On my Treo 650, I used to sync notes between its Memos app and a desktop application using The Missing Sync, but of course you can’t sync the iPhone’s Notes application with anything. Then it occurred to me that each contact has a notes field, so I created a fake contact and pasted in all of the info I like to keep with me in the notes field for that contact in Address Book. One sync later and all that info was again at my fingertips. It’s also a good way to hide your info if you lose your iPhone (better than, say, the Notes app).
Yikes, what a great idea.
I have been debating about how I was going to do this.
Thanks so much!
My Treo 650 is a much neglected machine these days (good riddance!)
I have used the Calendar in similar way to create a to do list for that day or week. I just create new event in Ical or Entourage have it sync to the iphone and away I go.
Some words to the wise: If you have confidential stuff in those notes, such as credit-card numbers, either set the prefs in your Mac's AddressBook not to sync Notes, or protect your phone with a password for operation. Then, after a set interval of non-use or when you shut off your phone, only you, who knows the password, will have access to those notes.
What kind of stuff are you writing notes about? My notes tend to be to do stuff for that day and when I'm done with it, I delete it from the iPhone. Or, if I didn't finish something, I delete what I've done (as I've done it) and then the stuff "still to do" gets "transfered" to the next day. I guess if you're tied to you're computers all day then it's nice to be able to sync it but if you're tied to your computer all day, why do you need to sync it to your phone?
Sorry to sound so negative but it boggles my mind....
~C
I don't use notes as my to-do list, but to store certain kinds of information. Some examples: prescription numbers, travel itineraries, a few Web site passwords, and my mortgage account number.
I used Missing Sync with my LifeDrive (which still hold some value for me). I don't really need the portability for most of my notes but its very useful to have my list of prescriptions whenever I have a doctor visit. I certainly didn't want this at the top of my notes list so you offered a very welcome suggestion. Thanks for the post.
I'm like several of the other posters. I use the notes to store reference information such as information about my auto, website password hints, recipies, size of the kitchen light bulbs, and even my past job history (great to have when you are filling out job apps).
Pretty much anything that I might need to remember when I'm out and about.
This application would really be improved if it could sync to a desktop application and maintain categories for the notes.
Howdy ya'll. I'm on vacation. Up in the Apalachian (sp?) mountains. Getting ready to head down the creeper trail. No cell phone coverage for *any* company where I'm at. Sucks for me and my shiny new iPhone. I have to head down to a coffee shop that has some wi-fi for any type of use. The folks-in-law, however, have a very old internet connection that does not play well with my PowerBook, so I just use their windows box.
About the notes (yes, I'll keep this on topic), I sincerely believe (hope?) that when Leopard comes out, we will all of a sudden get sync capability with them, as well as To-Do lists, as they will be integrated within Mail.app on the desktop.
I used Treo memos for recipes in addition to the other uses already mentioned here. The contacts-as-notes workaround for the iPhone is working pretty well for me except that there is a limit to the size of an iPhone contact note - which is significantly smaller that the notes size in AddressBook on my iMac.
I come to the iPhone from the Sidekick where I had lot of notes. What I did right before getting the iPhone was e-mailing all of my notes to google docs. This way I have an archive of all of my notes and I don't have to worry about syncing. I can continue this tradition with the iphone's notes feature. The only downside is that if there is no network coverage, then I don't have access to the notes.
Before the iPhone hit the streets, I just assumed that the Notes on our iPhones would sync with the Stickies on our Macs via the iTunes sync. Just kinda made sense, but I guess not.
'kito
I have an addition to the above idea . . . .
Create an address book entry called NOTES, and just use the Note portion of the record. Then, when ever you get a different phone, your notes will be moved no matter what ;-)
I use Backpack and I just send it to my Backpack page email address. Put 'todo' in the email subject and put an asterisk before each todo point and it automatically makes it a checklist on the Backpack page.
After purchasing a $600 phone you should not have to find creative ways to sync notes and tasks unless Apple is willing to pay you. It is a common function for other phones to sync notes, contacts, tasks, and calendar with Entourage. This is not the case for the iphone. It was premature on the part of Apple to release the phone without this very common feature. Apparently consumers will be forced to spend another $600 to get a phone that has these functions in the near future. Can you say "class action suit"?
Charles, most of those features will no doubt be added via free software update, not $600 hardware update.
"Class action suit?" Give me a break. Apple didn't include a pony in the box with my iPhone; guess I should sue them. Because after all, I want a pony.
The absense of "to dos" and the inability to sync notes are significant shortcomings, on par with the lack of search functionality and the non-existant clipboard. I don't think I'm splitting hairs here - all four of those things are basic functions I used daily on my Treo 650.
What makes these shortcomings particularly frustrating (aside from the high-end price tag for the iPhone) is that these features all appear straightforward to implement (so much so that not only were they on my Treo, they were also on the Samsung SPH-I300 I bought five-and-a-half years ago).
I guess that - in the absence of third-party app developers - we'll just have to wait on Apple. Apple has earned some trust, and hopefully these features are incorporated in the near future. (Perhaps "to dos" and notes at the same time Leopard is released?) That said, these shortcomings stick out like a sore thumb on an otherwise magnificent device - enough so that I think the haters are justified in some of their vitriol. It is unfortunate that so many revolutionary features are obscured by such basic failures; it's like having your doctoral dissertation rejected because you forgot to check your spelling.
QUESTION: Has anyone been able to figure out where Notes sync to? That might enable us to find a back door solution....
Hey I want a pony too! :)
Actually, I use MessageVault.org to create a nice encrypted HTML file into which I entered my "secure" data. Then I posted that file to one of the web sites I run under a different file name. That file is easily accessible using the Safari browser on my iPhone. This way I have access to my passwords and important data in a secure manner without having that information actually on my iPhone, should it get lost and that data then get compromised.
Not an ideal solution if you don't have a spot on the internet to place that file... but perhaps someone else has an easy/free idea on where one can host a simple small single file such as this.
THANKS for that tip - I'm a sticky notes nut and I can't wait to see a proper implementation of notes sync between my iPhone and my MacBook (and between notes and PC apps for Windows users). One possibility for Mac folks: If you've noticed the Leopard screenshots, and in particular, Mail, you'll see there's a new Notes application built right into Mail. My guess? They're going to offer a notes sync between that and the iPhone's notes app. All right, maybe I'm wrong, but if anyone is listening, that's my wish list request.
Thanks for the idea of using the contacts to store memos. I have been a long-time Palm user and have a ton of memos I like to carry around with me. To take the idea a little bit further, here's what I did:
1. Exported my Palm addresses to vcard to see what the format looked like. I had several addresses with notes, so was able to see a vcard tag for that.
2. I decided to have one contact entry for each memo. I used the vcard 'N' tag to store a 'last name' that would be a sort field to cause all of the memos to sort to the bottom on my contacts; and then put the first line of the memo into the 'first name' field. The rest of the memo goes after the vcard 'NOTE;QUOTED-PRINTABLE' field. Here's an example:
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:99900001;This is the first line of the memo
NOTE;QUOTED-PRINTABLE:This is a kludge, but it works for storing Palm memos in the iPhone contacts.
REV:20070721
END:VCARD
You can sync the notes, or at least back them up and read them on a desktop using this thing:
http://www.dudek.org/dudek.org/blog/75
Notes are critical to people working in fields where there's a lot of semi-random information that it's really convenient to have at your fingertips. For example, I'm a medical student; I have dozens of notes with relative potencies of various drugs, common sets of orders to manage various conditions, codes to all the random doors in the hospital (do they really think that people want to steal band-aids?), etc. Palm managed all these notes neatly in nice categories; I'm waiting (and praying) for Mail and Apple to do the same.
The Address Book workaround only works for short notes. Long notes are cut off during sync. Anyone have any idea how to get around that (short of manually splitting up notes)? I agree that unless a notes application shows up in an update, the iPhone will remain a toy more than a tool (of course, a search and cut and paste across applications are also required for any serious use).
just spent an hour trying to figure out why my "notes" were not syncing - then determined that they were truncated (!) - this should be on a high priority fix list...
On Dec 31st (yep, last Monday), an outfit called Mark/Space release a $40 program call The Missing Sync for iPhone, which supposedly provides syncing for memos and/or notes.
I'm not sure I want to be the guinea pig, but I guess $40 is a fleabite after spending nearly $500 for the iPhone (and some accessories) on which I can't access any of the megabyte or so of memos I put on the old Palm LifeDrive. Still, I have read some negative reviews on other products by this company, so I was kinda hoping I could find somebody else that has already tried it.
Apple is supposed to be releasing an SDK for the iPhone sometime next month, and I was seriously considering developing my own, although I don't think I would go to the effort if there is already a reasonable alternative (the fake contacts entry is a good one for my really high-use notes, like my CHL course of fire for range qualifications).
Upon further inspection of their website, I see that the program doesn't have on-phone search capability, so most of the functionality is on the iMac side only. Sorta makes sense, because the iPhone SDK isn't out yet, which would make it a bit tough to write stuff that runs on the iPhone itself.
Maybe I will try my hand at writing a memo program for the iPhone (when the SDK comes out), but I'm guessing that I won't be the first out with it. 1) I'm probably not the world's fastest programmer, 2) I don't have bunches of free time, and 3) the preferred language at Apple appears to be Objective-C, which I've never used.
Meanwhile, I guess I'm probably going to try the "Missing Sync" and report on what I think about it.
BTW -- unrelated to the topic at hand -- does anybody know of a good auxiliary keyboard for the iPhone? I'm a touch-typist, and one-fingering stuff into my iPhone is getting to be a pain, even for short email replies.
I tried to save notes into contact's notes...but where I can I retrieve the information in the computer???
why wont the notes field under a particular contact sync with the imac when you type the note using the iphone.
I just got an Iphone and had a previous TREO 650 had a lot of notes and memos on there that used daily I am a doctor and needed these things just to write notes, and some facts.
The best thing I found was google documents tab I cut and pasted all notes that I used the most and it even lets you make folder. I know is on safari but is very fast even on the edge documents open up quick.
This is not possible with notes from iphone I hope future updates addresses this problem needs to have a TODO list and MEMOS and Notes needs to have folders.
The fact that the Note field in a contact is truncated on the phone is maddening. In Leopard's Address Book's Note section, I haven't found a limit yet to the amount of text I can enter. But upon syncing with the iPhone, only a portion of the note field gets to the phone. And have you noticed on the Mac, if you want to print a contact and include the note section, it prints the note in two narrow columns and ALSO truncates, only including what can fit on one page. Wonder why there isn't more of an uproar about this?