Q: voice memos not showing up in itunes

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.

Hay Skakagrall,

When you say "scroll down" All I can see are all the different apps no "FILE SHARING"

is that something I need to download in order to see the files I recorded?????

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.)

I am so OVER this voice memo b@#$s@#T saga! Can one thing actually work on this stupid phone. I'm so sick of the constant intermitent & ever changing issues/problems that I'm ready to join everyone else & switch to android. so over it!! It just isn't worth the heartache anymore.  none of these solutions have made any difference & whats even more hilarious is that not only do my voice memo's not appear in itunes anywhere...but even the file that stores them on my drive is incomplete. ...how is this even possible when i can see them on my phone? 

How is it possible that each problem encountered on these stupid phones has 10 different errors or ways that it behaves for the same problem? Not even the errors are consistent.  How does the user even begin to troubleshoot something like that? one day it works, the next day it half works, the next day it wipes everything, then it sync's one file, then it half works again, then it deletes itself altogether. ***?

Lift your game Apple.....this isn't good enough!!!!  We're all sick of your half-@ssed products!

Dear all,

I don't understand why Apple do not just solve such problems with its Voice Recorder.

Apple need to understand that Voice Memo is an app that is important for some of us.

The idea to mix Music and Audio Memos is awkward.

Indeed, the difficulties to sync seem errors: we need to sync, re-synce, connect, disconnect, reorganized Library, mix voice memos with musics, It's strange and difficult.

The solution I'm trying now is third-party app: Adui Memos, FourTrack, and Super Note, in such order.

Renato Fabiano

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.  

Oh what, you can blank my bad words out but you can't look at what I wrote, **** you apple!

Apple doesn't read these, but they obviously should troll them and be ashamed.

I'm sure they can't have missed this 2 years and counting.  Where's the tech press hounding them with outrage over this half-baked app?!  Easy and "just works" MY A$$!  Shame on them for letting this PoS get by without even any basic QA or testing all these years.  Maybe if Google made a !@#%^&* voice recorder app they'd give a darn?!?!

Anyway, commiseration aside, give them heck directly:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

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.

Thanks for the tip NathaninNC. This was exactly the tip I needed. I'd recorded 10 conference sessions but only 4 came across when I synced my iPod Touch. Using your technique found all me recordings.

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.