Using Surface with iPhone, iCloud, and iTunes

If you’re already using iCloud, you can keep using it to sync your photos, contacts, and bookmarks to your Surface.

On your Surface, download iCloud for Windows from the Microsoft store.

Install iCloud for Windows, then restart your device.

iCloud will open and ask you to sign in. If you don’t see it, go to Start , search for iCloud, and then select it.

Sign in with your AppleID.

Choose what you want to sync to your Surface and select apply.

How to Sync iPad and iPhone Without iCloud

From the above-introduced method, you can see that iCloud only allows you to sync part of data between your iPhone and iPad. What if the data you want to sync is not included in the types of data that iCloud supports? In that case, you’ll need an iPhone data transfer tool — EaseUS MobiMover to help.

As a comprehensive data transfer tool, EaseUS MobiMover allows you to sync all kinds of iOS data like messages, photos, music, contacts, etc. Besides, it has the ability to transfer, delete, add, edit data on your device, or download videos from any site via URL/link. Here are the steps to sync iPhone and iPad data via EaseUS MobiMover.

Step 1. Connect your iPhone and iPad to your computer with compatible USB cables and tap on «Trust This Computer» on both devices. Start EaseUS MobiMover and navigate to the «Phone to Phone» mode. For data syncing between iPhone and iPad, you need to switch to the correct direction (transfer data from iPhone [name] to iPad [name]). Click «Next».

Step 2. Here, MobiMover allows you to transfer all types of data, like audio files, pictures, videos, messages, contacts, etc. You need to selectively choose the category/categories you want to transfer to your iPad, and click «Transfer» to initiate the process.

Step 3. Wait some time to let MobiMover finish transferring all the selected files. After that, go to the related apps to view the synced files on your iPad.

The Solution: iCloud

If you want to keep the data on your iPhone and iPad in sync, use Apple iCloud to keep all your devices in sync at all times. As long as both your devices connect to the internet and have the same iCloud settings—and you access them using the same Apple ID—they'll stay in sync.

Here's how to set up iCloud:

Open the Settings app on one device, tap your name to open the Apple ID screen, then select iCloud.

Turn on the toggle switches next to every category of app and content that you want to sync between the iPhone and iPad. Repeat this process with the second device.

The settings must be set identically on both devices for the sync to work.

Go to Settings > Passwords & Accounts and ensure the email accounts are set up the same on both devices.

Go to Settings > iTunes & App Store and turn on automatic downloads for Music, Apps, Books & Audiobooks, and Updates on both devices by moving the toggle switches next to them to the On/green position.

After you set up iCloud on both devices, they'll remain synced. This approach keeps the majority of your information identical across both devices. The iCloud is accessible on iOS, macOS, and Windows devices, and it keeps your data secure when it is in storage and when it is in transit.

How to keep text messages in sync between your iPhone and iPad

1. Open Settings on your iPhone.

2. Tap «Messages,» and then tap «Text Message Forwarding.»

3. Find your iPad in the list of devices (it is probably the only one) and turn it on.

4. A verification code might appear on your iPad. If so, enter the number you see on the iPhone.

Now, all of your text messages will remain in sync between the two devices.

Now when a call comes into your iPhone, it will ring on your iPad as well. Tap the Accept button to pick up the call on your iPad and start talking. On your Mac, a small notification pops up alerting you to the incoming call. Click the Accept button to pick up the call on your computer.

To make a phone call from your iPad to a specific contact, open the Contacts app. Select the contact and tap the number you wish to call. The calling screen pops up while you wait for the person to answer.

You can dial a number manually on your iPad by opening the FaceTime app. Tap the + icon and type the phone number. Make sure the call type is set to Audio and tap the Audio button to place the call.

Why is my Apple Mac, iPad or iPhone Calendar not Syncing?

We all lead busy lives and many of us depend on our paper diary or smartphone calendar apps to keep track of our schedule.

Many of our Apple-based customers use the built-in Calendar app in macOS, iPhone and iPad.

Keeping your calendar in sync between devices should be easy, but there’s a lot of reasons it might go wrong. Here we explain some of the more common causes of calendar events not syncing between iPhone, iPad and Mac.

The Fundamentals Of Calendar Sync

It first helps to understand the very basics of what’s happening when we sync calendars.

You will likely have at least one service provider account on your device. These accounts keep your calendars in sync.

Most commonly, the service provider will be Apple iCloud, Microsoft Exchange and/or Google Calendar. Other lesser-known providers may use something called CalDAV, which is essentially the same thing.

Any of these systems are designed to sync calendars between your phone, tablet and computer.

In order to maintain an up-to-date calendar, the devices themselves must send any calendar changes to the service provider. Your other devices can then periodically check with the same service provider, to see if any changes were made, in order to keep themselves up-to-date.

So, what are the most common issues?

1 – The device or account is offline

This is always the first check.

Any kind of warning, password popup or exclamation mark on your calendar app indicates some issue with your device communicating with the service provider. This means it won’t be able to send or receive any calendar event changes and will therefore fall out of sync.

Start by checking your internet connection is online. The easiest way for most users to check their internet connection is to try loading up any website. A particularly good test is to perform a Google search for something very random, that way you know that the browser isn’t loading up a previously-saved page and must therefore have internet access.

If you definitely have internet access, restart your Mac from the Apple menu (top left of screen) > Restart. If you’re on iPhone or iPad, shut it down and restart. This sounds like overkill, but it guarantees your Calendar app has been fully quit and reopened, as it’s easy for inexperienced users to simply close the window and not fully quit the app.

After restarting the device, check whether the calendar account is no longer showing any warnings, or prompting for passwords.

If your account password is being refused or is incorrect, you may need to reset it by contacting the relevant service provider.

Refer to our article “6 Reasons Apple Mail Keeps Asking For A Password”, as the guidance in there for resetting an email password is equally relevant to calendar syncing accounts, too.

2 – You saved a calendar event in a different account

At the start we mentioned several types of calendar service provider. Many people will have at least one of these account types on their device, usually two or more.

Let’s say you have an iCloud and a Google account set up on your iPhone and iPad.

You create a new event in your Google calendar on your iPhone, and it syncs to the iPad no problem. But maybe you only set up iCloud on your Mac, and not the Google account too. You’re not going to see the new event until you set up the Google account on your Mac.

This scenario might be extra puzzling because you do have iCloud on all 3 devices. So if on the previous day you unwittingly added a new event to your iCloud calendar, it would have synced to all 3 devices without any apparent problems.

This multi-account situation causes all kinds of confusion and headaches for users who simply don’t realise or understand where (i.e under what account) they are actually saving their calendar data. It effectively causes your calendar data to become split between multiple service providers.

As such, it pays to have a clear understanding of what accounts you have signed into on your devices, and which of those accounts are able to sync calendars.

Our usual advice to most users is aim to only have one account enabled for calendar syncing, to avoid any confusion. At most, you might want two; one for work, one for personal. But then you need to be 100% confident in exactly how to save new calendar events in the correct account, and both accounts must be set up on all your devices.

To check what accounts you have active at the moment:

Apple menu (top left) > System Preferences > Internet Accounts

Check which accounts have “Calendars” as an option and which ones are ticked.

iPadOS and iOS
(iPad and iPhone)

Settings app > Calendars > Accounts

Tap each account in turn and check which ones have “Calendars” as an option, and which ones have that function switched on.

3 – You haven’t enabled a sub-calendar

Many Calendar apps allow you to set up several sub-calendars for different purposes. A common example is having a separate work and home calendar, but you might have one for holidays or other categories. Often you can colour those events separately to help you stay organised.

Remember that we can also have multiple calendar service providers. Each of those service provider accounts might have several sub-calendars. So very quickly, this can get confusing.

If a calendar account is properly in-sync between all devices, you should see every one of your sub-calendars on every device. On the Mac it’s usually quite clear to see which calendars are enabled by looking in the left sidebar, or by clicking the Calendars button in the top left. But on the iPhone or iPad you must, usually, tap the Calendars button to see which sub-calendars you have ‘ticked’ at any time.

The idea is that you can deselect (“un-tick”) individual sub-calendars, to help reduce clutter in a busy calendar. For instance, you might only want to see ‘Work’ events but not ‘Home’ events during the day.

However, beware that if for example you add an event to your ‘Work’ sub-calendar on the Mac, but that same sub-calendar is un-ticked on the iPhone, the event will not appear until you choose to show that sub-calendar. This will manifest like a sync error, when in fact the data has synced, you have just inadvertently chosen not to show it in the calendar app.

4 – Your sharing is set up incorrectly

Sometimes the problem is that a 3rd party, such as a colleague or family member, is trying to share their calendar with you but you cannot see their events or changes.

If you’re using Apple iCloud, you can share any of your calendars with other iCloud users. The same is true with Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar.

Generally speaking, there isn’t much you can do to troubleshoot this apart from un-sharing the calendar and then re-inviting the third party again. The process is slightly different for each service provider, so search their support pages directly to confirm the process.

Most of the time, un-sharing and re-sharing will work and reset the synchronisation. The only reason this might not work is when there’s a further, underlying password or syncing problem with the account, covered by the various points above.

5 – General troubleshooting

Most calendar syncing services have a web-based calendar, which is really useful for troubleshooting:

Microsoft 365 / Exchange

Firstly, by logging into the above services using your web browser, you are confirming that you know your calendar service account password is correct. That’s a strong start.

Secondly, a useful check is to create a new, test event in the web-based calendar. That means you are 100% certain your calendar event is stored on the service provider’s system, completely independent of any problems your devices might be having. If any of your devices fail to download the test event to their calendar, you know there must be an issue with that specific device, rather than any of the others.

Lastly, you can try this in reverse. Create a test event on each of your devices, then check to see if any of them fail to appear in the web-based calendar. This diagnoses a problem with your device being unable to send changes to the calendar service provider.

It’s really just a process of elimination to work out which device(s) are not working and why.

So there you have 5 common issues and tips for troubleshooting a calendar synchronisation problem between your devices. We hope this makes sure your diary is always up-to-date on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android device or Windows PC.

If you are still having problems with you Apple Mac, iPad or iPhone calendar not syncing then please get in touch with us.

How to download photos from Google Photos

Once you’ve backed up your images to Google Photos, accessing and downloading them to your computer or phone is simple. Follow our simple guides below to find out how.

How to download Google Photos to your Mac/PC

1. Open your web browser and visit www.photos.google.com.

2. Select the photos you’d like to download to your PC/Mac. You can select multiple images by holding down Shift and selecting the first and last images of the group you’d like to download.

3. After selecting your images, click the three dot icon in the top right corner. Click Download.

How to restore photos from Google Photos to your phone

1. Open the Google Photos App on your phone and select the photo you want to restore to your phone.

2. Tap the three-dot icon in the top right-hand corner and click Save to device.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some popular FAQs that may help you:

How do you access Google Photos?

Accessing Google Photos couldn’t be easier. Simply, log into your Google Account and click Go to Google Photos. Once logged in, all of your photos and videos will be there, fully backed up. If you have any problems you can click here for Google’s how-to guide.

How to save Google Photos to iPhone?

Open the Google Photos App, select which photo or video you want to save. Tap more and then download.

Are Google Photos Private?

The photos and videos you have in Google Photos are private and only visible to you unless you intentionally share them with another user.

Now you’ve learned how to use Google Photos, transform your favorite photos into photo books, calendars, canvas prints, and much more.