Overwrite, Not Merge, iCloud Data On iPad

[SkippyThorson]

I was wondering if anyone is in the same scenario as me. My iPhone is synced to my iMac, and my iPad is synced to my MacBook. Everything on my iMac went up to my iPhone just fine, and then up to iCloud. Great and simple. I love iCloud thus far.

However, the issue is that my iPad's data is relatively out of date, namely the Calendars and Bookmarks. If I try to enable Syncing To iCloud for Calendars and Bookmarks, it asks me to "Merge" my data into what already exists in iCloud. This will double everything up, and I don't want to do that.

Is there any way to wipe the info from the iPad so that the iCloud data can go down to the iPad, and then to the MacBook? How do I go about that?

 

[sesnir]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

I'd love an answer to this one too.

 

[SkippyThorson]

Well I noticed something else. If I sync with iCloud, I can not get my subscribed calendars on my iPhone. Such as US Holidays and NASCAR. I kind of wanted those...

 

[Xenious]

similar situation

I've got a similar situation where I have a Mac Pro and an Air. I want to erase all the bookmarks on the Air and pull down the data from iCloud. Either I'm mis-interpreting "merge," underestimating the intelligence of it or just missing an option. It seems like a basic thing. Either you want to merge and upload or download and over-write.

Anyone trusted a merge between Macs and not ended up with two of everything?

 

[SkippyThorson]

Xenious, I have to admit, now that you said that, I have done so with Contacts, but that's only because I was positive the iPad's Contacts were un-synced and wiped off. In this case, all 246 entries in my Address Book have been pushed up to iCloud, and no duplicates were created. Wonderful.

Calendars seems to have been less friendly. Nowhere on my iPad, iPhone, or iCloud do I see duplicate entries. However, in the Notification Center on both devices, every event comes up twice. In addition, when synced to iCloud (instead of a computer) my 2 subscribed calendars (US Holidays and Nascar) do not make the cut, and don't show up anywhere.

Bookmarks is where I'm most afraid.

I have a USB hub attached to my AirPort, where all my Flash Drives sit. Otherwise I'd never maintain the things. One holds an Export of each of my Calendars, a mass group vCard, and my Bookmarks.plst file - or whatever it is. I'd just copy them to my Macs / Devices as needed. This eliminated the chance of doubling up ALL my bookmarks.

Well, I have an idea. I'll be the brave one later on. I'll make a backup of that Bookmarks file from both the MacBook and the iMac. I'll turn on the iCloud feature on both the iPhone and the iPad, and see what happens. Worst case scenario, I have to turn it all off and restore the 2 files.

I'll report back here with the results, but it won't be until later tonight.

Unless someone else is brave enough.

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I realized in iCal that the only reason I'm seeing doubles is because I only hid my Google Calendar and didn't un-sync it. Everything from it is still there, so deleting it would take care of that. Check and check - Contacts and Calendars went up to iCloud just fine, with the exception of Subscribed Calendars.

 

[SkippyThorson]

Totally messed up. I can't believe how bad iCloud messed up what was working so good. I have everything set to sync except Calendars and Contacts.

All I did for Bookmarks was copy the file to the other computer so that both are identical, then turned on Bookmarks syncing in iCloud. It works perfectly, nothing doubled up. Bookmarks is safe for me.

My Calendars and Contacts that went into iCloud were great, and were fine going down to the devices. Then the issue was taking that data one step further and getting it on to the computers. Impossible. I started getting doubles of things, mixes of old and new... Not pretty.

I'll contine to manually manage my Calendars and Contacts with a flash drive on AirPort. Works fine for me.

 

[MacBoolie]

I had the same issue and saw this reply on another forum:

I first put the iPhone in airplane mode so it couldn't sync. Then I went into Settings -> iCloud and turned on Contacts, saying I wanted to Merge the contacts. I was then able to start deleting Contacts (the Edit button was now available in my Contacts screen). After deleting a few contacts and deciding that would take way too long I went back into Settings -> iCloud and turned off Contacts. It then asked what I wanted to do with all of the contacts on my iPhone that had been merged with iCloud contacts (though they really hadn't b/c I'd been in Airplane mode all the while). I said I did not want to keep them. I went back out to check my Contacts and they had all been deleted. Success!

With an empty Contact list I turned off Airplane mode, went back into Settings -> iCloud and turned Contacts sync back on and my iCloud contacts started immediately sync'ing down to my newly cleaned out Contact list.

I just followed these instructions on my iPad and it worked for Contacts and Calendar.