Mac to iPhone contacts syncing mess

[edjusted]

Goal: to have only *certain* Contact Groups sync to my iPhone from my Mac.
2ndary goal: to have all my Mac contacts sync'd to iCloud

My current setup: I've got all my Contacts on my Mac, and they're all syncing to iCloud. It *seems* like the only way to do this is to "move" all of the contacts that are showing as "On my Mac" to "iCloud". i.e. I no longer even have an "On my mac" section in Contacts.

I'm trying to sync only certain Contact Groups to my iPhone via iTunes. The Groups are showing up and I can select/deselect them. But every time I've sync'd, my iPhone shows no contacts at all.

Do I have to have the Contacts "on my mac" to do this? And if so, how do I keep them sync'd to iCloud? When I had *both* "on my mac" contacts and iCloud contacts, it seems like changes made to one section would never sync to the other section, so I assumed they were essential two different...err...storage areas.

 

[Ken DL]

I'm not sure I can answer all of this, but here's my experience FWIW. "On my Mac" contacts are those that live only on the Mac and are not synched to any service -- iCloud, Gmail/Google, etc. iCloud contacts are constantly synching to the iCloud service.

I would think that the preferred way of bringing your iCloud contacts to your iPhone is synching them via iCloud, not iTunes. Any contact or group that lives in iCloud will show up on your iPhone and be in synch with the Contacts app on your Mac (the iCloud set only, not the "on my Mac" set.

Re your goal: If you only want *certain* contacts and groups to synch, put those in the iCloud set and they will appear in both places. Any contacts that are just "On my Mac" or "On my iPhone" will not synch.