Notes App: Duplicate entries as I type + sync problems

I know it seems like you're talking to yourself here Douglas, but I'm having a similar problem. Not me, actually, but one of my cohorts who relies on me to know what to do!

He just upgraded his home MBP to Lion, and was entering some notes to himself, and then received something like 250 copies of the note as individual items in his email inbox on his iPhone (iOS 5.1.x) and his iMac (10.5.8) at the office. This is someone who believes in read-process-delete approach to email, so he's flipping out about it. I really have no idea where to start with it. The MBP is not with him of course, and that I'm guessing is where I need to start? Any suggestions?

I should add that he doesn't have an iCloud email accout, we use gmail's hosting solution for business with our own domain name. He does have an iTunes account, obviously. Not really sure where this syncing-gone-wild is coming from.

Are we the only ones in the world having this problem? Are we doing something wrong? Using iCloud wrong, perhaps?

I don't have the issue with iCloud duplicating every letter I type into the notes app but I do have a problem with the notes app duplicatating notes I am working on.

I am using Lion (latest version) and iPhone 4 iOS 5.1.1. I was using my google account with Notes prior to upgrading to Lion and iCloud but I have since turned that off and have moved all of my notes to my iCloud account under my apple ID.

Please help this is really annoying and seems like an obvious bug Apple should have fixed.

I was on the phone with Apple tech support and reached someone who was clearly not one of their shining stars... That being said, he indicated that he had not seen evidence of this problem before, and really had no solution. He was pointing me to the phone, saying that I should reset the network settings on ~that~ device, which I did, to no avail. I really don't know where to go with it from here.

Real Williams, you are not alone in this. I have the same problem (start a new note in Notes, get a duplicate note shortly after typing some characters, continuing until I stop typing, then it adds one more and pauses until I type again).

I have tried everything I could think of -- removed all login items from my account, turned off all third-party preference panes (Default Folder, Hazel, etc.), turned Notes off in iCloud, deleted all Notes from every computer and started over, turned off network connections. Nothing has worked so far. I reinstituted everything, so I could get on with things.

It stands unusable to me. PIty. I have two Macs running Mountain Lion, and it would be nice to have something that could let me synchronize task lists and so forth.

I've got this bug too, on 10.8.2

I don't use iCloud at all, I don't sync or anything. I just start typing and end up with 60+ duplicate entries. It's automatically saving a copy periodically. Very odd behavior for an application. Any solution?

I've been having a notes sync issue for a while now. On my iPhone and iPad I get duplicate (old) copies of some notes, while on my Macbook I only have one (true/uptodate) copy of each note.

Seems to be something with iCloud as I recently reset my iPhone and set it up from scratch, and the duplicate notes are still there.

I wonder does someone fropm Apple not read these support discussions?

My satisfation with Apple has been in steady decline for a few years now, but that decline is seriously starting to accelerate. Whereas Apple was once about putting out products that "just work", they are now pumping out products riddled with bugs that cost users a lot of time and frustration... Apple is now as bad as Microsoft ever was it this game

Same issue here ~ just downloaded Lion from APPLE on my iMac~ if anyone has figured this out I'd love an update ~ Come on APPLE GENIUS BAR people out there reading this thread on your day off??? PLEASE

It STOPPED! I am not sure of what I did that caused it to stop, because in frustration I simply stopped trying to use Notes. Between when I stopped and when I tried using it again (right after bissabissa's note came into my email), the continuous generation of new Notes stoped. Although I am ready to speculate, I am unwilling to try to blunder through a backtracking process and accidentally start it happening again.

My current setup. In System Preferences -> Mail, Contacts & Calendars I have four entries: iCloud (checked: Mail, Contacts, Calendars&Reminders, Notes, Documents & Data), my email provider POP account (checked: Notes, but not Mail because I want email only on my main computer), a Facebook entry which has Contacts checked, and a Comcast Mail thing that has "Enable This Account" UN-checked.

Before. I used to have a separate entry in that panel from my email provider that was an IMAP entry, but was otherwise identical to the POP entry. At the same time, I also had "Enable This Account" CHECKED in the Comcast entry. At that time, the PROBLEM was active.

I think the PROBLEM stopped when I deleted the extra IMAP account and UN-checked the Comcast "Enable This Account" box. I cannot be sure, because I did a lot of other things to my iCloud/iPads (2)/Macs (3) setup when I bought the 2nd iPad, trying to get iCloud sync to work in a way that I could live with.

The other computers have the email accounts disabled, and the iPads have mail and Contacts "OFF" under the iCloud panel in Settings, and under "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" the iCloud account is my email address, and I have my email address listed separately. So, my current setup has all email funneled through my main email account onto my mail computer.

I am guessing, but I think it has something to do with either 1) having two active email accounts, or 2) having an email account that is accessed both by POP and IMAP.

The funny thing is, I never use IMAP, and I don't know how that extra entry got there -- so I deleted it.

So, my position is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." However, if it is still broken for someone else who has the same kind of setup in "Mail, Contacts & Calendars" that I used to, maybe you could experiment with this, see what happens, and report back to everybody. Good luck!

glad we both figured this out! The APPLE tech people could not have been NICER, an 1.5 hrs later problem resoloved ( they hadnt seen this issue either) Problem just started yesterday after I downloaded Mountain lion. Problem resolved by removing YAHOO notes on the devices ( imac, ipad, iphone) . Sorry YAHOO but you created problems for me!

settings>mail,contacts,calenars>yahoo>notes OFF

**iCloud Notes on 🙂

I was able to solve this problem for myself by deleting "folders" associated with my email accounts, listed under "On My Mac" in the left most column of Notes. Previously, Apple Mail included the notes functionality, and my notes created in Mail appeared in Notes after the upgrade. In Notes, I selected the folders associtated with the email accounts and hit the delete key. Some of these had no notes at all, and some did, though my notes didn't go away, interestingly. (Or maybe I moved them, don't recall.)

Anyway, this problem doesn't seem to be specific to iCloud or Yahoo, but to the way Notes organizes data.

Apple support article:

iCloud Notes – Fix Duplicates

Genius, worked straight up, am so pleased as it was driving me nuts. Thanks so much for taking the time to solve this issue for us and writing it herre

It's about 5 months since the last post here but I am having a similar issue. I just spent some time at the genius bar and they didn't know what to tell me. I am using OS X 10.8.5 and I just upgraded my iPhone and iPad to IOS7. I also just went iCloud for everything when I had been on an exchange server before. The first thing they checked was to make sure that I only had NOTES checked for iCloud which was the case (I have a number of other accounts though). My iPhone and iPad don't show the duplicates, it's only my Macbook. After reading this stream I checked the local version - "On My Mac" and under that is "All On My Mac" and found that all the duplicates were there - and no other notes. Something weird is going on locally. My current theory, b/c I can't come up with anything else, is that I THINK it might be when I have weak WiFi. It seems like the notes get created locally maybe if the WiFi zones out for a moment? I was recently in a hotel and it was bad service and that's when I got the most duplicates (I only get about 5-10, never a ton) and it doesn't happen all the time. If anyone new has some thoughts to share, please do. I'm set up to get alerts on this stream. Thanks.