Sync "on my iPad" notes to iCloud?

Question

Level 1

31 points

Sync "on my iPad" notes to iCloud?

I've got my iCloud notes syncing among my iPhone, iPad and Mac just fine. However, from before iCloud I have notes that are "On My iPhone" and "On My iPad" only and I want to sync them with iCloud so I can access them on my Mac.

The following article seems useful:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4191?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

The article states the following:

In Notes on your iOS device or Mac, verify that your notes are not stored in a local folder. Example: On My iPhone or On My Mac. If you have notes in these folders, you will need to copy or transfer them to iCloud or IMAP to sync with your other devices.

However, it does not provide any method for copying or transfering the notes. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Eric

Posted on Sep 8, 2012 1:56 AM

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Answer 1

StephenM

Level 2

148 points

Feb 12, 2017 7:33 AM in response to thedatadude

I know this question is long sense stall, but here's and update in case someone comes by here looking for an answer.

howtogeek has very complete directions on how to move notes from on my iPhone/iPad so they will sync with iCloud.

Sorry it's only about 5 years late for you.

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Answer 2

Sep 8, 2012 9:35 AM in response to thedatadude

If you have a Mac you have synced the notes with can simply drag and drop them into the iCloud account. Other wise you will have to copy and paste the text from the old note to a new note in the iCloud account. It may be easier to send the old notes to your iCloud email account them copy/paste them to the Notes app using www.icloud.com on a computer.

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Answer 3

thedatadude Author

Level 1

31 points

Sep 9, 2012 11:07 AM in response to Stephen Spark

First of all, that you Stephen for your response. What I was looking for was a solution that didn't require me to copy/paste all of the "orphaned" notes (I had over 70) on my iPad/iPhone in order to get them copied to iCloud and thus available on my Mac. Here's a synopsis of what I did to solve this issue:

-- I purchased an app called DiskAid (http://www.digidna.net/products/diskaid) which allowed me to access the notes stored directly on both my iPad and iPhone and download them to my Mac as text files. However, I would still have to copy/paste to get these copied up to iCloud, so this wasn't a great solution.

-- It turns out that part of the problem was that the main Mac I was syncing both devices to was recently upgraded to Mountain Lion. In ML when you sync an iDevice via iTunes, the option to Sync Notes (check box under "Other" in the Info tab) is no longer available (ML has notes as a separate app, so they also dissappear from Apple Mail). However, my laptop was still running Lion, and this was the machine that I had been backing my devices up to until a couple of months ago, so I...

-------- Did a final backup to both devices on my iMac running ML by plugging into iTunes.

-------- Plugged each device into my laptop (still running Lion) and did a sync via iTunes after selecting the option to Sync Notes.

-------- Now when I looked at my Notes in Apple Mail under On My Mac, the iPad- and iPhone-only notes now appeared.

-------- This allowed my to simply drag and drop them to my iCloud account under Notes -- problem solved.

-------- Finally, I went back and synced my devices again with my iMac running ML by plugging into iTunes. This restored anything lost by the sync with my laptop running Lion.

I know the above won't work for everybody -- it is sort of unique to my situation.

Among the lessons to learn here is this:

If you have a Mac you are using to sync your iDevices to, before upgrading it to Mountain Lion, make sure that any Notes sitting in "On My iPhone" and "On My iPad" have been moved to iCloud or they can become orphaned.

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