Sonny Software

Howdy y'all,

Lately when I edit a PDF on my laptop (usu. inserting highlights & annotations), the edited file either takes a long time to show up on my synced iOS devices or it doesn't show up at all. This seems to have extended to new attachments as well: a new reference syncs between devices; but when I hit the paperclip button for the new reference in iOS, the attachment doesn't get pulled down from iCloud onto the device. I've suspended and resumed syncing on both the laptop and iOS devices, but no change.

Any suggestions on how to pull changed and new files between devices?

Peace out.

Please try to temporary create a new folder in the “Bookends folder with icon” on Mac. This should force iCloud to sync the folder if for some reasons changes weren't synced previously. Also please open the Bookends folder in Files app on iOS, do you see all your recently modified files there?

Thanks for the suggestion. I added the folder. That seemed to pull over some attachments I had added yesterday, as well as the modified version of an existing attachment that I had highlighted further.

But it didn't pull over the attachment that I had added to a new reference shortly before I created the folder you suggested. And I still haven't been able to pull it over to the iOS app. (It's only 1.2 MB, so it shouldn't be a problem of file size.)

When I look in the Files app, I don't see the file there either. Neither in iCloud, nor Recent, nor the Bookends folder within iCloud. That parallels the behavior I observed with the previous files: they weren't in the iCloud folder on the mobile device, though they clearly were in the Bookends folder in my iCloud Drive on the laptop.

Peace out.

Howdy,

This is just to give an update on behavior.

When I tried to access the newest PDF I attached to a reference via the attachment button in Bookends for iOS, I couldn't pull down the file to the device. I checked in the iOS Files app and it wasn't there. This was around 10pm.

This morning I logged into iCloud on the web, and checked that the PDF was imported and uploaded to iCloud at roughly 6:30pm, several hours before. The file size is roughly 60MB. With previous files that size, a couple minutes had been more than enough to access the file in Bookends.

After confirming the file was in iCloud, I look at Bookends on my iPhone (a newer device). The attachment hadn't been pulled down, though I tried last night around 10pm. But when I went to Files, the PDF was there. I clicked on it and it opened in Bookends. So it's now "there" in Bookends on that device.

But I tried the same thing on my iPad (an older device) and nothing: nothing in Bookends, nothing in Files.

I can't tell if this is a "Bookends issue" or an "iCloud issue". I can imagine everything should be slower on my older device. But still

* on the newer device, I can't pull in the attachment from within Bookends, but have to go to Files;
* on the older device, I still would've thought that hitting the attachment button would cause a download from iCloud, whether the file had already been downloaded or not.

I don't know if any of that helps. I'm just trying to help determine where the issue might lie.

Peace out.

Even without Bookends app installed, if you put some files to the Bookends folder on Mac, they should be synced automatically to all of your devices logged in under the same account. So, it’s strange that you see files (downloaded or not) on your newer device (iPhone) and not on your older device (iPad). In this case I think it’s an "iCloud issue”… Do you have enough free space on your iPad? can you try to reboot it? Re-login to iCloud? To see if any of these actions triggers iCloud to fully sync your files?

Howdy,

Sorry for the long delay, but with all the iOS and macOS updates, I was waiting to see if the problem got solved by itself.

Evidently not...

I've tried rebooting and everything else short of logging out of iCloud. If I do the latter on my Mac, it makes a local copy that eats up my hard drive, which is dicey with the amount of space I have left...

I've noticed this also happens with the iPhone: the last item I modified on my iPad has not yet gotten pulled over to the iPhone, or the Mac for that matter. But oddly the latest files I added have been pulled over. That is

[*] I created some new references on the Mac and added attachments,
[*] I then made some highlights in a PDF attachment in an already existing reference on the iPad,
[*] the attachments to the new references only much later appeared on the iPad,
[*] the attachments to the new references also finally appeared on the iPhone, but
[*] the modifications to the existing PDF finally passed to the Mac, but not the iPhone. (On my phone that attachment appears as last modified on 11/21/20, but within iCloud accessed online it appears as modified "yesterday", i.e. 11/26/20.)

Peace out,
t