Duplicate notes? Notes not syncing?

You need to note that you don't have to do either of those things to repair this issue. Just quit out of Mail and Notes, then delete ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes. Read above for details.

Hey,

I've got a similar, but much simpler problem. Got a MBP that I updated from SL to ML. I don't have iCloud and I don't sync notes to any e-mail acc. Only thing I do is make notes on my iPhone and sync them with iTunes. They used to appear on iMail, but on ML notes is it's own app. Problem is that they won't sync anymore. Like someone mentioned before (this is a long thread, sry, can't remember who), there's no more notes option when syncing.

Am I just overlooking something?

Mountain Lion's Mail app will not show Notes, and Mountain Lion's iTunes won't sync Notes. You aren't missing anything; that option is gone.

There are a lot of good ways to sync notes (but not Notes) between Macs and iOS devices without relying on iCloud or IMAP email syncing. See one of my posts above for a few options.

Or set up iCloud on your Mac and on your iPhone, then allow Notes to sync that way. You'll be able to see the Notes in any web browser, too, because the Notes aren't "really" using iCloud to sync, but are still using IMAP. So if you go to the iCloud web site you'll see a Notes folder among your other Mail folders; you can create, edit, and read your Notes there in addition to the Mac Notes and iOS Notes apps. But you have to enable the syncing via iCloud first.

You can use another IMAP mail service instead, such as Google Mail, if you'd rather avoid iCloud.

I think John Hammer1 understands this issue. I would ad that although you can see your notes on iCloud, you can not add a note or edit your existing notes from iCloud.com, which seems weird and does make some other notes services more attractive.

Also, it seemed that a Lion setup on a MacBook caused me problems with the sync in that I was having two iCloud accounts. Deleting the ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes fixed the two computers running Mt. Lion, but not if I used the MB. Currently, doing a clean install on the MB. Looks like they should pull Notes out of Mail on Lion, as well. I know they are IMAP, either way, but something sure has screwed this all up!

I just wanted to add that this solution--and thanks so much for posting this--also fixed a similar problem for me. I didn't not have two iCloud accounts listed in Notes, but did have two (and sometimes three) "On My Mac" accounts listed. Even when I shut off iCloud, these two "On My Mac" accounts were listed and one would be selected as the main account.

I followed the directions above with Notes deselected from every device (Macbook Pro, iPad, and iPhone) in the iCloud settings. Once I restarted the computer, there was only one account listed. I then turned re-checked Notes in iCloud for all my devices and created a test note. Each device synced immediately, so it seems to be working (although getting my different devices to sync hadn't been a problem). So, if you're seeing duplicate "On My Mac" accounts inside Notes, this will get rid of the problem.

Oddly, this problem occured after a clean install of Mountain Lion on my iMac. Same clean install performed on my Macbook Pro did not produce the problem. Wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I installed Mountain Lion on the Macbook Pro first, and then did the iMac. Not sure, but I am really grateful to Talkingpengwin for posting this solution. Much appreciated!

Every couple of days one note (usually the most recently edited) is duplicated and gets put in "Recovered Items" on the local "On My Mac" store. Just now Notes made seven copies of one note and two of another. I have tried resetting iCloud and deleting ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes.

I've solved the problem (for me, at least, and many others of you might be in the same situation).

I have been using Notes for a long time and they showed up nicely in Mail. As soon as I upgraded to ML, they were duplicated and they stopped syncing. Sound familiar?

I fixed the dupe problem, but they still didn't sync.

Go to NOTES under Settings on your iPhone or iPad and make sure that the Default Account is "iCloud"

Mine was something different (another email account). Because of that, as soon as I upgraded to Mountain Lion, notes stopped syncing. Works fine now.

Won't help if you have the simpliest of set-ups, but if you have multiple email/accounts, it could be this issue.

What I was seeing was only duplicates on my iPhone. These appeared when I edited on a Mac. I saw none of the duplicated iCloud accounts others have mentioned. I saw no duplication on either of the two Macs that are syncing.

(Two system preferences can access what iCloud syncs: iCloud and Mail, Contacts and Calendars. Checking a box in one is the same as checking it in the other.)

Before doing any cache deletion, etc., I looked in Notes in iCloud, which are still shown within Mail. I saw the duplicate there. I deleted the duplicate in iCloud. The duplicate then disappeared from my iPhone.

I've now edited Notes a couple of times on my Mac with no duplicate appearing on my iPhone. I'll keep watching to see if that reallly fixed the issue.

Followup:

Removing the duplicate in iCloud worked, for several hours and a few edits on my iPhone and my iMac. Then I tried editing a note on a different Mac, which syncs with the same Apple ID. That caused a duplicate to appear. Poking into that further, I find a leftover .Mac account in System Preferences > Mail, Contacts and Calendars. And yes, it was set to sync Notes.

I'll delete that account and see if that fixes the problem.

Another followup:

It's the next day after my previous post, and I've edited Notes on both Macs and my iPhone several times. No duplicates have appeared.

So I did have the duplicate-account problem, just not on the Mac I was looking at. The lesson: if you're seeing duplication of notes on your iPhone, check all Macs that are syncing Notes.

Brilliant, thanks iacas this worked for me too.

A week later:

I've seen one duplicate this week, but we have one more Mac that could be syncing notes. It's in an office and we will be updating it to Mountain Lion pretty soon now.

I had a few notes show back up after I deleted them, but my biggest problem was that after accidentally dropping a small video file into Notes (1.2 Gb), if I opened Notes it wuickly consumed 5-6 Gb of my 8 Gigs.

Deleting ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes seems to have fixed it without doing anything else. Thanks!

Now if I could just teach the kitty cat to wake up without requiring a hard boot, I'd be golden!

Thanks, again ;P

Related question, and I may need to start a new thread:

I used Notes extensively on my phone for a couple of years, but didn't much in the last 6 months. Last month, right before the upgrade I decided to switch back to it for it's simplicity. And of about 100 notes, I had 5 random ones left. I They're not in Mail, but I've had some problems with corrupted files in emix files that sent my MBP into a kernel panic and it's possible I deleted them during one of the three times it happened- once on my old computer and twice on the new one... I've got archived and zipped bachups from MobileMe.

Can anyone tell me a precise way to search for those files?

'

Just because it's 2012, doesn't mean we should automatically expect syncing to work. After installing Mountain Lion syncing notes actually did work over iTunes, but of cause this was only just to show me that it's technically possible, because a week later it suddenly stopped working. No more syncing of notes between my Mac and iPod touch over iTunes. Didn't "touch" anything at all, just stopped working.

Now after 2 weeks of trying I still cannot for the life of me get my notes to sync again.

Just because it's 2012, doesn't mean we should automatically expect something as complicated as syncing, to actually work.

I'll be back in 2020 to see if they figured it out ... till then.