Q: iOS 9 / iTunes / Outlook Notes sync on Windows

Pleased to hear it! That's what I do. iTunes for photos and music only.

I also upgraded to IOS 9 and the option to sync Notes in iTunes vanished. Based on what I read from a lot of responses and a bit of trial and error, this is what I did to partially resolve my sync issue:

1. Copied all my Notes to a new folder in Windows Explorer. They appeared as *.msg files. This way I had a backup in case my Notes disappeared.

2. Deleted all Notes from Outlook and from my iPhone.

3. Closed and restarted Outlook. Also rebooted my iPhone.

4. Opened Outlook and copied over a few Notes from the backup folder back into Notes in Outlook. When I sync-ed using iTunes, the Notes showed up on my iPhone.

5. When I make changes to the Notes on my iPhone, the changes transfer over to Outlook. However vice versa did not work.

6. Also, when I copied all notes from the backup folder back into Outlook (Select All), after syncing I would get an error message saying my iPhone was disconnected. Not sure why this message appeared and all notes would not copy over. However this is what I found:

7. Copied about 8 of my longer notes over to Outlook and synced with iTunes to see them appear on my iPhone. For the remaining notes, I would create a new Note in Outlook and copied/pasted the contents of the remaining notes from the backup folder. This might be a bit of work for those with many Notes but my list was not so long.

8.After syncing, all Notes show up on the iPhone.

9. Any changes made to Outlook notes would not propagate to the iPhone. Solution: Create a new note each time and copy/paste contents from old note into new one and delete the old one. Syncing with iTunes seems to transfer newly created notes to the iPhone. iPhone to Outlook changes work fine.

Though this is not a perfect solution, I at least have a temporary workaround for my Notes now.

I tried your suggestion and could not get it to work for me. During the upgrade to iOS 9 did you accept the option to upgrade notes?  If you didn't then that may be part of the reason why your solution worked for you and not for me.

While I am not a great lover of putting anything in anyone's "Cloud" but I have gone to converting all my notes to individual .TXT files and storing them in a folder in my Dropbox.  At least that way I have Notes synchronization across all my devices and computers with a minimum of fuss after the initial copy and paste routine to convert the notes to TXT files.  As a side benefit, the notes are now in alphabetical order rather than the chronological order that iOS insisted on imposing on all  of us.   That makes it a lot easier to find a particular note.  Fortunately, I only had about thirty notes, but I've noticed that others have mentioned having one hundred or more and for them my solution may be rather time consuming initially but once finished it becomes a lot easier to use.

I found another solution that does what I want and does not use any cloud storage.  I followed a suggestion that I saw somewhere else in this thread that involves setting up a dummy contact with no name but a company name called "A Note - ******".  The asterisks are for each note's title and the note text is then placed in the Notes field of the dummy contact.  One dummy for each of my notes and then sync my computer to the phone and then the iPad and all is good.  Yo Apple, We don't need no stinking Notes!!

My initial comment is way back on page 3. As I flip through the possible, maybe and not solutions, I can't help but to shrug my shoulders at all of the brainpower that has been put into this - not to mention the time. Shame on Apple for causing this problem - here I thought companies looked out for their customers. I pray that the companies that depend on notes will move away from the Apple platform.

I created a new Note in Outlook and synced it to my iPhone.

Spotlight Search cannot find the note on my iPhone 6/9.0.2

Can anyone else confirm this is the same on their iPhone?

Hey jwdkhan,

I don't think your 9-step workaround is what Steve Jobs meant when he famously said, "It just works!"

I'm sorry to hear this is what you have to go through to try to utilize your iPhone in the way you could before the "upgrade." It appears all of this disruption is so you can sketch in your notes or something. They should have at least maintained the plain-text functionality that supported syncing with Outlook to avoid turning their customer's work-flow upside down. What Apple has accomplished is to alienate users that want to be productive with the phone and integrate it into their business lives at a time when more people were seeing the iPhone as a great business productivity tool.

If a user loses all of their drunken selfies, or photos of their cat it is very unfortunate, but if you lose the ability to conduct your business it can have ramifications beyond mere disappointment. Trusting your software provider to never do anything that threatens the integrity of your data is paramount, and I am dumbfounded at the way Apple has handled this.

I still say letters to top management are the best possible solution to this problem because so far no one from the technical side is really caring much.

I literally JUST noticed the outlook note sync problem today and I've already upgraded to 9.0.2 and iTune 12.3.0.44.   I do notice that the sync seems to be working from iOS to iTunes/PC/outlook only but NOT the other way around.   Needless to say, all my notes on my iOS are all jammed up without line break.   I fixed a few of them on my iPhone and they sync'ed alright into outlook.  But those I fixed within my outlook didn't make it into iOS.

Moreover, whatever I updated on iOS, when I synced, I'll get a sync conflict message hence I had to choose the 'right' version.   So somehow the 'status' for the data on outlook looks like it's a bit messed up/ignored...

My PC: win7SP1 running outlook 2010 w/ iPhone6 128Gb running 9.0.2.

Just an update...I created a separate post with all of the steps for my work around, including screen shots, etc.

Work around for iOS 9 Notes and iTunes Sync notes with Outlook feature removal

Sorry Naresh Arya,

I don't see ANY  ''advanced & click on replace information on this iPhone and toggle contacts''

Can you be more precise ?!

I am one of those people that refuses to sync through the cloud. I was using a Windows phone until they stopped doing local sync and then went to an iPhone. Now they screw up notes syncing. I found a good solution for me. It involves buying a third party software, but now I don't even need iTunes to sync my phone. I sync my notes, calendar and contacts through my local network and it is transparent, it just happens when ever I get close enough to my router to connect. What I found is a program called AkrutoSync for $35. For me it was worth it and now I can even take iTunes off my computer.

This does not work for iOS9, WIndows-7 Untimate Edition, Outlook 2007, and the iPhone6 Plus.

As a follow-up to my last post, here is what I have found and confirmed:

1. Any changes to my Notes on the iPhone will sync and transfer over to Outlook, but not the other way.

2. To make the Outlook > iPhone sync work, I make changes to/update my Note, copy it to a new Note and delete the old one. Simply 'select all', copy and paste into a new note and then sync with iTunes. The 'new' Note is transferred over to the iPhone.

3. If I have the iPhone already sync-ed and connected to iTunes and I make new changes to an existing note, I will see an error when I try to sync. To overcome this I disconnect the iPhone from iTunes and then re-connect and sync.

These steps seem to work for me. I have an iPhone 6, I'm on IOS 9.02 and I did unknowingly select the upgrade to the new Notes a few weeks back.

I currently have iOS9, WIndows-7, Outlook 2007, and an iPhone5. I did not select the option to "Upgrade" the Notes App when I went to iOS9 and the synch of Notes continues to work as before (even though the option no longer shows in iTunes).

I am planning to move to an iPhone 6sPlus. So I was wondering whether or not you had selected the Upgrade Notes option when you went to iOs9. This would help me determine whether or not I will lose the synch capability when i move to the 6s Plus.

Thank you.

JCommerce - I have Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, iTunes 12.3.0.44, Office 2007, and an iPhone6Plus running iOS9.0.2 ... my Notes sync'd fine until I accepted upgrading Notes to the new format. From then on, notes started duplicating, the didn't sync at all, and finally sync started throwing errors saying that it couldn't sync Notes because the iPhone disconnected.

Basically, for the moment I do not recommend you upgrade Notes at all, and I would hold-off buying the new iPhone until Apple either communicates its intentions to the consumer community on this issue, or promptly issues a working patch for it.

I had to resort to installing AkrutoSync to get Notes back on my iPhone and sync'ing, but this is just a short-term solution in my view - it's too much faffing-around to get something working that should work out-of-the-box. My iPad was due for upgrade, but now I'm researching Windows based devices for that upgrade, and also Windows-based Phones or Android phones to replace my iPhone6Plus. I can't spend this much time trying to resolve a problem with a device, it just makes it unviable as a tool.