A customer types delivery instructions or another important note into the cart, proceeds to checkout, and the resulting Shopify order contains no note.
The real symptom
- The textarea is visible and accepts text, but Shopify ignores it.
- The note exists in the cart and disappears after checkout.
- It works in a clean theme but not the customized cart.
- The note stops working after an Ajax cart customization.
The likely cause
The most common theme-level problem is that the note field looks correct visually but is no longer part of the form Shopify submits. A valid cart note normally uses name="note". Ajax carts must persist the note explicitly through the cart API.
The confirmed Community fix
Shopify Community guidance is to verify that the note field remains inside the actual cart form and to test the behavior with JavaScript disabled or in an unmodified Shopify theme.
Admin path
- Go to Online Store > Themes > Customize.
- Open the Cart or Cart drawer settings.
- Enable the native cart-note setting if the theme provides one.
Developer checks
<textarea name="note"></textarea>For Ajax carts, inspect /cart.js after the note is changed.
fetch('/cart.js')
.then(response => response.json())
.then(cart => console.log(cart.note));