HELP! iCloud has merged all of our contacts ArghhH!

[b-boyben]

Yeah... it's 2017 now... a full 5+ years since the last post in this thread... AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T CREATED A FIX FOR THIS PROBLEM. As soon as you activate iCloud it merges all your contacts into it. The multiple user issue discussed above is one thing for which there is indeed a solution - multiple i/cloud accounts using Home Sharing. But here's another issue: what if you don't want to see all of your hundreds of contacts going back years on your phone, all the time? You sync them with iTunes instead, no? And do the 'select groups to sync' thing. No. Your contacts are no longer on your Mac so when you disable iCloud they disappear. I'm lost then, as to how you are then supposed to use that iTunes function at all if you've EVER used iCloud. It's totally defunct. The groups don't even show up in iTunes to be able to select them.

Once you've synced with iCloud you are locked into using it. You can't even tell Contacts app to save the iCloud contacts to you Mac. You have to export them as Vcards, then disable iCloud in the contacts preferences then import them back in and manually place them all back in the groups they were in. And, btw, that's after recreating all those groups because they no longer exist. You can't export-import a proper backup that has them grouped because the backup automatically re-enables iCloud!!! I've been playing with this for hours and it's driving me insane. I'm now resigned to doing everything by hand, copying and pasting. This SUCKS.

 

[b-boyben]

Ok, figured out a way to do this. I had turned off iCloud on my phone, thinking I'd sync it, while leaving it enabled on my Mac, thinking it would act as a backup. I had then tried to sync All Contacts through iTunes only to find my Contacts app on the phone was left empty - everything gone! - since you can't sync iCloud folders from your Mac so it synced nothing. My only choice seemed to be to use iCloud on the phone as well.

Luckily, after I synced everything through iCloud the first time and decided I didn't like it, I had backed up my phone - with all my contacts in it, grouped. So I erased my phone and restored from this backup. On the phone when you disable iCloud for Contacts it asks you if you want to delete or keep them on the phone and I had kept them, thank goodness! Why it can't offer this in OS X I don't understand! Anyway, I was able to recreate the groups on my Mac (not sure if it would have done this for me, wasn't going to risk it) and then sync all contacts through iTunes. This took them off the phone onto my Mac where they are now safely listed as 'On My Mac', in their original groups.

Now that I have them all back on my Mac the next time I sync in iTunes I can select specific groups only. I just have to be sure never to enable iCloud again!

I hope this helps anyone having the same problem.
[doublepost=1485226767][/doublepost]Also realised today that you can move notes in the Notes iPhone app in ios10 back and forth from being in iCloud to On My Phone at will. Nice! So why can't I do this with contacts??? And why can't I do it in OS X on my Mac?