Notes wont sync between Iphone and Mac on Mountain Lion

I was having the same problem. Fortunately, I didn't have any old notes to worry about saving. I have a Macbook that I just upgraded to Mountain Lion, and I have an iPad and iPhone. The Notes synced to my iPad but not my iPhone. Frustrating - it's one of the main reasons I upgraded!

So, I went on my Macbook and just added a few dummy notes.

Then I went on my iPhone and turned off Notes in System Preferences > iCloud. I got out of System Preferences so it would save. Then I went back in (still on my iPhone) and turned Notes syncing back on. Whala! My dummy notes from my Macbook on my iPhone!

Mission accomplished.... I wish there was a way, though, for Apple to (1) either work out these bugs, or (2) create a quick help feature or site for common issues with new features everytime they roll out an upgrade. It seems this is a common problem that they had to of seen in beta testing.

I wanted to keep syncing but didn't want to set up an @me.com.email. I had been syncing with iTunes to get my notes into my iPhone. Here is my solution

On my Mac I selected an email account that uses IMAP (not POP) and enabled notes. Go into your iPhone and do the same thing. For both, you go into Settings, the account you've chosen and select Notes.

This creates a second Notes account in the Notes application on both the Mac and the iPhone.

Select All of your notes and then drag them to the other account. Do this on the Mac as you can select the whole lot at once.

It will sync these notes with your email account, and the iphone will synce as well.

Edits are instant (depending upon your network connection). Basically replicates what the iCloud does, without using iCloud.

Well, Apple is on the case which is awesome. Based on my posts in this forum, I got a call from Apple Care this weekend. They had me run some diagnostics and collect some info from my setup for their Engineering folks to look at. So with any luck the problem with sort itself in the next point release for Mountain Lion.

fullme wrote:

Same here. I started this thread and an Apple Engineer contacted me also this weeked and we ran through some things and they pulled logs and are investigating.

Awesome!!

I guess you have to be careful when going directly from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion.

I was able to solve this problem by goig back to my Snow Leopard backup and starting over again. I upgraded to Lion before upgrading to Mountain Lion. I also copied all of my "On My Mac" notes to .mac before upgrading to Mountain Lion. I was able to get all of my "On My Mac" notes into Mountain Lion.

Now, I have to deal with the fact that I can't search for text in a particular note. You can search of text and it lists messages with the text, but you can't do a find for where the text is in a note. Seems like a pretty big oversight.

NO one contacted me.

ANd I see iPhone and this forum are still buggy together.

NOtice the double caps.

Great discussion folks, very helpful. I only had 3-4 previous notes to contend with but they are very important (invoicing data for clients).

From the desktop Notes, I emailed them to myself and then copy/pasted into my iPhone Notes. They instantly showed up as new notes on the desktop. Delete original notes and done.

I believe Apple is getting closer to ironing out the bugs in iCloud. Carrying over registrations for MobileMe and integrating them with iCloud is a struggle but Mountain Lion has solved at least some of these.

Thanks for your feedback.

To be clear, the problem that myself and many others are seeing is completely unrelated to iCloud; it is specifically that the new Notes app does not display or sync notes stored in IMAP email, as the Mail app did previously on Snow Leopard. As far as I know, there is no solution to this yet (other than migrating one's notes to iCloud, which is not a solution, just a way to work around broken IMAP notes sync)

Has Apple mentioned if Notes was being permanently ported to iCloud instead of IMAP? Sounds like this is their intention and perhaps it wasn't specified amidst all of the features, large and small, that ML brought with it.

JKN1 wrote:

Has Apple mentioned if Notes was being permanently ported to iCloud instead of IMAP? Sounds like this is their intention and perhaps it wasn't specified amidst all of the features, large and small, that ML brought with it.

Even iCloud notes use IMAP behind the scenes. This is why an @me.com address is required. Also, Notes work with a Google account over IMAP. So based on these two facts, I think IMAP will continue to be supported. It's just a matter of the said IMAP account being on set ports and directory structure.

Viper320 wrote:

To be clear, the problem that myself and many others are seeing is completely unrelated to iCloud; it is specifically that the new Notes app does not display or sync notes stored in IMAP email, as the Mail app did previously on Snow Leopard.

And i't not only this, but also local Notes which are not stored on any server (iCloud or IMAP) are no longer synced between the iOS devices and the Mac.

Thanks for your suggestions - they worked for me too. I agree that it is unerving to delete the iCloud account and see all my calendar entriesand contacts disappear! But they all downloaded successfully when I set up the iCloud account again.

I have also managed to sync the previous notes from my iphone to my MacAir. I went through System Preferences >Mail contacts calendars>Btinternet (my mail provider) I checked the Notes box and was asked if I wanted to merge the messages from icloud. All the previous messages then appeared in Notes on my MacAir.

I have the exact same problem. Notes worked fine within my email accounts on Lion. Email accounts are visible in ML, not notes do not sync (up or down). Notes between my web mail access and iPhone and iPad still work fine. I am really upset.

Notes in Mountain Lion works perfectly. (I'm using a Cyrus IMAP server.) To set it up properly, go into the Notes app menu, select Accounts. That shows all your mail accounts, as is appropriate for IMAP protocol "syncing". There, select the IMAP-capable mail account that you've been using in the past, and in the Use With area on the right, click in the checkbox for Notes. You should designate the same mail account on all devices.

Do not go in through System Preferences > iCloud, unless you actually have a Me.com mail account.

Mail servers which do not hew to modern IMAP standards may be problematic.

Some day, Notes may use iCloud protocols for true cloud storage, but not yet.