Sticky notes lost original functionality in 16.04, how to get it back?

Question

I'm using a lot "sticky notes" in Gnome-flashback (megacity) which can be added to the main panel by Alt+MMB → Add to panel → Sticky Notes. It worked very well in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 14.04 LTS ...

Now in 16.04 LTS there is a new version (3.18.2) which lost crucial functionality which makes it completely useless for me. These crucial functions were:

• preserve content of all note windowns after reboot (in the new version all notes are lost after restart)
• can select text by mouse in order to copy-paste (the new version instead drag the window)

I was trying other alternatives such as Xpad, but these lack other necessary functionality like:

• can be shown/hiden by one click on the indicator on the panel
• run at startup
• should not show as regular running application but just as indicator icon

Is there any solution how to get original functionality back:

1. e.g. install the old version from Ubuntu 14.04
2. or install some alternative which has all the required properties ?

Answer 1

There are two problems and they are not related.

Problem 1: notes are not saved

Since Ubuntu 16.04 or Linux Mint 18.x or Fedora 24 the distros with Gnome and MATE desktops do not create the folder where StickyNotes applet tries to save its data. This is a serious bug because user data gets lost!

I helped fixing this bug in MATE and the patch was merged upstream on 8-Jul-2017. For Gnome it has been fixed on the same day. We can expect that the distros will release the fix in a few weeks in their regular updates.
See https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-applets/issues/254

Meanwhile you can simply create the missing folder manually by executing this line in a Terminal:

on a Gnome desktop:

mkdir -p ~/.config/gnome-applets

or on a MATE desktop:

mkdir -p ~/.config/mate

Problem 2: can't select text

This bug has been fixed in Gnome.
See comment #4 on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-applets/+bug/1703110

It also has been reported to the MATE team, but is not fixed yet.
See https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-applets/issues/236

If you are affected by this bug you can press Ctrl+A to select the whole text of a note and then Cut/Copy/Delete it although the selection will not be visible.

Hint: to undo and redo recent edits you can press Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z !