Change sync target -> lost all notebooks

I deduced from some old post that for syncing in android app, one may have to click many times on the sync button, till sync is said to be complete. There is quite a bunch of time I did not try syncing on android. I don't know if things improved. In my case it was we webdav on pcloud. It led me to difficult problem like not synched notebook which is a difficult problem to solve if notebook are big!

You're right, as the app seems to reset somehow and restart syncing many times, sometimes even displaying "deleting" without any reason! Looks a bit unstable...

Hi all,

Syncing with my Android smartphone still doesn't work, Joplin only retrieves 1 notebook out of ~60...

Any clue would be appreciated!

Hi all,

Back from a short vacation, I once again tried to sync my Android devices (smartphone + tablet) with the original Joplin files on my OneDrive but to no avail: same error, Joplin only retrieves 1 notebook out of ~60. It seems that the mobile app is wrecked or maybe useless with some sync targets: can you please confirm? It's a pity as I move from Evernote to Joplin as Joplin would support all devices too, which is a requirement for me... :disappointed:

Thanks in advance for any help!

Hi all,

I can confirm that Android mobile devices and Linux desktop cannot correctly sync to OneDrive. All instances but Windows 10 application can retrieve notes from the sync target, but fail to create notebooks, resulting in all notes being at the root.

What's really surprising is that only one (first-level) notebook is created, named TEMP. I just can't understand why others are totally ignored by the sync process...

Hope someone may help on this issue as it prevents me from using Joplin, the main feature for me being the multi-device sync capability... :disappointed:

Please, please, any clue for this issue?

Hi Community!

I finally managed to sync my Linux machine, using onedriver to connect to my MS OneDrive, then importing the whole backup from the original Windows machine. The latter allowed to recreate the notebooks, which wouldn't create despite the correct access to the files on OneDrive -> mystery #1.

However, I still can't sync notebooks to my Android smartphone: uninstall/install Joplin on the mobile to clean all data, configure it to retrieve files from OneDrive and trigger the synchronization. The app starts retrieving files but stops really quickly without any error message, as if the sync was done, but grabbed notes (all notes? don't know...) without any notebook -> mystery #2.

Moreover, when I click again on the Sync button, the process seems to stop if the app in not in the foreground! And exits again very quickly...

I'm open to any test on my smartphone, so please give instructions so I can provide logs, error reports or whatever could help solving this issue! This is one of the main value of the app that is thrown to bin here!

Thanks in advance for any help!

I cannot answer your mysteries #1 and #2. Especially #1 sounds really weird. Are these machines really in sync now?

Joplin is not able to sync in the background. So sync will stop if the app is in the background. For daily use thats fine, but for the first sync the display has to be active (!) and the app needs to be in the foreground.

Are all your devices connected to the same OneDrive account? You can check by accessing the web interface and check the content of the onedrive folder. What does your sync status show? Does it show the right number of overall notes?

Hi @Yann1ck !

Joplin is not able to sync in the background

This is indeed a real issue for the first sync, as the current zipped backup file on my source machine weighs around 400MB! I just can't tap on my smartphone's screen to keep it awaken for hours!

As per you questions:

  • Are all your devices connected to the same OneDrive account? YES, I have only one Premium account.
  • What does your sync status show? Both source machine and Linux machine are synch'ed, notes edited on any machine appear with modifications on the other.
  • Does it show the right number of overall notes? YES, both source and Linux machines display the same notebooks / sub-notebooks / notes structure and numbers.

This is clearly a mobile issue and I just can't overpass it as there's no 'import' function in the mobile app. I'd like to:

  • put the smartphone in flight mode,
  • push a fresh backup from the source machine to the smartphone,
  • import it in the background,
  • restore the sync source to "OneDrive",
  • and finally reconnect the smartphone to wifi/4G to update the sync status.

@laurent , any chance to get an import function in the mobile app? Does the current behavior handle large databases on the first sync and how?

Thanks for any help!

The development options or some apps will allow you to force the screen to stay on. I've personally used a "gaming overlay" which came with the phone, of which the only only useful feature is an "autoplay mode" which dims the screen but keeps the phone active - perfect for a long import.

My way around this was to deactivate the display time-out during sync. That should be possible on most Android phones. Depending on your connection it shouldnt take hours.

I didnt mean the sync between source machine and the Linux machine. I meant the sync with the mobile device. In the app settings you can view your "sync status", on the desktop as well (in the menu "help"). It should look like this:
image
Is it the same between the desktop and mobile? From my experience Joplin will download all files and resources first. Your folders will only show up at the very end of the sync, so it looks like nothing is happening.

Moreover the error log of your mobile device would be helpful. Perhaps it shows whats going wrong.

Personally I dont think that 400MB is that much data. My database used to be bigger and I had not problems syncing with OneDrive on multiple devices. And import is one of those things that breaks sync targets quite easily, so it can do more harm than good.

Right, finally found the option in the Dev menu...

I'll try to sync again with app in foreground, no display sleep, full-throat connection, then I'll let you know of the mobile sync status result!

Thanks a lot!

And the result is... OK! It finally synchronized the whole database and the issue was then clearly related to the app's inability to sync in the background! :open_mouth: There's a real possible improvement here!

So thanks a lot to all of you who provided help and hints and long live to Joplin!

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Thats great! :slight_smile:

Background sync would be great, but its not easy to implement. There are a lot of posts in the forum and on GitHub about this.

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