Q: I cannot delete iPhone keyboard shortcuts.  They keep restoring.

Have you restarted your device yet?

It has almost been 2 weeks, and I have had no return of any zombie shortcuts whatsoever.  I followed the process outlined on pages 17 & 32 (I did have that 2013 file that ended in .sqlite).  I have restarted several times, backed up to iCloud daily, and no issues.  I have even updated to iOS 9.  Finally the text shortcuts are syncing between my iPhone and MacBook after I deleted all the shortcuts in the MacBook again.  I can see the shortcuts update within 30 seconds whether I enter them on the MacBook or on the iPhone, so I'm very pleased with that.

The fix on pages 17 & 32 really do work, so if iOS 9 doesn't fix the problem for you, then you will need to follow this process if you want to get rid of the zombie shortcut issue.

Thanks again to LookInToMyEyes and Pickinic for this fix!

Ok.  Here is what I did and it fixed my zombie text replacements.

1. Upgrade all iOS devices to version 9.
2. Delete all text replacements.  Yep, all of them. Including other iOS/MAC devices
3. Wait for a single backup cycle
4. Recreate your Text Replacements.
5. You're done.

On a side note, Apple must of done something on the back end with iCloud to fix this issue.  When I upgraded all my iOS devices to version 9, they don't come back anymore when I wiped them all out. All I did was wipe them out, waited for a backup cycle, and recreated them.

No need for any special tools or iTunes.  It just worked this time (and the dozen other times on iOS 8 didn't).

Have you rebooted your devices?

That too.  Sorry, should of included that is step 5.

Several times - both hard and soft reboot.

yes, I also found it. Apple magically solved that in IOS 9 (not sure whether its temporary or permanent but it works now)

I sincerely hope that it really is fixed, but I wouldn't hold your breath until you wait a few days or even weeks.  On the other thread about this topic they are saying the zombies are returning.  This has been going on for way too long and I hope for everyone's sake that Apple has really done something to fix it.

Mine are back after about a week - running 9.1

"mine are back" as in Zombies or as in syncing of "text replacement" i.e. shortcuts?  And did you say iOS 9.1?  Please no, as if they ever gave us the option to stop iOS update files from downloading automatically & filling our memories I would never update again.  If it's not broke, don't fix it. If it is broke, fix it.  But this is clearly not the way Apple does business.

No syncing here yet... iOS 9.0 on both the iPad Air2 & iPhone5 (and battery life has just gone to sh*t on it) and as soon as it hits 10% notice, it cycles off completely.

It's quite possible, as soon as I make it back to the US from this month plus trip into Africa... I will be getting rid of this complete set of single platform MCP & iOS devices as they are wasting me too much time messing with them.... and the "Cult of Mac" promises are far from materializing.

maybe they just renamed it "text replacements" so users will forget "keyboard shortcuts" and just stop posting in these threads expecting the Apple engineers to fix it.  Vindictive b@#$ards!

So...  As funny or ridiculous as this may sound, I decided to go to the top.  Here is the email I just sent directly to Tim Cook:

Dear Tim,

  I am writing because as the CEO of a company myself, I would want to know personally if a large group of my customers was unhappy with my product where there is a presumably easy fix.  This problem has been plaguing many iPhone and iPad users for at least two years and it is best explained by visiting your support site here:  https://discussions.apple.com/message/28949289?tstart=0#28949289 In a nutshell, when a texting shortcut is deleted from your device it reappears minutes, hours, days or even weeks later.  This is extremely aggravating as many of these were deleted because they were misspelled, are an outdated email address or someone else entered them as a joke, etc.  While I found a fix for my device and posted it on the support page, many have not figured out how to do the same.  The engineers and support people at Apple seem to have abandoned this group and offered no solutions.  Everyone was hoping that iOS 9 would fix the problem as promised by the engineers, but it did not.  I think if you read that support page titled “I cannot delete iPhone keyboard shortcuts.  They keep restoring.” You’ll see the frustration including people planning on leaving the iOS environment for a competitor.  As for myself, I’ve found a solution, but have been contributing to the support page out of sympathy for the others.  This might seem like a trivial issue to be sending to the CEO of Apple, but I assure you it is not to those frustrated and annoyed by this problem.  I hope this reaches you and that you can see that a solution is brought forward by someone in your engineering team.  It would also be helpful to have an Apple representative monitor the support site and contribute in the dialogue like I’ve seen in other support sites.

Don't all laugh too hard out loud at once as I might go deaf, but what what the heck, they say he reads his emails.

Well done buddy. I agree with you 100%. Good luck with it.

Excellent. No reason to laugh. You and pagemakers4 have each helped numerous people on this forum. Thanks for your continuing support and advocacy.

Well done!

I have to say, as a business person myself trying to start a company, buying that MCP 2 days before departure to Africa was probably the worst business decision I have made yet and will impose significant lost opportunity costs that buying any PC based laptop would not have caused.

Hace you gotten out your microscope to see the new 4x4 apps grid in the iPad folders yet? Seriously, not broken, so let's fix it! The amount of basic needed things I've had to search for on Mac OS (that have been 'simplified out' to streamline & make 'cleaner' is really a ***?! not yeah that makes since coming off PC based environment).

cheers & thanks again from Namibia