Notes (El Capitan) not syncing to iCloud on one Mac

Back up your notes before turning off syncing!

Turning syncing on the iMac off and back on again fixed the problem, BUT in the process I lost half a dozen notes from the iMac. I gather that when the machine successfully synced, the iCloud data overrode the local data instead of reconciling. So I pulled the group.com.apple.notes folder from Library > Group Containers and restored this morning's version of it from Time Machine. Got my notes back. Syncing broke again. (Notes from iOS devices sync to iMac w/El Cap but not the other way round.)

Moved the iMac notes out of the iCloud folder and into the local folder. Turned syncing off and on again, again. Then copied the notes from the local folder to the iCloud folder.

Took longer for IMac notes to appear on iPad than the other way around, but all is working now. Thanks, autnagrag!

Reply to Craigandkerry

Thank you Craigandkerry for demystifying this. I have been struggling with this for months. It is Apple's poor design in this instance.

Just so others with multiple/family accounts don't waste their time as I did.....:

• toggling the Notes off and on your iOS or your OS/Mac won't fix it
• removing all the accounts from your iOS and OS/Mac and then adding them back won't fix it
• rebooting and hard reboots won't fix it
• trying to move the notes to "on my mac" or "on my iPhone" accounts while you do the prior steps, won't fix it
• trying to manipulate the notes by logging into iCloud.com won't fix it
• installing all the upgrades (which I have done since September 2015) won't fix it
• talking to people at the Genius bar who speculate that it is caused by having an Apple ID that is not @icloud.com, and forcing you change you Apple ID, won't fix it.

It is exactly as your post states. Thank you.

My wife and I have the same problem but can't both use the same primary account. Is there any other solution?

As far as I can tell this is still broken. Hoping for a fix.

This *****, I have the same issue, on my new macbook pro I only get like half of my notes and the rest are missing. I was thinking about paying icloud premium for convenience, but after this I won't. Also the support seems to be terrible, I found this issue all over the internet and couldn't find one solution.

Big problem for many people which Apple is basically ignoring. Screw them. I'm so freaking over Apple at this point and their buggy iCloud implementation. How is it that Dropbox has been making this work successfully on multiple platforms for so long?

Thank you, Craig&Kenny for your explanation. It seems cumbersome, I agree. I don't even have it that complicated - But I have multiple notes "sync" points - for different accounts. Two to be sure. Across an iMac, iPhone and iPad.

I have just adjusted my primary accounts. The unsung issue I had had is now resolved - for THAT account. I'll see if I've created a new issue.

I agree, Apple needs to provide clarity for things like this.

God **** it. Largest group of imbeciles of any computer company I've ever heard of. But hey, they've got profits, so **** the rest of us!

Except for some of us, editing on our iPhone doesn't take those changes up to iCloud. So EVERYTHING receives from iCloud, but NOTHING sends to iCloud (except browser).

Sharing didn't work. But I did update to the latest OS versions on my Mac and iPhone today and that fixed it.