iOS4 restore does not keep app folders

BRILLIANT!!!

this worked like a charm, the first restore restored all the Apps!!! all 700 of them (which only like 15% were on the iphone) the folders were empty except for a few apps

and then the second iphone restored it to exactly how it was before i got the iphone replaced!!! been trying everything and this worked within 10 minutes!!

again,

BRILLIANT!!!!!!

This problem has happened to me several times on both my iPhone and iPad. Each is synced to a different computer. This time, after 4 hours of recreating folders, I followed your advice and did the right-click>Backup.

I now have two questions. 1: Can anyone tell me where the Backup is stored on my Mac? Having been a Windows user, I am comforted by seeing the actual file path/hierachy of all my files. Plus, I would like to make a copy to put in my Dropbox.

Question number 2: While I haven't had to use the Restore from Backup (yet), I know it is just a matter of time. How do I stop the syncing during the first restore? There doesn't seem to be any option for that. Where is the "little x" that @Kurt Tappe1 refers to?

Wouldn't it be nice if apple would allow you to drag apps to folders from the left-side list? (I know, that was three questions).

In finder press Command+Shift+G and paste this in:

In iTunes at the top where it shows the status bar it should reflect what is happening currently with your iPhone. In that status bar there should be a little "x" that you can click to cancel syncing.

Thank you Linda.h. It is somewhat annoying that Lion has hidden the Library folder (apparently to protect us from ourselves). I had to search for a way to permanently unhide it. I promise to accept the consequences of my own actions.

The little "x" was so obious that I completely overlooked it. That is why I am always willing to humble myself and defer to the experts.

Thanks again.

This is NOT fixed in iOS 5. I updated my iPhone from iOS 4 to iOS 5 the other day. It went on to say "Restoring Apps." When it was done, only a few apps were in folders. The others were all spread out, and some icons were missing. Apps wouldn't run until after I had synced a couple times.

Now, apparently, the same thing is happening to iPad as I type this. The apps are all appearing one by one as the "Restoring iPad apps. . " prompt continues on the computer screen. They are NOT in their folders.

I had a supervisor help me with this. Restoring does not save the folders or places you put your apps. You must redo everything! I spent hours setting up my iPad and iPhone all over. I have over 300 apps on my iPad and over 200 on my iPhone. I had to do this with mine and my boyfriend's as well.

Restore does everything but apps. I believe you have to reselect the Photos you want as well. Ridiculous huh? You would think that backing up and then restoring from that backup would work 100% but it doesn't. I promise you, there is no other way. Sorry

hmm

Lee are you talking about IOS 5 or 4 ??

4 the above fixes work perfectly Ive done them a few times as Ive been through a few phones also done it for some friends

Ive not changed to 5 yet going to wait till 5.1

mikey

Didn't work for me in IOS 4 or 5 and I had supervisor on the phone. He said it wouldn't work and it didn't. If you can get it to work, let me know how. I restored from a good backup and none of my apps were in place.

havent moved to 5 yet so cant help but i followed the steps prevoiusly mentioned in this thread on 4 and it has worked perfectly everytime you just have restore from back up and stop it after it has synced apps then restore from back up again basically it has to have all the apps already on the phone so that when it makes folders the apps are there as when it does it the first time it tries to make folders but there are no apps on the phone so it ignores them

good luck

So I've just updated to iOS5 and it seems that the same steps as before apply. I must say that iTunes really can't handle the restore/update very well with 5. What was happening on the iTunes progress bar was completely out of sync with the phone and iTunes kept saying it had failed even though it appears to have worked on the phone.

I'd suggest making a copy of your entire itunes sync/backups folder before messing around with this and trying to restore your folders as I couldnt get itunes to say my phone was restored at any point. It just kept failing with errors.

1) Anyway I backed up twice before I even considered updating the firmware to 5

2) Did the update

3) I let it run for ages, it failed, then it asked me if I wanted to continue I said yes and it started trying to restore videos/etc. whilst the phone was clearly busy doing something else and failed again.

4) Then I right clicked the phone in itunes and went to restore from a backup (and restored from one of my good earlier backups)

5) let it run again, failed again, let it go through its many failure messages then I let it sync. Seems to be fine now and all the folders are back. It's still doing it's thing now but ive checked a few apps and they have the old data, old photos are there, etc. all appears to be peachy.

Oh by the way - when the restores fail it gives you a button to delete your backups - DONT unless you want to lose everything. I backed up my backups (copied the whole itunes folder) to another drive just to be safe before I started.

Not the ideal upgrade path I would say.

If you are like me and find that syncing apps in iTunes is automatically disabled after prior restores, this approach won't restore them. I needed to modify your solution to get it to work:

1. restore from backup

2. select Sync Apps checkbox in iTunes and (de)select checkboxes for individual apps I (do not) want back on my iPhone (my husband and I share the same iTunes store account, so often there will be new apps checked that I don't want).

3. sync so that all your selected apps in iTunes are downloaded to your phone

4. restore from backup again so that your categorization is restored

5. if you are left with extra apps outside your categories that you forgot you deleted in the past (or in my case my husband downloaded) and you still don't want them, just delete them individually.

ME TOO! Apple where ARE you?????

Unbelievable.. No way is iOS 5 going on my phone. I'm also going to wait on upgrading my iTunes version. This backup/restore problem started with iOS 4.x. When I flushed my phone and tried to restore, my apps were there, but not the folders. After restoring again, everything was there. It appears that things have only gotten worse since then.

I've reported this to the Apple Engineers numerous times. Each time they come back and tell me it is a non issue and that I'm full of it. It is they who are full of it. Even the tear 2 techs I spoke with on the phone confirmed it to be a problem. This one tech even told me his phone did the same thing. I'm getting real sick of this untested firmwares and softwares, and the whole hide the facts and admit nothing pony show that Apple consistently plays with. The antenna problem comes to mind, etc.

I needed to move my apps and data from my iPhone 4 (32 GB, Verizon) to my new iPhone 4S (64 GB, Verizon); both running iOS 5.0. I had 585 apps that used up all 12 pages, so I had to create many folders (about 25 or so) to stuff them all in. So after reading this thread I was worried that I might not be able to retain the carefully organized folder/app layout after the tranfer. I called Apple Support and was directed to this thread as an example of what worked, but I can see that it certainly didn't work for everybody.

Having no choice, I plunged ahead. First, I made a manual backup of the 4. Then I performed a Restore from that backup to the 4S. I stopped the subsequent sync operation as instructed here. While I was stopped, I looked at what had been transferred to the 4S and saw about half of my folders and only about 30 or 40 apps had made it across.

I performed a second Restore to the 4S from the same Backup source. I was hopeful that it would work for me, but when I checked, it looked the same as it had after the first restore. Hmm. I tried a third Restore just in case, but that one was the same. :-(

I moved along to the next step, syncing, and let it complete. I was very happy to see that ALL of my folders *and* apps were now in place! :-) So It, indeed, CAN be done with the current equipment and iOS. (Actually, there is a slightly newer iOS, 5.0.1, but I hadn't installed it due to grousing by quite a few people. I'll see if Apple responds with a 5.0.2 soon and install that.)

Before you attempt this sort of tranfer, and especially if you have lots of apps/folders, I'd stongly recommend shutting the phones off and restarting them. This restores a bit (and somethimes quite a lot) of RAM that I'm sure helps to make them run better while under duress.

Just thought I'd add my experience to the thread.