Getting Started

[Eric Ravilious]

I tried the demo versions of both Mac and iphone. Unfortunately you cant test icloud sync with these versions. Having purchased both I have spent a day trying to get the two to sync with no success. I’ve vigorously explored the icloud trouble shooting without success, the instructions for setting up dropbox I find incomprehensible the screens they refer to to set it up do not exist on my iphone, What is Ia writer??? I don,t have it installed, where do I get it. As the company suggest I have not upgraded the iphone to ios8, should I give that a go? I gather its not possible to go back??? Im happy to give dropbox a go if there are better stage by stage instructions.

Have I wasted my money, there useless without sync.

Stephen

[Eric Ravilious]

To add to my question one thing I notice is that contrary to the set up page in my iphone setting I have nothing listed under either Ia writer or tap forms. Is this normal??

thanks again

[Frank Tikket]

Try to upgrade to ios8 and make sure you “do NOT upgrade to iCloud drive”

1. Make sure all devices are using the same iCloud account.

2. Delete all prior sync by clicking “reset iCloud sync” on every device

3. Then go to each device and “enable iCloud sync”….. Do just one device first and WAIT until that device appears on the devices list on your other devices. Once it does enable the next device (do not click the sync button yet)

4. Once you see all your devices listed out on all your devices as enabled sync devices…. Then go to the device where your main data is and hit sync. Depending on your data size and Internet speed, you will have to wait, then wait some more…. Maybe 10-15min… Eventually you should see rows and columns syncing into your empty devices, again it could take a bit of time to finish.

5. Once finished future syncs are a snap.

That’s it, welcome to tap forms… A newer, cleaner, smarter and more powerful database then bento… Offering lots of support too ;-)

[Brendan]

Hi Eric,

Frank gave some excellent suggestions on how to get iCloud sync working for you. Thanks Frank!

Sorry about that reference to the iaWriter application. That is not my app and I apologize that it caused confusion. They had a good tutorial on how to reset network settings to get iCloud working again. I think those docs are out of date now. I’ve updated the support page to point to my recent forum article about getting iCloud sync to work now.

Hopefully with Frank’s help there you will get it working again.

There is currently a problem with iOS 8 and syncing with Mac. The reason that Frank was alluding to was that iCloud Drive is now the way to sync documents with iOS 8. But it does not work on OS X 10.9 Mavericks or earlier versions of OS X. It also does not work with iOS 7 and earlier iOS versions. You will need OS X 10.10 Yosemite in order for iCloud Drive to work.

When you upgrade to iOS 8 and then select the iCloud Drive option, Apple will do a one-time migration of your documents from the old Documents & Data iCloud service to the new iCloud Drive service (which is built on top of Apple’s new CloudKit framework). When this happens, Apple will freeze syncing of your documents on older operation system versions (older than iOS 8 and OS X 10.10).

Once Yosemite is available I’ll hopefully be able to stop telling people this. I really should write a blog post about it. I think I’ve answered this iOS 8/Mavericks sync question about 100 times so far :-)

Anyway, let us know if you get sync to work. It does take patience, especially with the old Documents & Data iCloud service. I tell you, iCloud Drive works WAY better. My syncs usually happen within a minute of each other.

One tip when you do get to iCloud Drive on iOS 8 and Yosemite… Logout of iCloud, then log back in on all your devices. Then sign back in on all your devices and wait for about an hour or so for everything to get synced again. Then try Tap Forms sync. It’ll work much better after that.

Also, if you’re technically inclined, typing this command into the Terminal application on your Mac will let you monitor what iCloud is doing:

brctl log -w

It will tell you when files get uploaded from and when they get downloaded to your Mac. It really helps me to know if things are working right. It also gives you a good idea of how the process works with Tap Forms and how long after Tap Forms receives a notification that it starts processing sync files.

Thanks!

Brendan

[tonyt]

HI BRENDAN

I DID SUGGEST A STICKY RE IOS8 / YOSEMITE / SYNC / ETC…

I COULD SEE PROBLEMS ON THE HORIZON AND I GUESS YOU MUST GET TIRED HAVING TO SAY THE SAME THING MANYY TIMES, SO A BLOG POST OR STICKY WOULD BE GOOD.

CHEERS

TONY

[Eric Ravilious]

Folks

Thanks so much for the help. It bodes well that theres this sort of support. The thing I really disliked about Bento was its lack of cloud sync, it also wasn’t a true relational database. So i’m pleased to discover Tap forms.

Ive got to the bottom of it I think. I believe when I first installed ios8 on my ipad I inadvertently enabled icloud drive. due to problems with a few apps I reverted to ios7 during the short window when you could but of course the damage was done. Ive installed the yosemite beta and ios8 again and Tap forms sync seems to be working as it should. Ill come back if there are any further problems.

Thanks again for the trouble

Stephen

[Author]

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