fbpx
Skip to content

Fixing Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Notes Crashes And Exchange Syncing Bugs

Update: ‘Fixing Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Notes Crashes And Exchange Syncing Bugs’ also applies to Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan
Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite iconIn this post I show you how to fix Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Notes crashes and Notes syncing bugs with an exchange server. The fix should work on previous Mac OS X versions like 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion and 10.9 Mavericks, too. Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite leads to several bugs concerning Gmail and exchange syncing. Further more, it could lead to Notes app crashes and syncing bugs with exchange server. I on my own faced these two major bugs on my MacBook Pro (mid 2012).

First, I got Gmail and Exchange mail syncing problems. I could not move mails from the inboxes to a folder. All moved mails appeared again in the inbox after a few seconds when I went back to the inbox. I’ve already posted fixes to overcome the Gmail bug on Yosemite and Mavericks, which perfectly works for me. In the meantime, Apple released an update for the mail.app to resolve the Gmail bug on Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

Second, the Notes app did not sync my Microsoft Exchange account, nor from my Mac to the exchange server, neither from the exchange server to my Mac. I fixed it following this work around:

Caution: If you got, in addition to IMAP and/or Exchange notes, sole-locally stored notes or POP3 notes, you have to take care on your own to save them separately! If you do not save them, they will be gone / deleted following this instruction! Following these steps is at your own risk!

Cleaning caches and notes app container resolves Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Notes crashes and exchange syncing issues. Could you fix it, too? Let us know and post your experience!

Stay tuned! 😉

Tags:

71 thoughts on “Fixing Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Notes Crashes And Exchange Syncing Bugs”

      1. Julio Dalge
        Reply

        Gee, I’m actually trying to understand why skype 7 crashes in mac os yosemite. I have recently upgraded a brand new Macbook Pro. I installed the official upgrade provided by Apple. This is the only issue I’ve been experiencing with yosemite. Is there any fix for that?

        Thank you in advance.

  3. MacRicow
    Reply

    Hi,

    It worked perfectly for me and it was instantaneous (my notes are only around 200 Ko).

    But it don’t get what’s the Notes checkbox in System Preferences iCloud Panel, provided my notes are still synchronized on iCloud, even not checked…?

    By the way, I guess (I’m on a French version) that there’s a small misspelling on point 4 : it’s not «librairies», but «Library», same folder as the one in point 5.

    Thank you for your help.

    1. Gee Are Pabst
      Reply

      Hi MacRicow,

      thanks for your feedback, misspelling in 4. corrected!

      Regarding the Notes Checkbox: Did you wait for some minutes (sometimes it takes time)? Did you reboot your computer? Maybe this helps.

      Cheers,
      Gee Are

  6. Sara
    Reply

    HI I wonder if you can help on something else? Since upgrading to Yosemite, my calendar will not sync with my work exchange server. Email syncs fine. Also it all works together on my ipad and my iphone running iOS 8.1. I have a 2009 macbook pro which works like a charm except for this niggle since Yosemite.

    Any suggestions would be gratefully received!

    1. Gee Are Pabst
      Reply

      Hi Sara,

      you can try in an analogue way for exchange calendar (On your own risk! Make a backup!):

      1. Go to ‘System Preferences…‘, ‘Internet accounts‘ and deactivate all ‘Calendars‘.
      2. Close Calendar app.
      3. Go to finder and click on ‘Macintosh HD/library/caches‘. Drag all the contents of the folder to the trash.
      4. Click on the finder, click ‘Go‘, hold the option key and click on ‘Library‘ (will not appear if you don’t hold the option key). 5. Go to the folder ‘Caches‘ again and drag everything in the folder to the trash again.
      6. Click on the finder, click ‘Go‘, hold the option key and click on ‘Library‘ and then on the folder ‘Containers‘. Drag com.apple.CalendarAgent, com.apple.CalendarAgent.CalNCService and com.apple.CalendarFileHandler to the trash.
      7. Click on the finder, click ‘Go‘, hold the option key and click on ‘Library‘ and then on the folder ‘Calendars‘. Drag everything in the folder to the trash again.
      8. Restart your computer.
      9. Empty trash.
      10. Go to ‘System Preferences…‘, ‘Internet accounts‘ and activate all ‘Calendars‘.
      11. Open notes again and wait for a while till updating of Calendar app is finished.

      Let us know if this works. 😉

      Cheers,
      Gee Are

          1. thankful-reader
            Reply

            You Sir are a genius! I have tried to fix this problem ever since Yosemite came out. Had at least 2 phone call sessions directly with Apple Tech Support and they would just respond “This is a known issue, we are working with Microsoft on it, you should contact Microsoft” – Applying your suggestions fixed the issue perfectly (I would just add that I had to remove and re-install the entire Exchange account) – You’ve made my day (and my week)…thanks so much!!!

  8. tony
    Reply

    SO My notes is crashing after following the instructions twice. Notes are fine in cloud can see them on my phone and open the Notes program on my other computers running yosemite. I think it is the application itself is there any other way to address this?

    Thanks

    1. Gee Are Pabst
      Reply

      Hi Tony,

      do I correctly understand you that you got several computers running on Yosemite and only on one single computer Notes are crashing? did you apply my instructions on the other computers as well? And does it work there?

      Cheers,
      Gee Are

      1. tony
        Reply

        So yes I have two desktops and one laptop running Yosemite and the notes are working fine on those boxes (as they are on iPhone and iPad) My wife’s laptop is also fine (i know different data) ironically my newest machine is the one that I have trouble with and to date only notes is effected. I applied you clear instructions on the effected machine but not on any of the ones that are working normally. When I open notes I get this mess of code in a Notes quit titled window. Access to my notes using safari logging into iCloud solves access issues but I cannot fathom what could be causing notes to crash on this one machine (27″ late 2013 build 1TB flashHD)

        1. tony
          Reply

          Hi again I should say thank you for helping and now reading through the code error I found this closer to the top

          “‘Got more than one folder with folderId AAMkAGFkMTc0ZWVjLTAxMWItNDg5MC1iY2EyLThmYWFlZWQyMmRkNwAuAAAAAAD5vQW1SAs/RqJu9HwRvqF5AQBM++7EiA4gR50/5LuOHC9iAAAAclNHAAA='”

          hope that is a good clue 🙂

          1. Gee Are Pabst
            Reply

            Hi Tony,

            Go to “Preferences Panel >> Mail, Contacts and Calendar”

            Look in the preference panel: Maybe your Exchange account had set up two accounts and maybe both have selected notes’s sync.
            Select only one. Hope this helps.

            Cheers,
            Gee Are

            1. tony
              Reply

              Hi Thanks for the suggestion a little confused as Mail, Contacts and Calendar is IOS right not Yosemite? If you have any idea what the folder would be named I could hopefully search for it and see

              Thanks

                    1. tony

                      Got you just looked and I only have one account for each of my accounts listed :(. I do not want to delete them so I think I am stuck

                      1. Gee Are Pabst

                        Hi Tony,

                        are you using Mac’s Mail App? If not, open it and let it sync for a while. Maybe this solves your issue. If this doesn’t work either, repeat the entire tweak in my original post and don’t forget to reboot your Mac. Sometimes it is needed to do it twice…

                        Cheers,
                        Gee Are

                      2. tony

                        Thanks Gee I leave mail open 24 hours a day for months at a time in some cases I rarely shut down my computers. I have done the procedure twice but will try it a few more times and see if that helps. hoping the next upgrade will fix the issue I am wondering if Yosemite set up new folders and the one from maverick is still hiding somewhere.

    3. Sara
      Reply

      thanks so much for your detailed reply, appreciate it. I will keep it on file. I deleted the calendar accounts earlier and restored to the latest back up and now the calendars are working again! I hope it stays working but if not I will try your method! When you say click go, where is go?! Thank again

    5. Apolonious
      Reply

      Thanks a lot Gee. I upgraded to OSX 10.10 a week ago and noticed that tha App Store aplication and the Drop Box crashed on startup. After searching long on the web came to your article and “lo and behold”! I i used your technique but instead of doing it for NOTES, I just follow your steps but number 5 i trow away the files containing app store. Finally after days searching, its all right. Thanks again!!!!

    7. Pingback: Fixing Notes Crashes And Exchange Syncing Bugs on Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks - miApple.me

    8. Randall King
      Reply

      Hi, Gee Are. This is a great page.

      I was getting an “Incorrect Password” message in Notes for my Exchange 2010 account even though I know the password is correct. Other apps were syncing data with my Exchange account successfully. I followed your instructions on my MacBook Pro running 10.10, but what happened is that my Exchange account shows up and shows current notes, but the account has the wrong name. (I had renamed the account in System Preferences > Internet Accounts.) It shows the name that the account used to have a long time ago.

      I’ve tried removing and re-adding the account, and I’ve tried doing your instructions again. It seems like maybe it was storing an Exchange account in Notes that I had previously deleted and it was using that password instead of my current password. Is there a way to clear out the accounts manually by deleting some files in Finder?

      1. Gee Are Pabst
        Reply

        Hi Randall,

        thank you very much for your feedback!

        In regard to your question to manually delete “some files” in finder check this post:
        https://miapple.me/fixing-mac-os-x-10-10-yosemite-app-crashes/

        Follow these instructions for “Mail” to delete the mail containers, but keep in mind that the re-syncing process could last up to a couple of days if your mailboxes are huge (>1 GB). Make a back-up before. Disclaimer: On your own risk!

        Cheers,
        Gee Are

    10. Pingback: Fixing Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite App Crashes - miApple.me

    11. Josef
      Reply

      Hi Gee Are, thanks so much for this, I called Apple Senior tech support just earlier and they had me create a new “library profile” I think it was, over two hours on the phone and that just exacerbated my issue further and lost all of my preferences and settings, your remedy here really did work for me! on a MacBook Air 2013 & MacBook Pro 2013, this issue was a real pain for me, you seem to really help others a lot just looking at the amount of comments above, I just wanted to say a huge thanks, also are we able to now “re-tick” the notes syncing in Mail.App ? I have several Exchange and iMap accounts, also running Outlook for Mac 2011, I am only using Outlook for Exchange accounts and have sync set in the account settings here, I just wanted to ask if you knew of any conflicts in having this option ticked in Mail.App and in Outlook 2011, I am also running Yosemite on both of these computers and have iCloud notes too, thanks in advance for you assistance again, keep up the great work, I am very very grateful !

    13. Andy Mason
      Reply

      Thanks for the detailed post! Unfortunately, I have followed all your steps to no avail. Every time I open Notes, it crashes within seconds. This is only an issue since updating from Mavericks to Yosemite. Similar to Tony in October, I am also getting the “Got more than one folder with folderId” under the application specific Information. I use three different Exchange accounts, and only one of them has Notes set to sync (before Yosemite, I could sync all three Exchange account’s Notes and iCloud Notes without error).

    15. Todd G
      Reply

      This repaired my notes crash. It occurred because I set up two new domains and emails on office 365 on apple mail with notes checked. In addition to my Yahoo notes and iCloud notes. The remaining problem is that I cannot set up my notes from Yahoo and the exchange accounts now that the crash is fixed. They both time out or come back with a pass word failure that is inaccurate. Any help on getting notes to work across this many accounts?

      1. Gee Are Pabst
        Reply

        Hi Todd G,

        thanks for your feedback!

        In regard to your Yahoo and exchange accounts issue: Do you have a complicated password meaning to you use special characters? Some time ago I experienced a similar problem. The solution: I just used a new password with standard letters and numbers and at a maximum of 10 digits.

        Cheers,
        Gee Are

    17. karim el hamawy
      Reply

      Hi,

      I followed the below steps, but I still can’t sync my iCloud notes with outlook for the exchange account. Here is what happens, in settings, internet accounts, I select the exchange account, and upon selecting notes I get the symbol of progress but it does not stop.

      Go to ‘System Preferences…‘, ‘Internet accounts‘ and deactivate all ‘Notes‘.
      Close Notes app.
      Go to finder and click on ‘Macintosh HD/library/caches‘. Drag all the contents of the folder to the trash.
      Click on the finder, click ‘Go‘, hold the option key and click on ‘Library‘ (will not appear if you don’t hold the option key). Go to the folder ‘Caches‘ again and drag everything in the folder to the trash again.
      Click on the finder, click ‘Go‘, hold the option key and click on ‘Library‘ and then on the folder ‘Containers‘. Drag com.apple.notes to the trash.
      Restart your computer.
      Empty trash.
      Open notes again and wait for a while till updating of Notes app is finished.

      1. Gee Are Pabst
        Reply

        Hi karim,

        this fix applies to the native Mail and Notes app of Mac OS X, not for Outlook for Mac. Are you using Outlook which also includes a notes section? Have you check your native apps if they are working?

        Cheers,
        Gee Are

    19. karim el hamawy
      Reply

      I followed the above instructions for fixing the notes synching with the exchange account. It did not work and it messed up the notes application on iPhone. I restored iPhone os it was not fixed. Please help

      1. Gee Are Pabst
        Reply

        Hi karim,

        was your iPhone connected to iTunes while you performed this tweak? Or did you perform a sync during the tweak? You should not do this. But deleting cashes should not change anything on your Exchange content either.

        Look into your Exchange account via web browser if your data is still there. If so, disconnect your iPhone and re-do this tweak.

        Cheers,
        Gee Are

    21. Dan
      Reply

      Thank you so much for this article! I’ve been going out of my mind without being able to use Notes! Worked like a charm 🙂

    23. Mike
      Reply

      I’m so glad I found your site. I upgraded to Yosemite and I Notes crashed on startup. I tried downloading Yosemite again. But nothing worked. But, following these simple instructions, I was able to get my Notes app working again. THANKS

      1. Gee Are Pabst
        Reply

        Hi Liyana,

        have you already lost all of your notes??? Which kind of account are you using for notes? If it is an iCloud account and check your notes on https://icloud.com/#notes. If their are still there, iCloud will restore the notes.

        Please, give me more details information for helping you.

        Cheers,
        Gee Are

        1. Liyana
          Reply

          Yeah ever since I updated my Mac to Yosemite, I lost all notes. and I can’t even find it on iCloud. I don’t know why 🙁 There’s only the newer notes after Yosemite and not from before.

    27. Vidar
      Reply

      I tried every step here twice, it did not solve the notes app exchange account sync issue. However I found an alternate solution by myself. First I unticked “auto discovery” in Mail options for the exchange account. Then I created a new account from within the notes app, manually entering all details, gave it a brand new name to keep it separate from the “original” exchange account. That did the trick. Now it is working very fast. Do not enter “Internet accounts” – just keep the Notes unticked there for the Exchange account

      1. Gee Are Pabst
        Reply

        Hi Henry,

        thank you for your feedback. I really appreciate this!

        Do you have any impressions, how long it takes to write that kind of a post? And you do not have a couples of seconds to have a right look a my post to see the ‘x’ to unhide the content without any forcing?

        I would appreciate a more respectful approval of my work.

        Cheers,
        Gee Are

    31. John Jung
      Reply

      Many thanks for solving this annoying problem… but I would suggest a step number 9… go back and turn on NOTES for each account under System Preferences: Internet Accounts. Maybe this procedure would be obvious to many users, but it was not for me, and when I rebooted my Notes folder stayed empty no matter how long I waited, as you implied.

    33. Tamer
      Reply

      Hi Gee,

      After i upgrade to 10.10.5, Mac outlook 2011 connection to exchange server stopped…
      Outlook is requesting password but after that nothing…

      i rebuilt the DB, deleted and created the account, created a new identity and even reinstalled the application with no success

      Mac Mail app and web access is working fine

      Can you please assist?

    35. CEB
      Reply

      My fix was easy. Go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts > select Notes to be active ONLY for the iCloud account – unselect Notes for all other accounts.

      1. Gee Are Pabst
        Reply

        Hi CEB,

        thanks for your help. You’re tweak will work solely for iCloud Notes. However, some guys need MS Exchange Notes…

        Anyway, thanks again for replying!

        Cheers,

        Gee Are

    37. Jimbo
      Reply

      Hi, I tried step by step but am just getting a spinner next to the notes icon in Internet Accounts. It won’t actually check the box.

      I’m trying to sync notes from a google account in 10.10.5. This all used to work just fine, but one day stopped syncing.

      Any ideas?

        1. Jimbo
          Reply

          No, just one. I found a solution, and that was to disable two factor authentication. apparently the mail app itself has an issue with two factor because I can add the same google account to apple mail just fine.

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *