Sync failed

I currently have over 515 annotations that have yet to be synced from my iPad. I have sent feedback on this several times and have heard nothing. The info at the bottom of my last feedback was:

Gospel Library 4.0.5 9997
iOS 10.2.1 on iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi
iOS Locale: en-US
Logged in as jksorensen
Unsynced annotations: 515
gospellibrary://content/scriptures/nt/matt/17?lang=eng (English 000, v3-33)
Version: Schema 3, Catalog 172

I make a lot of notes when I study. I don't want to lose them. Otherwise I would probably just delete the data and start over. How can I get this to sync so my notes are not lost?

Is this something recent you noticed with Gospel Library 4.0.5 (within the past two weeks), or is it a problem you've had for a while?
Do you happen to have any tags with commas in their name?

@jksorensen I just checked with our services team, and it looks like you have six notes that are more than 20,000 characters long. The rest of your annotations should be syncing correctly, but unfortunately we seem to be calculating the unsynced annotation count incorrectly. You can verify that your others are syncing (or not) by signing in on a different device or on the web.

We're working on improving the sync error handling and reporting in the app, but in the mean time you can try to find and fix those notes so you are in a working state again if you want.

@sbradshaw: It is somewhat recent I believe, probably with 4.0.5.

@nicknick: that doesn't sound right because I just made a small annotation on my ipad. Closed the app. Opened it. Clicked sync to be sure and then I go to the web and the annotation is not there. Can you point me at all to the annotations that are too long... like which verses they are in? I do make a lot of notes and continue to add onto existing annotations, so I can believe that. I don't think I have any annotations "open" or in a "working" state as far as I know. Because I have so many annotations, I don't know how I would ever find which ones might be the offenders...

Given that it appears to not merely be a problem with counting but that it actually is not syncing all my annotations, even small ones, is there another step I can take or something I can do?

I tried updating an existing note in the app and also creating a new one, then checked in the browser and did see that it got updated. When I update from the web browser and check on the app (after closing and opening), I do not see the update in the app. For my test today, it appears to push from the app okay but does not pull correctly. I thought what I checked yesterday was that my annotation failed to push from the app either. From a few tests now, it looks good though to push but not pull. Not sure what I did different before. Does this mean that I should be safe deleting the app and installing it again on my ipad or is there still some question about some long annotations?

I thought I posted an update earlier but I don't see it... and don't see it pending so I'll repeat. I ran a few more tests this morning and confirmed that I can see added content from my annotations on my ipad updated to the web. It appears that it is pushing content. I had tried this before and didn't see it. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong but after several tests it does appear to be pushing content. It is not able to pull content though. I added an annotation on the web and could never see it on my iPad. With this information, would it be right for me to delete the app and its data and reinstall and download the content again, or am I at risk of losing some of my really long annotations still? Thanks

I think you'd be at risk of losing your 6 longer notes that haven't synced. There may need to be an app update to handle that situation better... I'm sure you're not the only one who could have that problem.

jksorensen wrote:I do not see the update in the app. For my test today, it appears to push from the app okay but does not pull correctly. I thought what I checked yesterday was that my annotation failed to push from the app either.

Keep in mind that the sync may fail when it encounters the large note and cause all subsequent notes to not sync. Since we don't know the order of the sync, the results may appear random.

I'd wait until the large note bug gets fixed.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll wait for an update for this to be resolved. Any idea when that may be? Is this a weeks or months kind of thing? Thanks.

jksorensen: We have a beta version we're testing with a way to see and fix sync errors. Would you be interested in getting access to that beta and seeing if it fixed the problems for you? Send me your email address and I'll get you added if so.

Does this latest beta for iOS have a fix for this sync failure? If I download the beta do I risk losing my notes? I have testflight installed, just wondering if this release is intended to fix this problem and if I risk losing notes by trying it.

You won't risk losing anything by installing the beta on TestFlight. The new update has some new screens that allow you to see which annotations are failing to swung and to resolve the problems. It should fix most most sync problems that we know of.

I installed the beta. It showed me some notes that had too many characters, which I fixed. After doing that, it still says I have 3 errors. I click on it, and don't see anything. I don't know how to fix the remaining 3 errors.

As noted above, I still have errors with the update. I have submitted a report from my tablet but still haven't heard anything. Do you need any more info for me or is there something I can do to help run this down?

@jksorensen I don't know why you would still have it showing errors... I added a way to print them out in the feedback email, which should be available in the next release. I'll try to remember to post here when that's available.

For now, though, this new release should have solved the majority of your original problem, which was that your iPad wasn't syncing hundreds of annotations. Is that right? You can verify that your annotations are syncing as expected by signing in on another device or signing in on lds.org. Any changes that show up on multiple devices are syncing properly, while any changes that you only see on the device that made the change most likely have an error of some sort.