Update: ‘Fixing Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Notes Crashes And Exchange Syncing Bugs’ also applies to Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan
In 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! 😉
71 Comments
It’s disgusting to force people to like or endorse your site before they can appreciate the quality of your responses.
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
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
Hi Vidar,
thank you very much for your feedback and that alternate solution! Great!
Cheers,
Gee Are
if i lost all my notes from updating to yosemite, what should i do? do you have any suggestion? thanks!
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
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.
Hi Liyana,
do you have an iPhone or iPad? and do you have any backup? Then check this: http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS4108
Good luck!
Gee Are
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
Hi Mike,
thanks a lot for your feedback!
Cheers,
Gee Are
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 🙂
Hi Dan,
thanks a lot for your feedback!
Cheers,
Gee Are
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
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
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.
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
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?
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
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).
I have not sorted my problem either. The Extra folder issue stands deleting and deselecting has no effect
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 !
Hi Josef,
You’re welcome! Regarding the Mail app check this post:
https://miapple.me/fixing-mac-os-x-10-10-yosemite-app-crashes/
Cheers,
Gee Are