Syncing Voice Memos?

iTunes should automatically sync voice memos to your iTunes library when you connect iPhone to your computer. This lets you listen to voice memos on your computer and provides a backup if you delete them from iPhone.

Voice memos are synced to the Voice Memos playlist. iTunes creates the playlist if it doesn’t exist. When you sync voice memos to iTunes, they remain in the Voice Memos application until you delete them. If you delete a voice memo on iPhone, it isn’t deleted from the Voice Memos playlist in iTunes. However, if you delete a voice memo from iTunes, it is deleted from iPhone the next time you sync with iTunes.

My wife has a similar problem but in reverse. A tech person at the Apple Store recently did a full OS reinstall on my wife's iPhone, and then supposedly synced everything back to the iPhone from her MacBook laptop. Unfortunately, today she discovered that none of her 162 voice memos (which are recordings of her student's music recitals) synced back to her phone. In fact, the entire list that she usuall sees by simply clicking on her Voice Memo icon is missing from the phone! The good news is that they still exist in iTunes on her laptop. She's has tried everything to manually drag the each voice memo to her iPhone from within iTunes, but instead of appearing again inside her Voice Memo app, they wound up in her Music folder. Ae there any tricks to getting these voice memos copied back to her iPhone where they belong?

Well, once they are in iTunes & no longer on your phone, the only way to get them back to your phone is to sync them back, and no they won't go back to the Voice Memos app. Best to just create a playlist, add them all to that, then sync to your phone.

Thanks for your quick reply wjosten. Actually, you can sync your voice memos from iTunes back into the actual Voice Memo app, for I just figured out a way to do so while I was waiting for a response. This is what I did...

1. Click on your iPhone inside of iTunes, select the Music tab and uncheck "Include voice memos"
2. Then select the Summary tab and check "manually manage music and videos"
3. Then scroll down to the bottom of the iTunes playlist in the left column and drag the voice memo folder onto your iPhone listing above it. iTunes should immediately begin syncing (sending) all of your voice memos directly into your iPhone's Voice Memo app! If it doesn't start immediately, then click Sync.
4. Don't forget to uncheck "manually manage music and videos" in the Summary tab after you are finished. Don't recheck "include voice memos" under the Music tab, or the voice memos will disappear from your iPhone Voice Memo app listing again.

you saved me! thank you

Actaully, I only solved half of the problem. I can access the voice memos on my computer but I cannot copy them to my computer. How do I do that?

It should be noted here that IF under the Music tab on your iPhone device homepage (in iTunes), you have NOT selected to sync the entire music library and instead have selected to only sync selected playlists, etc., YOU MUST CHECK THE BOX NEXT TO the Voice Memos playlist in order for the memos to sync properly.

Hello, please help me here too, i recently upgraed my 3gs to ios6 , every thing working well on phone just that i lost all voice memos off my phone but are in my itunes on my pc. i have tried several times to get them back on the iphone but just not working. what i noticed though is , i dont want all music on my itunes on my phone so what do i check and how do i get my voice memos back?? thank you

Thank you so much! you solved my problem!

Could you please clrify what you mean by "drag the voice memo folder onto your iPhone listing above it"? I'm using iTunes 11.0.2

I see the Voice Memos in iTunes, but am having trouble syncing onto the iPhone.

Thank you.

How do I locate my voice memo from itune which I've deleted the voice memeo from iphone?

It prompts me the following message;

"The voice memo “11/23/11 7:34 AM” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"

And how do I locate them?

Thank you.

@Joyjiaxuan

THAT is exactly my issue too. I have synced all my voice memos to I-tunes and now cannot play them AND they are gone from my phone. Did you get anywhere with this?

Can anyone help me??? I've transferred my voice memos to my iTunes on my computer but cannot transfer them back to my phone in a playlist. The playlist just shows up blank on my iPhone. Help!!

Thank you so much for this simple solution. Now the memos I delete off my phone don't keep turning up again every time I sync - leaving me all the space I need to free up for updates :-(