Can’t share/collaborate notes? One solution below.

In their wisdom, Apple locked up my iPhone’s access to my iCloud account (for which I pay surcharges so it will hopefully keep my phone backed up—does it work? I don’t know) pending my OK on an updated 50-ish page user agreement. I don’t know for how long iCloud access was denied to my iPhone. For all I know, it’s been locked out ever since I bought the phone 2-3 years ago, and I was paying for a bunch of memory Apple wasn’t giving me access to.

Today, I wanted to try to try out this “productivity” app called Notes and share access to the notes on my iPhone with my PC by “collaborating” with myself by sending a link to my email.

The Notes app wouldn’t let me share/“collaborate”, blocking the door, as it were, with some vague message that co-collaborators needed to be “approved”. I was unhappy because I approve of myself, and so does Apple, because they gladly take my money.

Reading somebody else’s comment on this portal that noted that iCloud has to be functioning in order to enable collaboration in Notes, I went into settings on the iPhone and searched for “iCloud”, and discovered a message of a pending approval request. I accepted the new terms and now collaboration seems to work (I was able to send FROM Notes, but I have not yet checked whether the link in the email works on the other end).

This is another one of those instances that discourage further use of an app because the time wasted has already wiped out any expected benefits from using said app. I’ll just go back to typing out my notes in an email and sending them to myself, and will use the MS Teams app or one of my MS Exchange folders on the iPhone next time I really need to collaborate.