Getting forms from Mac to mobile devices

[Ellen Herzfeld]

I’m not sure I understand how to get things into Tap Forms on iPad/iPhone.

I transferred my libraries from Bento to Tap Forms on Mac using Giacomo Vernoni’s very nice tutorial.

I then activated iCloud sync on the Mac, and after that on the iPad. Apparently, the iPad synced but my stuff didn’t appear.

So I made a backup of the database in Tap Forms Mac and put the TapForms_db.sqlite file into the File Sharing window on iTunes and synced with the iPad. This worked. I did this for the iPhone and it also worked and the forms sync on all devices.

My question: Is this the correct method?

I see no mention of this method anywhere… which may be unsurprising as I didn’t find much documentation. I watched the screencasts but I never remember much after watching such things. I need to read a user manual.

Ellen

[Brendan]

Hello Ellen,

Do you see your iPhone, iPad, and Mac show up in the list of registered devices on each device? If so, then just click the Sync button on your Mac to send changes from it over to your iPhone and iPad. There’s no need to tap the sync button on your iPhone or iPad for the sync process to happen on those devices. Basically you just tap on the sync button on the device that you want to upload changes to iCloud from. The other devices will auto-sync once iCloud has finished syncing the files Tap Forms generates over to the other devices.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Ellen Herzfeld]

Yes, they all appear on all devices. At one point the iPad mini appeared twice on the mini itself. Since then I’ve reset them all and they all appear only once.

However, as I said, on my first try, when everything was in Tap Forms for Mac, I tried various ways to get them to the mobiles but nothing happened. So that’s why I used iTunes. I was wondering if there was any compelling reason to avoid this method, at least to get things going in the first place.

Anyway, at this time, everything seems in order, so I won’t try again unless something goes wrong.

[Brendan]

No, it’s fine to restore the database files across all your devices. But when you do that I would suggest doing the Reset iCloud Sync button on an iOS device to reset iCloud sync so it starts back from the beginning. Data will be merged across all databases when you sync. So if all databases start out the same, the effect of the first sync won’t be noticed since all the data is the same. But from then on you’ll see changes from one device go to the other devices when you tap the sync button on the device you’ve made changes on.

[Author]

Posts