Cannot get icloud Bookends folder to appear

A place for users to ask each other questions, make suggestions, and discuss Bookends.
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atimm
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Jan 04, 2018 2:44 pm

Cannot get icloud Bookends folder to appear

Post by atimm »

I have been struggling for far too long to set up iCloud sync. I have scrupulously followed the instructions in the user guide, but I cannot get the Bookends folder to appear in the iCloud Drive folder on my Mac (running Catalina), so I can't move my attachment files there. The Bookends folder is visible when I log in to icloud.com, and new attachments sync. But then bizarre things start happening. The PDFs that I added in iOS and on my Mac now appear in the iMovie folder on iCloud drive. These do sync between my Mac and the cloud, but why are they there? In case it matters and to make things even more baffling, this iMovie folder has a Dropbox icon on it on my Mac and does not exist at all on icloud.com. I will also say that I almost had everything working once, but then my hard drive filled, everything crashed, and I had to start again. I am now finding it impossible to retrace my steps. Having searched the forums, I found a thread that mentioned a helper app for people who could not get the Bookends folder to appear. But this was a couple of years ago, and the app no longer works. (It just immediately crashes and probably isn't compatible with Catalina.) I have spent hours and hours on this and have made no progress. Can someone give me some hints about what I might be doing wrong? I don't even know what other information you might need to understand my problem better.
Serge
Posts: 339
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2011 1:09 pm

Re: Cannot get icloud Bookends folder to appear

Post by Serge »

It’s hard to suggest something here, because we receive reports from our users about missing “Bookends folder with icon” on the iCloud Drive from time to time and didn’t find any working solutions. It’s not a problem of our app only, I think something is wrong on the macOS level. You mentioned that you had some problems with your hdd. Did you try to save your data and do clean install of macOS?

As for that helper app we were using on Mac please write to support@referencesontap.com and I will generate it for you, to see if it helps in your situation.
atimm
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Jan 04, 2018 2:44 pm

Re: Cannot get icloud Bookends folder to appear

Post by atimm »

Here is a brief update. I ended up just moving my files into the misnamed iMovie folder in the cloud, and everything is syncing fine on two computers and to my iPad. When I go to icloud.com, the folder is called Bookends and has the right icon, but on my computers, it is still called iMovie (it is a duplicate, there is another iMovie folder as well), and it has a dropbox icon. I am loath to go through the process of reinstalling the OS at the moment, since despite the weirdness, things are syncing. I actually went through the process of switching to iCloud on two different computers, one of which is only a few months old and has not been used intensively. The same thing happened both times, I just didn't actually notice that the files had gone into iMovie on the first computer. I will definitely try to figure out whether there is something strange with my instance of iCloud, which I've never used that extensively before. And I'll write an email to get the helper app from you. But for the moment, I guess I'm in the "don't try to fix what ain't broke" category.
atimm
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Jan 04, 2018 2:44 pm

Re: Cannot get icloud Bookends folder to appear

Post by atimm »

A long update that will only be of interest to people having problems with weird behaviour in their iCloud drive or who need advice about fighting with Apple tech support.

I ended up deciding that I really did need to fix this problem, because I found it hugely disconcerting that the folder containing my Bookends attachments would get randomly renamed. Sometimes the attachments were in iMovie, sometimes they’d be in Text, and they'd be in differently named folders on my different devices. It was infuriating and worrisome. It was also, as Serge says, clearly a Mac problem, not a Bookends problem, so I started a very frustrating saga of trying to get Apple tech support to help me. It took me something like 10 hours on the phone with Apple -– in four or more phases -– to finally get this fixed, so I’m hoping to save someone else this grief by providing a few tips. Most importantly, keep your eyes on one goal: You have to get Apple to wipe and restore your iCloud drive, something they are incredibly unhappy about having to do for reasons no one would divulge. Achieving this was incredibly arduous and involved a lot of polite persistence along with a couple of angry explosions on my part. The techsplaining (condescending insistence that I just didn’t understand my own problem) was off the charts. I don't wish this on anyone, and my very slow path to victory suggests some key strategic weaknesses on my part. But maybe these three bits of advice will still help someone:

1) Get to a senior-level tech as quickly as possible. You will waste your time with the junior people, who basically only have the knowledge and authority to tell you to reinstall everything. (Don't bother even calling before you've updated to the most recent OS. That will be their first instruction.) Say right away that you need someone with the authority to start the process of restoring your iCloud drive. Even then, the person you talk to will have to consult with the engineers and get back to you. Make sure they do get back to you. I got busy at work, failed to notice they hadn’t contacted me, and had to start the whole process all over again a few weeks later. There was zero record of past conversations, and I had to prove my credentials (that I wasn’t just making shit up) to the next guy all over again before I got anywhere.

2) If you aren’t careful, their first response will be that the issues are being caused by "third-party software," so not their problem. I had to fight this one hard: "So you're telling me that Apple does not think users should install any non-Apple software programs on their Macs?" This is a ridiculous argument to have to have, so I recommend finding some other quirky behaviour in your iCloud drive to focus their attention. If you have the same problem I had, there will definitely be quirky behaviour -- such as folders being randomly renamed as described above. I only made actual progress after I refused to discuss Bookends anymore and focused only on how Apple’s own programs were doing mysterious things. (They had to actually see that the same folders, with the same content, had different names on all four of my Apple devices to acknowledge that there was a problem.) In fact, I would strongly recommend not mentioning Bookends at all. It is just a trigger for them to try to write off your complaint.

3) I did manage to find discussions of this problem on various support forums, and you can find advice about how to reveal hidden iCloud folders on your hard drive. You might then see that a bunch of your long-deleted iPad apps still have ghost folders in your iCloud drive, for instance. But figuring this out was ultimately a rabbit hole because there was nothing I could do about it. Anything you delete from your hard drive just gets repopulated by iCloud drive. I had to work hard to get Apple to acknowledge that it was their job to kill the gremlin lurking in their cloud, but since they had no other explanation for what I was seeing, they eventually relented. Just as an FYI, you can’t transfer apps to a new Apple account, so that way of creating a clean iCloud drive won’t work if you’re an app packrat like me.

4) Consider having someone with a deep male voice make the phone call. A gratuitous comment, perhaps, but holy gods this was frustrating.

I hope this helps someone out there. It was time to give something back after all the years of relying on support forums like this.

Annette
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