What is currently the most reliable sync method for Tapforms between a mac and an iPhone – in terms of minimizing possible data loss?
- Local wifi is fine – I don’t need it to be remote
- A reasonable cost is OK (does not need to be free)
- Setting up additional software wouldn’t be my preference, unless it’s a clear frontrunner
Background: Twice, just after sync between Macs or iPhone / iPad (using iCloud) I’ve noticed unexplained data loss. Just this week 5 fields mysteriously disappeared. Fortunately I noticed, and was able to use the “recover deleted items” function and got them back. Although most of my use is on my office mac, I like the ability to update data in the field with my iPhone (especially GPS and photographs). I do make backups, but I’d prefer not to have to keep checking for vanished data.
A secondary question – If I move from iCloud Sync to some other method, how do I do this?
Thanks for the reply.
1 – Re: warning for deleted record. I can’t find that setting in TF. In TG, There is no “Preferences/Settings”. There is a Top Menu – “Tap Froms Mac 5″/Settings” window but I don’t see that warning button there.
I looked at OSX Ventura Menu “Apple/System Settings/Notifications/Tap Forms Mac/ Allow Notifications”. Is that the button you are referring to? I tried it out, and that does the job. I didn’t know that would turn off that notification and I did turn it off because many programs notify me to death. Next time give a reasonable location for the answer.
2. Re: restoring a record in a Form. I feel like I’m about to juggle with eggs and if I get something wrong there will be a disaster that isn’t recoverable.
Could you please provide directions, not in sentence form, but itemized procedure format. It is so complicated I could easily lose everything.
– Since this is such an important part of the program, I’m surprised you don’t have it laid out already for people.
The record I lost isn’t that important, but when I do lose something (it will happen eventually) as I have in the past with my old database. Files get corrupted, or an accident happens. I need to have experience with this before the emergency occurs.
Thanks.
If the form didn’t appear in the Recover Deleted Items function, you would need to re-import a .tfarc file that you had previously made. However, I’m guessing you probably don’t have one of those.
The Recover Deleted Items function will not work if you had compacted the database after the delete. That may be why it didn’t show up there.
But if you’d like to email me a backup of your whole document, I can poke around inside the database to see if there’s anything recoverable.
I want to restore one Form in my “My Forms” document that contains 67 Forms.
Mac desktop, on my way to use Advanced Find and Replace, my mouse activated “Delete”. I don’t know which record got deleted. I tried “File/Recover Deleted Items”, but nothing was on the list (for just that Form or all Forms?).
From the manual it sounds like the only thing that can be “restored” is the “My Forms” that holds all 67 Forms. That won’t do.
What happens if I just want 1 Form, or 1 record from 1 Form restored?
Data “disappeared” on tap forms database. I have an address list database. On the multi-column view, at one point all of the data in one column disappeared from the display. However, it still showed when viewing the list view. As I was trying to figure out what happened, that same data started disappearing from the list view as well. I did not intentionally delete anything, not did I delete that field in the multi-column view. The column heading was still appearing, but not the data.
I turned off the syncing with my other computer and phones, but don’t know if it is a display issue only or if there is something more wrong. i.e., What did I possibly do and what can I do to recover it.
I do have older backups of our data, but now with our most recent, fairly extensive, edits.
Thank you VERY MUCH for any help.
Larry
I have a couple of older forms (not encrypted) that I’ve apparently checked “enable access controls” on. When I try to disable access controls, no password that I believe I would’ve possibly used work in the “enter admin password” window & the “Disable Access Controls” button in the window remains disabled no matter what I type in. Is there a way to recover whatever this mysterious password would be? Same issue with the “click the lock to prevent changes” password field…no password working & “unlock” button remains disabled. Did I really screw things up bad here or can I find these somewhere, somehow? (this is happening in version 5.3.33 (Build 1896), but was also happening on the previous version as well)
5.0.7 is a really old version so I’m not sure if you’d have it but there should be an option in the File menu to “Recover Deleted Items” that was added some time in 2017, not sure what version it was back then though. That might be able to recover the form for you.
I would add my voice to the “safety” camp. I have been leery about the swipe/delete for some time then yesterday, it happened: 3 key records zapped. I recovered them with the recover deleted records option, but would very much like to be able to switch off the swipe/delete function.
I am searching for advice on how to recovers lost files. After a search for a specific record, the rest of the database became unavailable. Suggestions?
Hello,
I have created my own form in Tab Forms about two years ago, but haven’t used it recently. Now I got a new Mac, but realized that I forgot to create a backup of the database from my old computer. But I still have the *.tfx files.
Is there a way, that I can figure out what fields I have used and recreate my form and reuse my data?
I primarily use Tap forms on my Mac & iPhone.
I’d been using it fine through this afternoon on my iPhone app.
This evening on my Mac, I found that one of my Forms (“Tea Inventory”) was no longer available. I thought I might have accidentally deleted it.
I tried to see if I could recover deleted items, but it was not there.
I tried to restore a previous backup from 3 weeks ago.
What happened:
1) CLICK restore, selecting the latest backup..
2) Wait. Do not see a restored form.
3) Restart Tap Forms (sometimes 2x) to see it.
2) As I watch, it renames my “Tea Inventory” to “New Form”, then promptly removes it from the Category.
I’ve repeated this action 2x.
Restore. Restart. Watch the form get removed from the category w/o any intervention from me.
?!?!?!?!! Help?
Unfortunately, these are rather large files, so can’t upload.
(Edited to add: I did a short QuickTime mov so you can see what I’m seeing….
First steps I usually do is make a backup of the document in question as is and copy it somewhere offline (USB stick or similar) to make sure you can always get back to the original document.
On the Mac, if you’ve enabled backups (backup on quit for example), then when you go to preferences you can click on “Show files” to be taken to your backup.
If you don’t have backups on quit enabled and didn’t manually make backups, you can go to the Tap Forms documents folder to see if you can restore from Time Machine. Either right click on the document name in the title bar and click on the immediate folder it’s in, generally Documents or alternatively in the “Database Documents” window (CMD+0 or Window > Database Documents) you can select the document and the right facing arrow is “Show in Finder” which will take you to it in Finder.
The last place to look is File > Recover Deleted Items. It’s not guaranteed to have everything but it might have your form in there still that you can recover back.
Brendan might also be able to help recover the data. The records are likely to be all there though he’d be the expert there.
Only explanation I can think of is that your devices got out of sync and for some reason you deleted something from your phone that was mapped to the computer. Once the sync reconciled the changes, it propagated the delete. It’s entirely possible if you had a partial sync at some point that the form looked weird and you deleted it thinking it was junk.
Thanks. I can post my question directly. I responded to Brendan because his initial thought–that the field would be in my Recently Deleted items and could be recovered that way–didn’t work out. It doesn’t show up in Recently Deleted items. So Brendan and I are emailing…
Thanks, Brendan. That clarifies things. Please check my list of the steps below. This is what I did. I want to make sure I made no mistakes:
1. Create an export of an up-to-date file with “Export Tap Forms Archive” in the “Tools” menu of the iPhone app. It will go to the “Exports” folder.
2. Go to the “Tools” area, then tap on “Files,” then tap on the “Exports” function.
3. From there tap on the file you exported, then tap on the “Share” function and send it to the Mac. It will end up in the Mac’s downloads folder.
4. In Tapforms on the Mac, locate “Import Tapforms Archive” in the dropdown “Files” menu, navigate to the Downloads folder, and click on the name of the archive folder.
Now, though, comes my tale of woe. First, a mere oddity: I wonder why the Mac tells me there are 2,440 records whereas the phone says there are 2,435 records. Much more disturbing, though, is the fact that the photos are missing from both devices. I may have 100 photos left out of 2000. I complained that they were missing from the Mac before, but I had not checked to see if they were still on the phone. Now I see that they are missing. So my earlier export made with the “Export” function rather then the “Export Tapforms Archive” function must synched them out of existence on the Mac, where before my meddling they may still have been safe. I will now try to recover them on the Mac using Time Machine. I would rather have a version with the photos but without the rather few alterations I made on the phone since the last successful synch.
Is there a way of recovering former versions of the phone’s file?
Dear Brendan,
I need help: I want to recover the data of the field which disappeared.
Could you help me?
Thanks
