Unable to delete or edit some Contacts

[Pine Man]

Difficult to know where to post this as it involves an iPhone, iCloud, a PC and an iMac but here goes!

My wife has an iPhone 5c and the Contacts are backed up to iCloud. No other devices are synchronised with iCloud.

I noticed that there were 35 Contacts on her iPhone but on iCloud there were 41, 6 extra Contacts that do not appear on her iPhone.

Accessing the extra 6 Contacts via iCloud I tried to edit or delete them but was not allowed to do so and I got a pop-up stating,

'Couldn't save changes to 'Contacts Name'. Your changes to this contact couldn't be saved because it was just updated by another device.'

Now there is only one device synchronised with iCloud and that is the iPhone 5c and none of the extra 6 Contacts are on it. I have tried turning off access to iCloud on the iPhone and then restarting it, set to 'merge contacts,' but I still end up with 35 Contacts on the iPhone and 6 extras in iCloud.

My wife normally administers the iPhone 5c via iCloud on her PC but just in case that was the issue I used my iMac and got exactly the same result.

Some of the extra Contacts had similar headings to others, and contained older information, but it was not possible to update that information or delete the Contact.

All devices and software are up to date.

Anybody got any ideas how to get rid of the unwanted Contacts?

 

[BugeyeSTI]

You sure they aren't coming from your email account or the Mac? When I go to contacts on my iMac I have iCloud, on my Mac and Gmail listed as having different contacts. If it's set to "all contacts" it merges all three lists

 

[Pine Man]

Thanks for responding.

The administration of her iPhone is mainly carried out on a PC although the same results occurred on my Mac. She only has 'All Contacts' and no other Groups on both the iPhone and in iCloud and only one email account is in use. She only has an iCloud email address and nothing else.

 

[Борис Марьяновский]

I have exactly the same problem that appeared about the same time as yours: some contacts cannot be edited or deleted in iCloud on Windows 10 64 bit. When I tried to backup and restore contacts again, it became even worse: some actual contacts disappeared! I have much more contacts and had long time to restore them from WhatsApp. Did you find a solution so far? Thanks!

 

[Pine Man]

No luck at all!

I have tried various forums as well as Apple and nobody knows the answer - short of opening a new account and starting from scratch.

 

[MacDraida]

M Anyone found a solution? I've had the same problem for several months now.

I have a couple of Android phones with Apple 3rd party generated passwords. I deleted those apps and revoked all Apple 3rd party app passwords. I also removed all devices (via appleid.apple.com) except for the 3 iPhones, 1 Mac and the PC I'm currently using (accessing icloud.com via Chrome browser).

All my 3 iPhones and 1 Mac notebook show the same number of contacts - 895. Contacts in iCloud.com (seen via Chrome/PC and Safari/Mac) show 1419. So, only iCloud.com (browsers Chrome or Safari) show some duplicates. iPhones and Mac don't show duplicates. I also trial tested syncing iCloud contacts to MSO and MSO didn't show any duplicates. So, the problem seems to be with iCloud.com.

I turned off Contacts sync on all phones and Mac, made sure all Phone/Mac contacts show zero contacts.
Then, I deleted all contacts on iCloud.com. After refreshing, iCloud.com shows 524 contacts. These 524 contacts can't be deleted or modified. When I try to modify any contact, the page gives me "Your changes to this contact couldn't be saved because it was just updated by another device"

 

[mhumbert55123]

Here is the situation:
Ipad Air had ~500 contacts. Windows 10 computer 64 bit had ~1000 contacts. I couldn't edit or delete some of the "bad" contacts on the computer. I kept receiving the "your changes to this contact couldn't be saved because it was just updated by another device" error.

Apple Support:
I spent hours with Apple support -- clearing caches, installing programs, removing devices, backing up and refreshing iPad. In the end, a "random act" fixed it where everything else failed. Support was just as mystified as I was as to why it worked. He was taking notes and screenshots to send to their tech engineering support -- maybe that threat scared the iCloud

Here are the steps that "fixed" it:
1. Refreshed Chrome browser www.icloud.com/contacts -- still ~1000 contacts
2. Opened using Edge browser www.icloud.com/contacts -- same ~1000 contacts
3. Refreshed iPad Air contacts (only set up to use icloud) -- ~500 contacts
4. Added a new contact on iPad Air
5. The new contact was added to the computer www.icloud.com/contacts
6. I refreshed the browser and voila -- ~500 contacts on the computer

I can now go back to using it like normal.

 

[powerprasad]

Thanks You made my Life :
Today Whole day I was struggling to solve the same problem .
Some how came across this post and problem got resolved ....
Million thanks

Here is the situation:
Ipad Air had ~500 contacts. Windows 10 computer 64 bit had ~1000 contacts. I couldn't edit or delete some of the "bad" contacts on the computer. I kept receiving the "your changes to this contact couldn't be saved because it was just updated by another device" error.

Apple Support:
I spent hours with Apple support -- clearing caches, installing programs, removing devices, backing up and refreshing iPad. In the end, a "random act" fixed it where everything else failed. Support was just as mystified as I was as to why it worked. He was taking notes and screenshots to send to their tech engineering support -- maybe that threat scared the iCloud

Here are the steps that "fixed" it:
1. Refreshed Chrome browser www.icloud.com/contacts -- still ~1000 contacts
2. Opened using Edge browser www.icloud.com/contacts -- same ~1000 contacts
3. Refreshed iPad Air contacts (only set up to use icloud) -- ~500 contacts
4. Added a new contact on iPad Air
5. The new contact was added to the computer www.icloud.com/contacts
6. I refreshed the browser and voila -- ~500 contacts on the computer

I can now go back to using it like normal.

So