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
Thank you !! Worked Well .. Excellent
Hi Smith Jones,
you’re welcome! Many thanks for your feedback!
Cheers,
Gee Are
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?
Hi Jimbo,
do you have more than one notes account activated? Try to deactivated all (not delete!), reboot and then activate your Google account and try again.
Cheers,
Gee Are
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.
Hi Jimbo,
great news! And many thanks for your information!
Cheers,
Gee Are
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.
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
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?
Hi Tamer,
have you tried a newer version of Outlook 2011, meaning Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2016?
However, Outlook on Mac is crap… 🙂
Cheers,
Gee Are
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.
Hi John,
thank you very much for your feedback and input! OP updated! 🙂
Cheers,
Gee Are