completely blank.

I only have about 50 sent and 50 received text messages, so I don't think those are affecting anything.
 
The thing is, after hard resetting I don't get the Notes error at all. It's all fine until I restore my previous settings. So it's not a firmware constant. Something happens to mess it up, I just don't know what.

My firmware version is:

3.06.33.09.04
20-11-06
RM-89
Nokia E61
 
Hmmm, that's what's really strange. Let's go through this, how have you customized the OS? What have you done that's different than a vanilla f/w would be? See if you can list it out... i'm determined to figure out what's going on!!!!

-olly
 
I really do appreciate all your help with this. Let's see...

I DID have a bunch of software applications installed previously, on the memory card. Since the reset and restore I've not re-installed any of them, but who knows what they may have done to the phone's memory/OS.

Under Tools-Settings-Phone-General:

I have phone language set to English instead of Automatic. Chinese is also available.

Under Tools-Settings-Phone-Standby:

I've set the default standby mailbox to be my Gmail account instead of the standard Inbox.

NOTE: In the middle of typing this out, I also just tried doing a soft reset to reset all settings without wiping the phone's actual memory. I then went through every single setting and option, and manually reverted every one of them to the default vanillla setting, if they weren't already. Effectively the phone is now back in its pure vanilla firmware state, and the Notes problem is still happening.

I will do a restore from memory card and continue to list here all changes I had made, but based on the experiment above it seems that it's unrelated to any manual change I could do or undo. Something inside the phone's memory must be corrupt, that can't be altered by changing settings.
 
My inclination is to say that something you had previously installed dropped a file somewhere that's causing the problem. So even though you may have uninstalled the app, it may have left something behind that is causing issues... and when you do a restore, that file is getting restored as well.

I honestly think at this poing, I'd do the following:

1.) Switch your inbox to save messages to the phone, rather than the mem card ... it will ask you if you want to copy your sms over; say yes.

2.) Restore all your contacts from the memory card to the phonebook, if you haven't already (this makes sure they are stored on the phone, not the memory card).

3.) Format your memory card

4.) Switch your invox to save messages to the card, this will copy the sms and whatnot back to the card.

5.) Backup your phonebook to the memory card (to be restored later)

6.) Remove memory card, and reformat your phone (hard format, using the *#7370# command).

7.) Then restore your sms and your phonebook to the phone.

This should save your sms, and your phonebook data, but will completely wipe out any trace of bad files left over from previous installs. Kind of a roundabout way, but give it a shot!

-olly
 
Thanks Olly, this sounds like a solution that may work. I have only a couple of questions about how to do it. I can't actualy find any options anywhere to specify where text messages are saved.. memory card or phone. Or any way to back up just contacts or just sms. The only option I have under Tools-Memory is to back up entire phone memory to card. It doesn't give me an option to back up only specific things.

How is it that I back up or transfer just text messages or contacts back and forth between the memory card and phone? Could you point me to the right menu to find this choice?
 
I found the method for copying just contacts back and forth between memory card and phone, but no such luck with Text SMS... I guess I still need a pointer for that one...

EDIT: I found the option to change where SMS are stored, but it only worked the first time. I switched it from phone memory to card, and it asked me whether to copy all SMS over to new location. I said yes, and it copied. But after I reset and went back to that option, it was set back to phone memory of course. When I switched it to card, it didn't ask me about copying anything, maybe because there was nothing to copy yet. But then when I switched it back to phone again, it still didn't ask me.

Now I have tried a bunch of times, and it still never asks me. If I select phone, it shows only the one text message I have received since the reset. If I select card, it shows me all my old ones from before. But I can switch it all I want and it never asks me anymore about copying anything. It just treats them as two seperate storage locations, with different messages in each.

How to make that work again..?
 
What I have found is that when you switch SMS storage locations and it asks you if you want to copy them to the new location, it also asks you right after that whether you want to also save the original messages in their existing location. If you answer NO, then it wipes then from the old location completely, which is what you want. Because as long as you chose that option, then the next time you switch locations again, it will again ask whether you want to copy them back over again. You can keep doing this back and forth, as many times as you want.

BUT, if you answer YES to saving the SMS messages in their old location while copying them, that's it, game over. You will no longer be given the chance to transfer messages again the next time you change storage locations, or any time ever again thereafter. Once you elect to save messages, you forever lose the ability to transfer them upon changing storage locations. It just from then on considers both locations to be valid, and will switch back and forth between displaying messages in each independent location.

And this remains true EVEN after a hard reset of the phone, wiping all saved messages. It seems that it still somehow knows that you previously chose to save messages, and does not offer you the chance to copy SMS the next time you change storage location from card to phone, following a reset.

I would love to be able to find the physical FILE on the memory card that represents the text messages inbox, but I have had no luck in identifying any such file. If I could find it, I could manualy transfer it back over to the phone memory using a file explorer app.

PC Suite does not seem to offer any method for backing up or restoring text messages specifically.
 
Ok, so at this point someone who knows PC Suite, and/or the location of the sms on the storage card is going to have to help, because I've reached the limit of my ideas. I *know* from reading previous threads that someone on here knows the location where SMS are stored... so as soon as that person comes along and answers the question, you should be able to get onto your card in mass storage mode and grab the sms.

Sorry that I couldn't take you further!!!

-olly
 
I appreciate the help you were in fact able to provide Olly, thank you.

I managed to find the location of stored SMS on the memory card. They are in E:\Private\1000484b\Mail2

I believe this directory also holds all other messaging data including email, though I'm not entirely sure of that. By manually copying the contents of that directory back and forth between the computer, SD card, and phone memory, I was able to restore all text messages from before the reset.

However, this is where it gets interesting. It appears definite that in my case the stored messaging data is what was in fact causing the error to occur with the Notes application. As soon as I restored those messages, the problem re-occured. I then removed them, and the problem disappeared again.

I even went so far as to test it by having both locations (phone memory and card) contain valid SMS data, with one location containing the old stuff and the other just a new message or two received since the reset. I then went into message settings and switched back and forth several times between using each location as the default. When I selected the one with the old stuff, Notes would stop working instantly. I'd then change the location, and Notes would work fine. Back and forth, back and forth, the results kept repeating every time.

And this was even without resetting or even turning the phone off and on. Just switching SMS storage locations from the settings menu was enough to change the behaviour of Notes, every single time reliably. Something in my messaging folders was obviously corrupting things, though I don't know why. Manually deleting all messages still didn't help things.. somehow that message "container" still held corrupt data of some sort.

Anyway, that's that explanation for now. Maybe it will help someone else somwhere down the line. Incidentally, as a side result I also discovered that if you pick the memory card as your storage location for SMS, it will take much longer to load up the "new text message" screen directly from the standby screen. Around five seconds or so, as compared with under one second if the phone's memory is used instead.
 
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