Please explain or help: contacts-email accounts vs. syncing

[Munchkinsdad]

Ok, here goes a few questions for the tech savvy people here.

I have 4 seperate email accounts on my device, Yahoo, Verizon and Gmail, and hotmail. Each account has a different amount of contacts but some contacts are the same in a couple of the accounts. Why don't they all sync together to keep all my contacts together?

This leads to the next question, why am I getting duplicate names in address book? Because several accounts have the same names ? How can this problem be rectified?

If I use iCloud, why can't all contacts be merged in iCloud, then deleted in each email accounts and then re synced to have the same contacts in each account? It seems iCloud is duplicating or adding same names from each account into its one iCloud account.

Is it normal for iPhone contact list to take contacts from each email account and show them in the list?

I know it sounds confusing but anyone who has experienced and/or fixed this problem, I would appreciate the help.


The whole purpose is to have one clean contact list.

Thanks!

 

[MooneyFlyer]

I just sorted out something similar. It's not painless... here goes.

Ok, here goes a few questions for the tech savvy people here.

I have 4 seperate email accounts on my device, Yahoo, Verizon and Gmail, and hotmail. Each account has a different amount of contacts but some contacts are the same in a couple of the accounts. Why don't they all sync together to keep all my contacts together?

This leads to the next question, why am I getting duplicate names in address book? Because several accounts have the same names ? How can this problem be rectified?

If I use iCloud, why can't all contacts be merged in iCloud, then deleted in each email accounts and then re synced to have the same contacts in each account? It seems iCloud is duplicating or adding same names from each account into its one iCloud account.

These are all related. You are getting multiple names in the address book because you are showing "All Contacts". To check, open Contacts and click "Groups" in the upper left. You should have the ability to select one or all of the groups below.

You can merge these all into iCloud (iCloud asks if you want to merge them when you first turn it on) and then go into iCloud.com and delete the dupes. Then, on your phone, only show the contacts for iCloud. If you have merged and are showing all 4 accounts and iCloud, you probably have even more than duplicates already.

Is it normal for iPhone contact list to take contacts from each email account and show them in the list?

Yes, I think this is the intended behavior. You could imagine having a work account and a home account with different contact lists and showing them all in one list on your phone.

I know it sounds confusing but anyone who has experienced and/or fixed this problem, I would appreciate the help.

The whole purpose is to have one clean contact list.

Thanks!

Agree - but it is going to take some manual work. You are starting off with overlapping data across several accounts and getting it all cleaned up won't be free but it shouldn't be terribly hard.

 

[Munchkinsdad]

You explained that really well! I appreciate it. Makes everything that much clearer.