If You're Successfully Syncing I've Love to Know

[Adrian Mathie]

I love the functionality of TapForms as a standalone database on my Mac or on my devices. However, I’ve never really been able to synchronise reliably between devices despite trying both iCloud and Nearby sync and this has become increasingly frustrating. I’ve communicated several times with Brendan but never got a satisfactory result. Yesterday, I had another go at iCloud sync between my desktop Mac and iPhone and ended up with nearly all of my records lost on both platforms. So I started afresh with a backup copy with the aim of trying Nearby sync again. I’m fairly sure I’ve done everything correctly but I can’t get that to work properly either. With the same database document open on the Mac and iPhone, transfer of new data is nearly instantaneous from the iPhone to the Mac, but after just one successful transfer of a test record from the Mac to the iPhone, it stopped working, although transfer in the other direction still works.

So, I would love to know what other peoples experiences are and particularly, if they have set up trouble free, reliable and secure synchronisation, how they are doing it.

Failing that, I would reluctantly ask if anyone has heard of an alternative app that has the same functionality.

Thanks very much.

[Adrian Mathie]

Just as an addendum to the above, these are the versions I’m using:

Desktop
Mac OS 10.12.5
TapForms 5.1.2

iPhone
iOS 10.3.2
TapForms 5.1.2

[Brendan]

Tap Forms 5.1.4 is the latest for macOS by the way.

I’m not sure how syncing would cause all of your records to be lost on each device unless you deleted records which then synced to the other device.

Did you watch the iCloud sync segment in the What’s new in Tap Forms 5.1 video?

https://vimeo.com/channels/tapformsmac5/page:1

[Adrian Mathie]

Thanks again for your input Brendan. The features are simply too good for me (especially the ability to format text with font sizes and colours in the “Notes” type field) to give up so I hope you don’t mind if I persist with this.

1. I’m on the latest versions; I made a typo above and I have been on 5.1.4 on Mac.

2. With Nearby sync, I’ve just had a period when it started working bidirectionally; not sure what I have done for it to be working both ways but that’s encouraging and it may be I can use that if it subsequently appears stable. The trouble is that I have previously had Nearby sync working but have subsequently lost some updated data. It is simply too difficult to remember what changes have been make to which records on which forms and to check all of these when you next open the app on the device which you expect will have synced. I might help if I understand exactly when syncing is initiated. If I edit a field on a device, what actually initiates sending this change to the other device or to iCloud? Is it when you click outside the field or say when you click off that record? What happens if you quickly open your iPhone, enter some data and then quickly put the phone back to sleep? Will it be sending the new data on in the background or will you have to wait until you open TF again for the sync to complete?

3. I rewatched the video covering 5.1 iCloud syncing. When I tried activating iCloud sync on an existing database on my Mac, I didn’t get the “placeholder” icon showing up on my iPhone. I’ve tried doing various things including rebooting Mac and iPhone, toggling off/on the system prefs/iCloud/iCloud drive options switch for TapForms 5 and starting with a brand new database document with only two fields and four records. I still didn’t see a placeholder show up on my iPhone. Both my iPhone and Mac are signedAny suggestions

4. I’ve had one or two strange things.

a) In a previous email, you suggested starting with a database file on my Mac, copying it over to my iPhone with the “send to” facility, then enabling iCloud sync on my Mac, waiting until that had completed and then enabling iCloud sync on my iPhone. But on the iPhone the iCloud sync was already enabled, as though this was inherited from the original file sent over.

b) Once when I disabled iCloud sync on my Mac and then hit “delete from iCloud” it froze, perhaps leaving a rogue copy on iCloud? I’ve tried looking at my iCloud drive and although some apps, for example MindNode, Pages, Numbers have visible files, I couldn’t see anything related to TF.
One thing I did notice was that there was a switch for both TapForms 3 and TapForms 5 in the system prefs/iCloud drive file storage options, despite having deleted TF 3. Could there be some corrupted pref files somewhere?

[Adrian Mathie]

RE: No placeholder file appearing on iPhone when enabling iCloud sync on Mac

I’ve just tried creating a simple db on iPhone and enabling iCloud sync; a placeholder immediately showed up on my Mac. I tried again the other way round but I can’t get it to work from my Mac

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