Thanks for the suggestion. its not that syncing isn’t on, its that its flaky. By way of example I use notes in my iphone, ipad and mac. The phone version doesn’t sync when I open it if it was already running. I have to swipe close it and open it again or make a change to a note to get it to sync. ipad version is fine, mac version is fine. This for the past 6 months or so.
As an example of how interested apple is in all this see Exchange calendar not syncing in macOS Mo… - Apple Community for a running ‘why doesn’t apple read this?’ on the calendar/exchange issue.