How can I get notes from iphone to notes on Mac

pberk wrote:

Do you remember where? Were they in you appleID email inbox (the one you use for the cloud) or somewhere else, or had you filed them into mailboxes?

Precisely like this:

http://imgur.com/N3c8K

I didn't have Google Notes or iCloud Notes enabled before. I set those up in Mountain Lion (both on my Mac and on my iPhone). I simply had my notes from my iPhone here. I didn't want to put them in the cloud. They would sync whenever I would do an iPhone sync via iTunes.

I don't know what to tell you. Prior to ML my notes showed up in my various email inboxes - post ML they show up under On My Mac in folders that have the same nams as the mailboxs.... I don't think I've ever seen the "Reminders" category in my Mail app.... (could that have been due to your working with Google Notes?)

pberk wrote:

I don't know what to tell you. Prior to ML my notes showed up in my various email inboxes - post ML they show up under On My Mac in folders that have the same nams as the mailboxs.... I don't think I've ever seen the "Reminders" category in my Mail app.... (could that have been due to your working with Google Notes?)

I appreciate you hanging in there with me, pberk. I truly think, in this case, it's a simple matter of there being a bug somewhere in the ecosystem. If I had to guess where it is, having all the information I have to date, is that when I enable iCloud on my iPhone, it should move my notes there into the cloud. It isn't. And that's where everything falls apart. If it did, then I'd be happy because iCloud syncing (and Google syncing) works perfect.

I'm a little upset at Apple about this, but clearly I'm in a tiny minority of users that have the problem. So I'll go through the effort of syncing against a Lion install on another Mac to have the opportunity to migrate my notes to the Cloud via Mail.app. I didn't do this before because I didn't want to put my notes in the cloud, but it looks like now that's the only viable choice. At least if I want to have my notes on both my iPhone and my Mac.

I truly think, in this case, it's a simple matter of there being a bug somewhere in the ecosystem. If I had to guess where it is, having all the information I have to date, is that when I enable iCloud on my iPhone, it should move my notes there into the cloud.

I don't think it's a bug (ergo, I don't think it's something that will get "fixed"), I think it's by design with the move to an integrated account-centric information structure across all of the ML apps designed to allow the segregation of personal information into segments that should be shared and segments that the user doesn't want shared as well as being able to segregate into various user accounts. [I think most of us, because of the manner in which it evolved tended to think of iCloud as just another way to sync information between our devices, but ML makes pretty clear that you have to think of iCloud as your personal server with accounts such as "On My Mac" or "On My iPhone" being files you expressly don't want to share on the server...sort of like at work where you might store all your work docs on theworkgroup server, but would want to keep your personal files just on your own local device. A clear distinction between syncing and backing up

Mobile devices, with their more limited capacity allow you to make these information choices, but don't allow you to manipulate them on the back end - that you have to do on your desktop or via iCloud.com (note that on your mobile devices you can't even sign into iCloud.com on Safri... you're limited to the capabilities of the mobile app).

I'm with you in that there definitely should have been some "Before you install information provided which should have alerted you to the fact that information which you had designated as local" on your mobile devices, and was previously sync'd to the REMINDERS category, needed to be moved to an On My Mac category to preserve its accessibility in the Notes app.

There are already a lot of third-party utilities that enable you to move data from your phone to the Mac (search on CNET... I think most were designed for playlists and music files, but there are some broader ones) If they won't currently handle notes, I would bet that before too long you will see some of them upgraded or new ones that which will enable you to move your On My iPhone data directly to your Mac.

I don't think Apple intentionally decided to disconnect notes not on the cloud already with no official way to get them into the cloud in Mountain Lion. Because it would not be consistent with how they approach the rest of their systems.

Intentionally is a funny word, but i do think it was by design - Lion gave you a choice, a preference in Mail that let you select whether or not to have your notes (STORED) in your Mail inbox where you could handle it like you handle mail... if you didn't select it, then you were opting not to have your notes permanently stored (archived) on the desktop. I think you have to distinguish between the choice to store your notes and the ability to merely see them in a Reminders category... [Reminders are generally short term information....]... It is consistent.. i.e., if oyu turn off iCloud in Calendars the information that was previously ther eis not save on your computer... it disappears...

Just out of curiosity, did you go to your iCloud.com account and see what's in the Notes folder in the Mail app there?

Intentionally is not a funny word at all. It has a meaning. In design, sometimes things happen unintentionally. By designing one aspect and focusing solely on it, there are other things that might happen unintentionally. I think that's what happened here. Do you really believe Apple's software designers said, "Well, about these notes not on the cloud, the user will sort it out in Mountain Lion on their own?" The simpler possibility is that they focused so much on getting that cloud bits right that they failed to test for this use case of notes not in the cloud. Or they tested it, it failed, but decided to launch that way anyway. Whether they will fix it or not, I don't know. But I think it is recognized as a flaw in the execution. Not an intentional design decision.

pberk wrote:

Just out of curiosity, did you go to your iCloud.com account and see what's in the Notes folder in the Mail app there?

Nice idea. Just tried it. There are only the new notes I've created to test iCloud syncing across devices. My existing notes aren't there either.

Diskaid allows one to transfer notes from one's iPhone to one's computer, however it doesn't work well with ML, so I am now looking into iExplorer. Unfortunately neither of these applications are free.

sildani wrote:

Intentionally is not a funny word at all. It has a meaning. In design, sometimes things happen unintentionally. By designing one aspect and focusing solely on it, there are other things that might happen unintentionally. I think that's what happened here.

That's what I meant - that the issues you're facing were unintentional, they are a by-product of the design (as opposed to designing with that intent). I do think it was by design, however, because your situation is only one side of the coin. I'm on the other side - I have notes (and other information) that I definitely do not want traveling through the cloud or saved on my desktop, or appearing in iCloud.com as it's private and highly confidential and vice versa. I have information on my Mac, now in the On My Mac category, that I don't want to carry in my phone and iPad as I am pretty much maxed out on both re storage and I have to make choices to what information I need with me and what I don't want taking up space on my mobile devices.

As I said above, however, I do think that Apple could have given better pre-install information, perhaps a choice for the initial Notes sync as to whether you wanted to caputre the notes that were in your non-Cloud category (On My iPhone) since they would no longer be viewable on your desktop....

Napoleaon, have you looked aat GoodSync or iPhone View?

Tak a look at the utility... it was updated AFTER ML was released and specifically mentions notes... and there's a 7 day free trial

http://download.cnet.com/PhoneView/3000-18511_4-165681.html?tag=dropDownForm;pro ductListing;pop

I had the same problem as silldani. I gave up looking for a way on Mountain Lion, because I realized I had an old Mac Mini that is still running Snow Leopard. iTunes 10 on Snow Leopard allowed me to sync from my iOS devices (iPad & iPhone) to the local Mac Mini. I then created a gmail account that I used to copy all the local Notes from the Mac Mini (which were just synced from iOS) to the gmail Notes folder. Finally I went to my MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion, and added the new gmail account. I was then able to copy all the Notes from gmail to iCloud. I then removed the gmail account. Now my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook all point to the same Notes data in iCloud.

Someone named Robin gave a suggestion on another related thread that worked for me. Here it is:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4140230?answerId=19068486022#19068486022

Thanks! It seems that PhoneView is a viable option for removing notes from ones iPhone, though it is not a longterm solution, since after seven days it requires one to pay more for a liscense than we paid for ML. A more immediate problem is the location where notes.app saves its data. I have't been able to find it. Does anyone have any ideas?