installing app on new iPhone and downloading data from iCloud to phone
after I install the app, it asks me if I want to import data from the previous version of Mental Case. The answer to that is no, since I have already been using the new Mental Case 2 version, just on a different phone.
It also asks if I am new to Mental Case and want to import samples. The answer is also no, so I clicked on the skip button.
So after this, the first order of business is to get the cloud data installed on the phone. So to do this, I open the app and click on Sync, and then slide the on/off button to the right (after making sure Cloud Service is set to iCloud.) The response to this is status message "iCloud data is fully downloaded.". At one point it did say "downloading", although I have a 39MB file on the cloud and it indicated it was only downloading something like 1MB.
I have left the app up and running for a while with no indication of any kind of connection to the cloud going on. Phone is plugged in and fully charged.
What do I need to do to get data from the cloud moved to the phone.
Things to keep in mind:
Before I installed the app, I made sure the phone iOS was fully updated.
I do not sync any other devices to the iCloud (I have the mac version but stopped using it long ago due to the inability for the iPhone and mac to sync up without continual problems.) The mac version sync is set to OFF.
Also, is there a way to back up the 39MB file that is now on iCloud before I sync, as now I am worried something will go wrong and the sync will go in reverse and erase the data on the cloud with the empty phone data.
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Support Staff 1 Posted by drewmccormack on 17 Oct, 2015 09:31 AM
> So after this, the first order of business is to get the cloud data installed on the phone. So to do this, I open the app and click on Sync, and then slide the on/off button to the right (after making sure Cloud Service is set to iCloud.) The response to this is status message "iCloud data is fully downloaded.". At one point it did say "downloading", although I have a 39MB file on the cloud and it indicated it was only downloading something like 1MB.
I’m a bit confused. It sounds like you are not actually syncing any devices, so why is there data in the cloud?
Am I right to assume you turned on the sync just before you upgraded your phone, to try to back up the data? The problem with this is the way iCloud works. Mental Case puts the data in a local folder on the phone, and later iCloud uploads it. My guess is that you have a lot of data, and didn’t wait for it to fully upload before you installed the new phone. (39MB is not very much data.)
The best way to migrate between phones is to use Apple’s migration approach. You backup your original phone to iTunes or iCloud, and on the new phone, you restore that backup. That would bring back your Mental Case data as it was, and that is how you are supposed to upgrade. Mental Case sync is not intended as a backup solution.
My recommendation is to follow Apple’s approach if possible. Backup your old phone to iTunes or iCloud, and then restore on your new phone. This will give you not only the Mental Case data, but data from other apps.
If you really don’t want to do this, another option would be to leave Mental Case on the old phone open for a while. Hopefully the data will upload, and when it is finished, you can switch on the new sync. But if the sync was already a problem on the Mac, I can imagine it might also be a problem with iPhones. I think your best option is the Apple backup.
Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Drew
2 Posted by zeppo on 20 Oct, 2015 02:01 AM
My recollection was that I had sync turned on on the iPhone app and turned off. I guess I just thought that it would backup data to the cloud. The phone is a warranty replacement and I had to delete the data on the old phone before leaving the store. But I do have a backup from earlier this month that will be close enough. I'll give it a try. I guess I'll find out then if I had sync turned on or not. If so, I hope it doesn't immediately sync to the cloud data after the backup is restored and keep the cloud data, since I guess that may be data uploaded from the new phone when I installed it at the store.
EDIT to above: "turned on on the iPhone app and turned off on the mac app." (It is certainly turned off on the mac app).
3 Posted by zeppo on 20 Oct, 2015 05:59 AM
Well, after installing the backup the mental case app won't let me access it. The icon is darkened and where it would say "Mental Case" below it, instead it says "Waiting..."
So I am guessing that I did have the sync on and it is having trouble with the cloud, but who knows. The other flashcard apps I have installed are doing the same thing. I deleted the others to see if it might speed up resolution with Mental Case, but hours later, it still says "waiting..." Wifi has been on. I may try to reinstall the backup again, but this time do it without an internet connection and see if that allows me to access it before it perhaps is attempting to connect to the cloud.
Support Staff 4 Posted by drewmccormack on 20 Oct, 2015 07:17 AM
You mean the Mental Case app itself shows ‘Waiting…’? That is odd.
Are you trying to install that from the Mac App Store? That would probably be best. Note that the data itself is not stored in the app, so you can reinstall from the Mac App Store without replacing any data.
Your old data will be found like this:
1. Go to your old hard drive
2. Open your old home folder, the one with your name on it. It should be in Users
3. With that folder open in Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder
4. Enter
Library/Containers
5. Locate the folder called com.mentalfaculty.mentalcase.mac
6. Make a copy of it to your new computer
7. Repeat the steps above in your new home folder, moving the existing com.mentalfaculty.mentalcase.mac to your Trash
8. Drag the com.mentalfaculty.mentalcase.mac that you found in your old data into place
9. Before you launch Mental Case, I recommend doing this to prevent syncing when you launch:
https://mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com/kb/mental-case-for-mac-os-x/fixing-interface-glitches <https://mentalfaculty.tenderapp.com/kb/mental-case-for-mac-os-x/fixing-interface-glitches>
10. When you have doing that, and restarted the computer, you can launch MC.
11. If everything works, I recommend going into the Preferences of Mental Case and pressing ‘Reset’ in the iCloud sync settings, to clear the cloud data.
12. Setup a good backup system like Time Machine or Backblaze.
Kind regards,
Drew
5 Posted by zeppo on 20 Oct, 2015 08:55 AM
I mean the icon on the iPhone is darkened and says "Waiting..." below it where it would normally say "Mental Case". But I am confused. The instructions you give would seem to apply to the mac app. It is the iOS iPhone app that I am trying to restore from a backup that I saved on my mac via iTunes (rather than backing up to the cloud, which would cost money to buy the extra back up space).
I do use Time Machine, though that of course only backs up my mac and not the phone.
I'm guessing the cloud data is compromised and I should delete it. But even though I have an iTunes backup of the phone, it was my thought that the scheduling data was saved on the cloud. If there is nothing stored in the cloud that isn't stored on the phone, then I guess it can't hurt if I go to the iCloud manage data function in my phone settings and delete the Mental Case data before I attempt to restore my iPhone backup again. But I'm not sure which is the case.
PS I edited my prior comment to make it clearer.
Support Staff 6 Posted by drewmccormack on 20 Oct, 2015 09:12 AM
Ah, I thought the problem was on the Mac. Apologies.
In that case, you probably have to restore the whole iPhone. I’m not sure if that is an option, because it would replace the data in other apps too.
The sync may work, but it could take a while. If you want to try this, I recommend this:
1. Install a clean/empty version of Mental Case on iOS from the App Store
2. Press the reset button in the sync section on iOS
3. Press the reset button in the sync preferences on the Mac
4. Turn on sync on the Mac
5. Be prepared to wait while it uploads
6. Turn on sync on iPhone. You should see the data start to download. Could take a long time.
7. Wait for the data to appear, with the app running (plug in to electricity).
If you don’t want to try the sync route, you could try transferring the Mac library directly to the iPhone. Here is how you would do that:
1. On Mac, click on Finder.
2. Choose Go > Go to Folder
3. Enter
~/Library/Containers/com.mentalfaculty.mentalcase.mac/Data/Library/Application Support/Mental Case
(One space after Application, one space after Mental)
4. You should see Library.mentalcase2lib. Right click on it, and choose Compress
5. Drag the new zip file out, select it, and choose File > Get Info
6. Enter the new name: NewLibrary.mentalcase2libzip
7. Move the file to your iPhone, using a problem like Dropbox or some other file handling app. (I think AirDrop may work too)
8. On the iPhone, select the file and choose Open In…
9. Choose Mental Case
10. It should ask if you want to replace your library. You can do that. It will completely erase existing data with the data from the Mac.
Drew
7 Posted by zeppo on 20 Oct, 2015 03:37 PM
Sorry for the confusion, but I do not want to use data from the Mac app. I haven't used the Mac app in over a year due. I have about 4500 notes showing due on that app versus on average 50 per day on the iPhone.
I have an iTunes backup of my old iPhone that is stored on my Mac, not the cloud, from earlier this month that I can restore to my new phone. But when I tried this I got the "waiting... " issue. I can try it again .
You seem to be assuming that if I am turning on the sync on the iPhone app, I must be turning it on the mac app as well, because otherwise what is the point, right? But that is not the case. I turned it on on the phone only because I thought perhaps it would give me some sort of data backup on the cloud (perhaps an erroneous assumption) should anything happen to my phone.
8 Posted by zeppo on 21 Oct, 2015 04:43 AM
PS - I resolved the "waiting..." problem. I believe the restore process may have had a problem with the fact that I had restrictions turned on for buying apps. I turned the restrictions off and then went to the app store updates and clicked on Mental Case there. It loaded Mental Case with all the data from my October 2 backup. I closed Mental Case before it could schedule any notes. I'm wondering if it is possible that, assuming my cloud data was not deleted or corrupted somehow, I might let the app sync to the cloud and get more current scheduling data. But I don't know what exactly is stored on the cloud. If there is a chance I have good data on the cloud, I would like to keep that and use it since the data on the phone is from October 2 and the cloud data should be from last Thursday.
Support Staff 9 Posted by drewmccormack on 21 Oct, 2015 06:47 AM
You don’t have much to lose by trying. Mental Case will attempt to merge the data, so if the data in the cloud is not complete, it simply won’t change anything. You should not lose any data.
You have a backup at least, so even if it really did go wrong, you could restore. Maybe worth making a new backup now. (Don’t override the old one.)
Drew
10 Posted by zeppo on 21 Oct, 2015 08:33 AM
After the app finally loaded, it showed 776 notes due. I went to the sync control and sync was turned off.I don't know if my recollection was wrong and I did not have it turned on, or if it is automatically turned off when an iTunes iPhone backup is restored.
Before i switched it on, I noticed that the cloud data section on the app showed around 48MB to be downloaded, and that this amount was counting down (I presume being downloaded) even before I turned on the sync switch. So I let it count down until it said "cloud data is fully downloaded" and then I flipped on the sync switch. But nothing further happened. Still shows 776 notes due. So I guess I'll just flipped through all the cards with the default set to marking them as correct. That should catch me up on a lot.
Support Staff 11 Posted by drewmccormack on 21 Oct, 2015 09:04 AM
48MB does not sound like much data, and I recall you had quite a lot, maybe gigabytes.
I think probably you enabled the sync, but it didn’t have time to upload all the data. Something like that.
Might be an idea just to hit reset in the sync.
Drew
12 Posted by zeppo on 21 Oct, 2015 02:35 PM
The most I ever recall being stored on the cloud in the past was somewhere around 170MB. I look back on some of my past inquiries here and have previously stated it has always been under 200MB. I have a lot of notes, but there are no images on them. That said, I think you are right about it being a low amount. I thought I had about 139MB of data in iCloud documents storage, and when I checked after deleting my old phone data, it showed 39MB, so I thought I must have just been mistaken in thinking 139. Now I'm thinking my memory was probably correct and something happened tot he data, but who knows.
What data is stored on the cloud? Is it just scheduling data? I haven't added any new notes for months. As I said, my scheduled cards per day has gone down to around 409 to 80 cards a day, even though I have about 6500 cards in my schedule overall.
I may go ahead and try a sync to the mac as well just to see if I can get a successful update of those cards, and if it doesn't work, just time machine it back to prior to the sync.
13 Posted by zeppo on 22 Oct, 2015 12:46 PM
After marking all 776 notes as correct yesterday, this morning it scheduled only 72, so it is back within range of what had been getting scheduled each day.
But I also got a pop up message stating iCloud sync has been disabled due to unexpected error. The data in the cloud has not changed and is still 39.8MB
Support Staff 14 Posted by drewmccormack on 22 Oct, 2015 12:52 PM
My recommendation is to clear that data in the cloud using the reset button.
Drew
15 Posted by zeppo on 23 Oct, 2015 11:46 AM
I reset yesterday and it removed all the mental case data from the cloud. Then I turned it on today and the data is now at 38.1MB , which is slightly less than it was before. Only 50 cards scheduled today so scheduling seems to be generally back in line with what it was before.
drewmccormack closed this discussion on 11 Feb, 2016 05:32 PM.