thank you Ms Apple.
Sure Love yoUr Tutorial

THANKS! Your easy to follow guide really helped me. Nice blog, I think I’ll bookmark ya!

^^

Holy crap finally. Thanks for doing this tut. I was ready to punch my Mac before I found this.

If the technical support people at Apple aren’t smart enough to solve the widespread syncing problem with mobileme, even with native applications, then they should at least be smart enough to read your simple and straight forward advice and then share it with the rest of the world. In the future, I will look for solutions here first!

Tony, you ROCK!!! Thank you a million times over, I spent the better part of a weekend surfing apple support & various forums, to no avail. I was ready to throw my Macs out the window (i did that once, to a coffee-maker that kept clogging and spilling grounds all over my kitchen — aahhhh, it felt so good!). Seriously, thank you for the amazing tutorial. When does Jobs plan to hire you? You’re amazing.

Thanks very much for your tutorial. I followed all the instructions to the letter but my lost contacts, calendars, and bookmarks did not appear on my iPhone. Any idea what else I could do?

it’s Aug 8th – Well you have my gratitude, thank you. i have been in a truly pointless dialogue with Apple – they do not have a clue how to guide people thru the simple process you’ve articulated here. I will forward it to them, as i am sure others have done.

mattybee x

This was a tremendous sigh of relief. Thank you so much. Be well. Ian

Thanks a bunch! So glad Google found you because Apple did not make this info easy to figure out.

Thank you so very much! I was about to pull my hair out, but your guide (with pictures, gee I love pictures lol) helped tremendously! I finally have my contacts list properly updated. Apple needs to hire you :p

I have literally been going bonkers over this whole MobileMe fiasco. The so-helpful (not) chat says to call Apple. Apple says to use chat. SO, with that being said, and after literally days trying to get the sync to work, is this info still relevant since they quietly made some (hopefully positive) changes around the end of October? I’m trying to sync between my iMac & MacBook. I finally got my email from the dreaded Time Warner to work in Apple Mail, but it won’t sync. Everything has to be done twice!

I also need to sync other items on the list, not just the email and contacts. The dock went fine, but not my (not-so-smart) mailbox and the folders I’ve created underneath it, where I store stuff from emails from certain people to passwords.

Sorry to be wordy, I’m literally going insane over this. So – will this work for all my items (other folders, bookmarks, etc). Thanks SO much. Plus I’m glad I discovered your site – the name alone brought me my first smile of this wasted day!

Thank you so much for this! Syncing is quite annoying but when you get it working it’s amazing. I had to disable my iPhone connectivity so it all well to hell, but using your instructions I was able to put it back into place.

This tutorial should be posted on the front page of Apple’s MobileMe. I wasted a couple of hours trying to make MobileMe work before I found this page – and then all problems were solved.! Thanks again!

I cannot even get into Sync in Mobileme System preferences. I get the spinning beachball.

The simple answer I was looking for, that oddly enough was hard to find on the apple website… go figure.

You, sir, are a miracle worker.

Hi, Tony!

In your instructions, the user switches the sync direction to “from computer to MobileMe.” Does this setting automatically change to a merge type sync, on the next sync? …or does the user need to be careful to explicitly request merging syncs? Why make your change in the first place?

I ask for another reason. Will your recommended setting erase all data in my iPhone? I got an iPhone first, and entered quite a bit of data into it, without backup. I just purchased a MacBook and MobileMe. I can’t figure out from that inscrutable MobileMe “advanced” button, what direction I should sync, to move data from the iPhone, to backups in MobileMe and my MacBook. Right now, my MobileMe and MacBook are a blank slate. That inscrutable MobileMe “advanced” button does not appear to have an option to move data from the iPhone to MobileMe.

What exactly does “replace” do? Does it erase all data at the destination device, and then transfer data from the source?

I can find no clear explanation of the terms replace or merge. Some general discussion of sync terms is at the following Apple developer page, but nothing on exactly how MobileMe was programmed to work.
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/syncservices.html

Could this confusion be the ultimate cause of what happened to Elizabeth, who posted Jul 23, 2008 12:27 “Thanks very much for your tutorial. I followed all the instructions to the letter but my lost contacts, calendars, and bookmarks did not appear on my iPhone. Any idea what else I could do?”

I don’t want to lose the data already on my iPhone!

Hello Tony,
I can’t update or sync my address book on my mac mini or any other macbook pro or macbook (I have 2 MBP and 2 MB). I need from MobileMe to computer (address book). One MBP and Mac mini are new, therefore address book empty on each one of them. MobileMe is up to date and work very good with iphones (I have 4). Is MobileMe down, maybe, or any other idea will be appreciated.
Thanks.

You should change your name to AppleSaint…… thank you Now the second time you have solved a problem for me!!!

Hmmm. Still a bit confused about syncing email…. can I do this with MobileMe?? Appreciate some more help! Cheers Jayne

I wonder if anyone can help me. I’m running a Macbook and syncing nicely my address book, calendar and emails to Mobileme. I’ve just bought my husband a Macbook and would like us both to use the same address book. He doesn’t need to see my emails, or calendar, just the address book. I’ve got a mobileme email address for him. Can anyone tell me how I can get him sharing the address book? Can’t seem to find any instructions from Apple.

OH. MY. GOD. You are a goddess. I tried for weeks to get (ok, I’m going to try to watch my language here..) the darn thing to work. Despite 1:1’s at the store and endless Applecare calls (and my contacts were lost, too, with no one quite sure how that happened). I had a Macbook, (my phone numbers were on my iphone (which somehow was an appleworld error, why would you keep your phone numbers on your phone?) and then I got a new IMAC. Yikes. I finally finally got everything working. I am grateful to your comments about how to do it, since I guess I did that, but I wasn’t sure what it was I actually did. That whole, ahem, darn “manually” and “automatically” choice is tricky.
I will always look at your site first. You are an angel of the dark night of battles between woman and machine.

When I open MobileMe in System Prefs, I can’t get the Sync tab to open. Help!!!
norie

Good tutorial on syncing contacts, etc between iPhone and a single Mac (or PC).

Here’s my problem: 2 macs (both Intel boxes running 10.5) and 1 iPhone. I can’t get mobile me to sync (i.e. update) the contacts on one of the Macs (actually a 2008 Macbook). I keep getting an “inconsistent data” error for Contacts only… seemingly Widgets, Calendar, and Bookmarks are ok.

My “source” data for the MobileMe cloud is an Intel MacMini (10.5). I’m able to update and/or reset the “cloud” at will. The problem occurs when I try to sync (over-write) the info on my MacBook from the MobileMe cloud. I get the “inconsistent data” error message.

Can you help?? Already did the Google thing… and as common as this problem seems to be, Apple has not addressed it.

Billed in Apple Store as the answer to ICal failing to sync properly this b******* thing has reduced a 62 y o former rugby playing toughie to tears! I shall start again tomorrow after a good night’s sleep.

I’m also wondering if I can import my contacts from Entourage into MobileMe or Mail? And how?

Thank goodness! Someone who knew what my problem was! Thank you thank you thank you for your helpful, easy to follow information!!!

Thank you so much! This problem has been bugging me for weeks and nothing on the apple support site helped, but this worked right away. Thank you thank you thank you!

You f-ing rock! This site saved my life! I had the same problem and couldn’t figure out how to reset my sync options, but you got me through! Thank you sooooo much!

thanks Miss Apple !
you just saved me a billion hours of stress trying to find this out! You’re great!

Was lucky to find your site after searching for about 20 minutes on the Apple site. Thank you so much for your easy to understand tutoring! Now everything is working beautifully! Thanks a million.

Alleluia!!! Thank you!

thanks for this I’ll have a crack. I guess if I want to sync all my address book, iCal etc data between 2 computers (home and office) I’ll have to get all data onto one machine first (hopelessly disorganized of course and diff data on diff machines – how else would anyone store their data? ). I was hoping I could use mobileme to merge data, any thoughts on that?

Also have you attempted to back up files on mobileme?Again I want to sync files at home and work, so that when I update a folder at work the home one is updated also. But it seems to have tried to copy the entire hard disk to mobileme, apps and all, and used up all storage memory. So each sync takes days and slows my internet connection down to a trickle. AAAAGGGHHH!

Thank you so much for this tutorial you made my day. I have question: How do i sync my mail-folders? Why can’t i see the folders i have in my mail on my macbook pro in mobileme? Thank you again. Have a nice day / night. .christian

tony, i tried it and there are still some items on my ical which have not transferred over to the mobileme calendar. i can’t seem to figure it out… i took the steps you recommended and performed them twice and still no complete sync… I can send you screen shots…?

thanks for your help

peter

I followed your instructions but I can not get any of my ical data to show up on my Mobile me ical?

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Drew

Hi, thanks for the great tutorial!
I have a similar problem to that of Bill Henry. My husband has an Imac, i have a macbook, and one iphone. We want to sync our calendars on all three, but it is wigging out on us! now a number of our weekly dates have duplicated, and no matter how often I’ve tried to erase them, they keep coming back double or triple. Anyone have any ideas what we can do to regularly update all of our devices and not loose or duplicate information? Will be soooo thankful for an answer!!

Your tutorial is wonderful. I am still having trouble though, it says contacts cannot be synced because of inconsistent data. Would you happen to know what this means?
Thanks so much.
Linda

great tut! when I check the box next to “synchronize” I still can’t click the drop down box. any idea why?

Cool, but how do I get mobileme to work with something like Entourage, which manages my calendar, email and contacts?

Thanks for your Tut Tony. I spent some time getting it to work before I found it. It would have been very helpful earlier. I am now looking for the next step which is syncing multiple calendars from different users. We have a family pack and wanted to sync the calendars of the all the users. Firstly is this possible and if so how do you do it? Thanks for you help in advance.

Hi Tony – great tutorial, very clear and it all worked perfectly. Thank you!

Thanks!!!! have been frustrated with the double entries, deleted address book entries. This solved it! Thanks for taking the time to show this.

Thx, thx thx
3 days I’ve been searching till I found your tutorial

My problem is that the up to date info is on mobile me and not on my mac, so I don’t want to replace all data on mobile me w/ info on my mac or else that will delete all the info on mobile me.

So in the switch sync direction, it should be replace all sync info on this computer w/ sync info from mobile me

but I get the contacts could not be synced due to inconsistent data, over and over again…after trouble shooting everything I can find.

any insight would be huge.

Thank you THANK YOU! I have spent days on this and was getting ready to chuck my trial account. It’s incomprehensible why Apple would not explain the direction switching option up front. I’m a new convert to mac from pc and had already stumped two apple geniouses (genii?) on other issues. This was making me angry, but I’m calmer now.

What I still can’t figure out is why contact groups won’t sync but that’s not a biggee for me yet.

Help!!! I just synced my itunes account, and somehow after 8 months of it working correctly, my iphone numbers all disappeared. I had used this tutorial on 2/15/10 to get all my calendar entries from my iphone onto my computer and just used mobile me to put all of that data from the 2/15 sync back onto my laptop. Now, I’m terrified to use itunes again to sync because I’m worried my phone numbers (or lack thereof) will go from my iphone to my computer. I haven’t used time machine yet to back up everything. Is there a way to get the data I just pushed from mobileme onto my macbook onto my iphone? (I know there is, just frozen with rookie mac indecision, worried that I will delete all my phone numbers.) Help me Tony, you are my only hope.