Best way to bulk move contacts -> iCloud?

[ls1dreams]

Hi all,

At a previous company, when I setup an exchange account on my phone, it set the default contact creation to be that outlook account rather than iCloud.

Now, I have hundreds of contacts in there that I want to move into iCloud so they will be automatically backed up.

What's the simplest/easiest way to do this? I no longer have access to that outlook account, which may complicate things.

From what I can tell iOS only lets you move one at a time.

I honestly wouldn't mind doing a full clean-up if I could export everything to my macbook, sort through them, and then re-import to iCloud.

 

[Armen]

Hi all,

At a previous company, when I setup an exchange account on my phone, it set the default contact creation to be that outlook account rather than iCloud.

Now, I have hundreds of contacts in there that I want to move into iCloud so they will be automatically backed up.

What's the simplest/easiest way to do this? I no longer have access to that outlook account, which may complicate things.

From what I can tell iOS only lets you move one at a time.

I honestly wouldn't mind doing a full clean-up if I could export everything to my macbook, sort through them, and then re-import to iCloud.

If the contacts physically reside on your iPhone they should automatically be backed up to iCloud if you have contacts enabled in your icloud settings on your phone. I don't have contacts toggled for my exchange account so I don't know if they are just displayed in contacts but reside on exchange only or if they are both.

 

[KALLT]

If the contacts physically reside on your iPhone they should automatically be backed up to iCloud if you have contacts enabled in your icloud settings on your phone. I don't have contacts toggled for my exchange account so I don't know if they are just displayed in contacts but reside on exchange only or if they are both.

I don't think that this is true. When these contacts reside in Outlook, they are tied to that account, not iCloud. A system backup will keep all of them, but once you remove Outlook from your account list, the contacts will go with it.

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I don't think that there is an easier way to do this while circumventing your Outlook account. On your Mac you can simply copy your contacts to another account, but this isn't possible on iOS. There may be some third-party applications that can do this.

 

[Armen]

I don't think that this is true. When these contacts reside in Outlook, they are tied to that account, not iCloud. A system backup will keep all of them, but once you remove Outlook from your account list, the contacts will go with it.

If I remember correctly when you remove an Exchange account it prompts you whether or not it should delete entries from your phone in the process. If you say no I think it retains contacts and calendar entries that were created by exchange. Once this is done I think those contacts are considered local and will sync with iCloud.

 

[KALLT]

If I remember correctly when you remove an Exchange account it prompts you whether or not it should delete entries from your phone in the process. If you say no I think it retains contacts and calendar entries that were created by exchange. Once this is done I think those contacts are considered local and will sync with iCloud.

No, I think it only does that with iCloud accounts. I've just checked what happens when I disable contacts on one of my Exchange accounts and it will remove them.

 

[simon lefisch]

Hi all,

At a previous company, when I setup an exchange account on my phone, it set the default contact creation to be that outlook account rather than iCloud.

Now, I have hundreds of contacts in there that I want to move into iCloud so they will be automatically backed up.

What's the simplest/easiest way to do this? I no longer have access to that outlook account, which may complicate things.

From what I can tell iOS only lets you move one at a time.

I honestly wouldn't mind doing a full clean-up if I could export everything to my macbook, sort through them, and then re-import to iCloud.

The easiest way to move all your contacts to iCloud would be to sign in to your exchange account via owa and export all your contacts to a .cvf file (or whatever the format is). Then log in to your iCloud account via a browser and import the cvf file. *bamm* all your contacts are now in iCloud and will show up on your phone.

I recently did this for one of my accounts and it took all of 3 minutes.

 

[KALLT]

The easiest way to move all your contacts to iCloud would be to sign in to your exchange account via owa and export all your contacts to a .cvf file (or whatever the format is).

That assumes that they have access to OWA:

I no longer have access to that outlook account, which may complicate things.

 

[simon lefisch]

That assumes that they have access to OWA:

My bad. Must've skipped that line

 

[Armen]

No, I think it only does that with iCloud accounts. I've just checked what happens when I disable contacts on one of my Exchange accounts and it will remove them.

well boo! then. I guess I was wrong or maybe I was thinking google contacts? /shrug.