Unlock your locked notes before using smart switch to sync with a new device

[Athusiva]

Without unlocking my notes, i used smart switch to sync with my new phone. After that, when I tried to access my locked notes, it gave a pop up error message: "Can't access notes locked by another account".

What another account? My phone number and email were the same. The same error message came both on my old phone and new. Earlier I used to be able to unlock notes with password or fingerprint. Now it's not asking for it. 

Samsung email support just told me to visit service centre. I had to find out myself where the nearest one was. There the standard solution offered regardless of your issue is that you should backup all your data, they'll reinstall software and whatever issue you're facing will probably get solved. I didn't go back there. Samsung customer care didn't know how to help beyond generic responses. They tried saying that maybe I was entering wrong password. But it didn't ask me for password at all. They also repeatedly told me to just forget my data and insisted this can't be solved. I insisted that someone at samsung should be able to create a solution, if none currently exists, because I'm not gonna forget my data. I noticed something that they didn't notice when trying to help me. The version number of samsung notes on my old phone was different, even though on playstore it showed up to date. On playstore, I saw a message "this phone is not compatible with this app". Since my locked notes were safely on my new phone, I deleted the notes app from my old phone, then tried restarting my new phone and logging in again. I still couldn't access locked notes. Next I noticed the country is showing UAE on my phone personal profile and this is grayed out and not clickable. I logged in on the web page of my samsung account. Here, it allows to change the country but only if I can verify with phone number. When I entered my phone number, it says this number is already in use. So I used my mother's phone number and successfully changed country to India. I still couldn't access samsung locked notes. I backed my data on cloud and logged out on my phone. I usually login using email, but this time I logged in using phone number. Now I'm able to access locked notes. When I try to add email, it says this email id already in use. When I log in using email and try to add phone number, it said the same thing. Basically samsung is treating my email and phone number as two separate accounts, Even though there's only one account. At least my notes are unlocked now. Samsung accounts and/ or smart switch is messed up. Changing your country shouldn't be so difficult either. Backup all your data with Google for better safety.