voice memos not showing up in itunes

I have had no such luck, checking and unchecking boxes, many many times, in different orders. I had an iphone 3GS and I never had a problem with voice memos. When I plugged in my phone to my PC they downloaded just as easily as a song or photo. I have a new iphone 4s and I can't get my voice memos to my itunes. SO FRUSTRATING!!

As I have free Applecare, I spent 15 minutes with a couple guys on the phone (before I found this forum) and they knew nothing of the problem that seems to be so common with other users. They only suggested renaming the memo (didn't work), and unchecking, then checking the boxes (didn't work)

I was having the same issue, which turned out to be someone related to iTunes Match. I turned off iTunes Match on my phone, then connected to my MBP via USB. This now gave me the option to sync Voice Memos, and it just happened. When I turned iTunes Match on again, the ability to sync Voice Memos went away.

if you're having this problem and you're using iTunes Match, this might be a fairly easy kludge to get your recordings into iTunes. Definitely a rough edge in the Apple software.

VikiJane,

If you've tried the tips here and are still not getting your voice notes to import, and you need them now, I highly recommend you download iExplorer -- which is fast and free -- and extract them that way.

The other ways CAN work -- though none is fool-proof, we have all found -- but iExplorer is good to have on hand anyway as a last resort. I've used it many times and it's great to be able to fall back on it. (And I am in no way affiliated with the company that makes it -- besides, it's free.)

This worked for me too.

My voice memo transfer from iphone to itunes was working fine until I did an upgrade to my iphone, and it must have put the settings to a default where the voice memos had no category. You Select the memo in your "voice memos" list on your phone, tap the blue arrow, then tap the grey arrow, and select a category from the list, i.e. podcast, interview, lecture etc, and once it has a category, itunes can see it.

Here is a solution - this is written for a Windows 7 machine - but other OSs should have an equivalent solution.

1) Enable backup of your iPhone and back it up within iTunes

2) Locate the backup directory - on Windows 7 it is: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\[some series of random characters]

3) Sort the files by size - the larger of these files are likely to be the M4A files from the voice memos

4) Copy the larger files to another location and rename each of them with the extension M4A

5) Play these within iTunes or another media player - match up the ones that play to the dates of the files on your iPhone. Rename the files as you would like.

Not happy with this solution - but it worked!

I found a way to force iTunes to sync my voice memos!

1) I set checked the "manually manage music and videos" option in the summery of my iphone

2) I selected all tge voice memos in the voice memo playlict in the device

3) I right clicked and selected "get info"

4) in Options I switched the media kind to audiobook

5) I then synced the phone, although I don't know if this is nessacary

6) I selected all the memos, this time from the books menu in the drop down list under the iphone in the device sidebar, I again did get info and changed it back, under options, to voice memo

7) I set the iphone to sync music and made sure that "Include voice memos" was checked

It worked perfectly, there is one cach, it seems to have doubled all my memos when I look at the list on my iphone in itunes. It isn't really doubled on my iphone and I just deleted the multiple listings.

I am having the same problem. Out of 184 recordings that I've made over the last 2 months about 130 of them do not even play on Iphone anymore. In the list panel there are written durations, however at the bottom it shows zero seconds and refuses to play. I've managed with great difficulty to transfer about 50 recordings to itunes all of them over different time periods some 2 months old some new so obviously time has no impact or makes no difference here. All of the recordings have to still be in the phone however I just can't get to them. I've tried many of the advices here like changing the name, making adjustments in itunes, using other programs like iexplorer, 3herosoft iphone to computer transfer and some others. I use windows xp however I don't think that should make a difference but I still can't get to my files which are very very very important to me. I can't understand how a program whose only purpose is to record data doesn't do exactly that. I am beyond ****** and have come here because I see this has been going on for two years to see if anyone (maybe Apple... heloooo) has found any solution to this because I am not about to lose those recordings even if I have to take the **** thing apart to get to that information. Please help.

I wrote to them and it's my opinion everyone in this thread should write to them too. Thanks for the link, I've been trying to find that =)

Losing data is so fu**ing 90's, I can't believe there wasn't even a warning or that that program is even in use when it does stuff like that. I downloaded it 3 months ago. Had I known about the problems which could of been deduced from here I wouldn't of used it and lost all my data. I seriously do not undestand this, they say it's a revolutionary phone yet it's worse then a floppy disk.

Do it clean and it'll work for everyone. I solved it by downloading a trial version of iExplorer for mac, (works for windows too, but any of the many applications that will let you explore your iPhone's file structure will work):

- Find the "Recordings" folder on your iPhone

- Copy it to your desktop

- Delete the entire "Recordings" folder from your phone

- Copy the m4a files from your Desktop's "Recordings" folder into iTunes and rename them to names you'll recognize 😉 . If there's any big mov files in there, ignore them.

- I did this and my iPhone rebuilt the "Recordings" folder and db files once I made a new recording on the phone. If you want your old recordings back on your iPhone, drag them into your "Voice memos" playlist in iTunes and sync.

Done!

Appologies if this method has already been listed, but it was faster to type it out than read 10 pages of comments 😉

my iPhone rebuilt the "Recordings" folder and db files

Are you saying that after deleting the recordings folder on the iphone by a computer program (iexplorer for example) and after you make a new recording on the iphone that all the old recordings magically appear in the iphone again? I don't understand.

No - next sentence after that ;)

Once deleted, your iPhone will rebuild the "Recordings" folder on the phone, nice and clean with nothing in it to cause the same hang up. Again, to put the old memos back on your phone, (remember they're now in iTunes), add them to your "Voice Memos" playlist in iTunes and sync it.

Sorry dude, that doesn't help whatsoever. You've just listed the way to do it that's in the iphone manual. This is not what happened to most of the people here. They including me tried that. I saved about 50 recordings out of 184 of them that way. Other recordings weren't even in the recordings folder on iphone. There was about a 200kb .mov file which didn't do jack s*it. I'm still ******, and apple is still not responding.

Hey merkel - you need someone to get mad at - cool - since apple's not responding then pick me for trying to help you ;)

It's obviously a bug. Forget a out the mov file, (that's causing your problem - its creation is the bug that messes everything up in the first place), find your other recordings with iexplorer or whatever else you have that will get you into the file structure of your iPhone, and recover them to your computer. Lots of posts here about the different locations and/or methods people have used to find them. Then, "fix" your recording folder on your iphone by deleting it.

It ***** that you've got to go in to your iPhone and muck around in there, but it is what it is. good luck.

Sorry man, but I did all of that, went and saw and there were only 50 of the listed 184 recordings in those folders and actually anywhere else in the iphone. So they must be in the system somewhere or were most likely lost during the process of conversion some minutes after they were made which would mean they are lost forever. I would rather not believe the second option but since apple is again not responding I have no clue what to do. Two freakin' years and they can't even issue a statement about it. F**k apple, this really is inexcusable.

I agree that it should work and that it's apple's fault, no doubt. Merkel, can you play all your memos from your phone? What about doing a manual backup from iTunes, and then using a program like file juicer to search that backup for audio files? M4A, WAV and MOV? Of you backup regularly with iTunes, (as opposed to or in addition to iCloud), you could search previous backups for your memos.