iCloud sync discrepancy on one device, unsure how to try and resolve?

[Kyle Jeremy]

Hi! We’ve been very happy users for nearly 10 years, having found Tap Forms after Bento was discontinued.

We have a quirky issue that just started happening that we can’t figure out how to resolve. We’ve got a hard-wired Mac Mini, a MacBook Air, and an iPhone all running Tap Forms for an internal item-logging database that consists of a little under 3000 items syncing over iCloud (we previously used CouchDB, but found iCloud to work better in our environment.)

It turns out, somebody missed the prompt on the MacBook Air laptop asking to “reenter your iCloud password to accept new terms and conditions” so various work they were doing wasn’t syncing, which totally makes sense, as iCloud wasn’t updating.

The iPhone and Mac Mini copies of the database were synced and working normally.

What’s odd is that upon re-entering the iCloud password on the MacBook Air and confirming syncing was working again, we noticed a deviation in record count between the MacBook Air (2848 records) and the Mac Mini + iPhone (each having 2894 records).

We went record by record, eventually finding somewhere around record 100 a handful of “missing” records on the MacBook Air, though interestingly they were very old (Date Last Modified typically around April 2013). It’s quite possible that this deviation had always been present and we only just noticed it now?

If we modify one of these very old “missing” records in any fashion from the Mac Mini or iPhone, it immediately syncs correctly to the MacBook Air. Any changes made by the MacBook Air are immediately synced to the Mac Mini + iPhone.

Since we were confident our “golden copy” of the database existed on the Mac Mini and iPhone, we decided to completely delete the Tap Forms app and ~Library/Containers/com.tapzapp.tapforms-mac/ folder on the MacBook Air, hoping it would prompt a full re-sync from iCloud.

This appeared to happen normally, but the MacBook Air is still “short” and only showing the same 2848 records, not the 2894 we’d expect. While I presume we could fix this by doing an inconsequential edit to all 2894 records from the Mac Mini, we actually like having the “Date Modified” intact and would hate to lose it by having it updated to <present>.

Any ideas what might be cause our MacBook Air to continually fail to acquire/sync the ~50 or so records that appear to otherwise be intact in the database, but getting “ignored” by the MacBook Air?

[Brendan]

I would recommend using the Send Document function to send a copy of the document on the device that contains more records over to your MacBook Air. It’s possible at some point that the sync was interrupted for some reason during syncing of those 50 records and the system thinks they were synced already because they’re older than the last sync date at that time.

So best to just reset and copy the document over so that both devices are in sync again.

Also good to make a backup copy of your good document before going any further.

[Kyle Jeremy]

Thank you, Brendan!

To clarify, because we’re using iCloud syncing, should I just use the icon in Tap Forms at the bottom to AirDrop the .tapforms file from the Mac Mini (the one with the “gold/master” copy) and send to the MacBook Air? (the one missing the records)?

In other words, it’s OK to just overwrite the .tapforms file from one system to the other without causing havoc?

[Brendan]

You’ll need to remove you want to overwrite before you transfer it over from the Mac. Otherwise you’ll just get a notice saying the file exists already. I did it that way because I didn’t want anyone to accidentally be sent a file they already had and to have Tap Forms overwrite the file. So a bit of a hassle in this case, but for added security.

[Kyle Jeremy]

I just wanted to confirm that this ultimately worked fine. I AirDropped the .tapforms file from the “gold/master” copy on the Mac Mini to the MacBook Air. I then disabled WiFi on the MacBook Air and deleted the “missing some records” copy. I then moved the AirDroped “gold/master” copy from my Downloads folder to the previous location, opened Tap Forms and voila, all 2894 records were there.

I concluded by making some test entries on all 3 devices (Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and iPhone) and all synced appropriately through iCloud.

All set here, thank you very much for your help and the product in general!

[Brendan]

Sweet! I’m glad that worked for you.

[Author]

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