Multiple Contact Groups

[ATEspo]

I am not sure how this happened but somehow I have multiple contact groups (iCloud & 2 GMail accounts). Whats the best way to go about this? Right now I have it "showing all contacts". Is there any disadvantage to having 3 sets of "groups"?

The other day, I sat at a doctors office waiting for my uncle's MRI and went through and deleted all double contacts so now each group has different contacts in it and no more duplicates (although I am not sure which group I deleted the contacts from).

Is there an easy solution to this or is is one of those "it is what it is" things with the contacts/groups in the iPhone?

Lastly, is there any way to create a new "group" so I can classify different contacts (like my employees, my hockey team, etc.)?

Thanks in advance!

 

[deeddawg]

If you're syncing contacts from multiple places you'll end up with multiple groups. On my phone I have iCloud as well as my work Exchange contacts and then groups within those. In your case you probably are syncing contacts to two gmail accounts as well as to iCloud.

I don't know how to do contact groups for gmail, but for iCloud you can create / assign groups from the iCloud Contacts section at https://www.icloud.com/#contacts by clicking the "+" at the bottom left side and selecting "New Group". You can then select "All Contacts" and drag+drop contacts onto that new group. To delete a group select it with your mouse and hit the Delete key on your keyboard. The whole groups thing in iCloud could be a lot more intuitive.

 

[ATEspo]

If you're syncing contacts from multiple places you'll end up with multiple groups. On my phone I have iCloud as well as my work Exchange contacts and then groups within those. In your case you probably are syncing contacts to two gmail accounts as well as to iCloud.

I don't know how to do contact groups for gmail, but for iCloud you can create / assign groups from the iCloud Contacts section at https://www.icloud.com/#contacts by clicking the "+" at the bottom left side and selecting "New Group". You can then select "All Contacts" and drag+drop contacts onto that new group. To delete a group select it with your mouse and hit the Delete key on your keyboard. The whole groups thing in iCloud could be a lot more intuitive.

Yes, I figured out how to make new groups on https://www.icloud.com/, that helps.

Now, I am thinking about just merging ALL my contacts into iCloud (exporting them out of GMail and into iCloud) and just disabling gmail contacts as I dont think its necessary, or is it?

It seems as thought when I create a new contact, it saves onto GMail before it saves onto iCloud, and I want to eliminate that.

 

[deeddawg]

I'm all for keeping things as simple as possible. I don't keep contacts on Gmail and don't sync contacts there. All my personal contacts are in iCloud (and sync to my mac as well). If I should some day decide to move to a different platform it will be easier having all my contacts in one spot.

That said, I do keep my work contacts seperate and sync them to my work exchange account. It's a bit cumbersome to create a new work contact from my phone though, so I usually don't bother with it there. (go to Contacts, select Groups and unclick everything but the one group you want the new contact to be in, hit Done, then + to create the new contact, and finally go back and re-click the Groups you want to be visible in Contacts. Nice and intuitive, right? Or if you don't care about specific group and just want to put in the account, you can go into Settings->Mail,Contacts,Calendar and change the default Contact account)

 

[ATEspo]

I thought I had moved all my contacts over from GMail to iCloud (exporting out of GMail and importing into iCloud). So I went into contacts - groups, and just selected my iCloud group to see how many contacts are in my phone, then I go also add the GMail group to see how many and I have like 130+ more contacts when I select GMail, even though I thought I moved them all over.

I give up, I am just going to keep all 4 accounts (iCloud, 2 GMail and my work Exchange) live and active and view ALL groups.

I did download an app (Cleanup Dupes) which did merge/delete all duplicate contacts which helped clean everything up, now its just an issue as to where the contacts are all coming from (which account).

I'm going to go home and sync my phone to my iMac, that will take all my contacts off my phone (regardless of account) and back them ALL up on my iMac via iTunes right?

 

[deeddawg]

I'm going to go home and sync my phone to my iMac, that will take all my contacts off my phone (regardless of account) and back them ALL up on my iMac via iTunes right?

It's been so long since I actually synced contacts via iTunes that I don't know just exactly what will happen.

First, so long as you have your phone syncing contacts to iCloud you may be unable to get iTunes to sync contacts. You'll need to turn off iCloud contacts sync (General->Mail,Contacts,Calendars->iCloud(underAccounts)->Contacts slider) and tell it to keep the contacts on the phone rather than delete them.
Maybe repeat for the Gmail accounts as well.

The trick though is on your Mac, I don't know what happens if you sync a bunch of contacts over from the phone. Do they duplicate iCloud contacts in your Mac's contacts or merge?

I think is probably the easiest way to clean it all up is to do it from your Mac. I'm sure there's a tool to sync / download Gmail contacts. iCloud contacts sync is easy enough. Merge the Gmail contacts into iCloud on the Mac and quit syncing contacts with Gmail on all devices.

At least that's what I'd do. Continuing to sync against multiple sources if there's not a specific reason to keep them separate just seems like kicking the can down the road.