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Why won’t Contacts app synchronize across my devices?

blackxacto

blackxacto

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 15, 2009
1,240
145
Middle TN
I use an iPad Pro 11” iOS15.3, a iPhone11Pro w iOS15.3, and an iMac w Monterey. Can anyone tell me why signing in and out of my Apple account on all my devices, then signing back into will not sync my contact lists. Why do I find some contacts disappearing on me, or on one device and not the other?

This is happening within the last couple of months For me.
 
To sync our contacts on all our devices, does it include shutting down all devices as well? Why isn’t signing in and out of my Apple account on each device enough?
 
How are you contacts syncing, it sounds like your contacts are not stored in iCloud and maybe syncing with another email provider or being stored locally.

Check Settings > Contacts and see if more then one account is listed, if so that’s your problem.
 
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They are all 3 Apple devices using only one Apple account. I’m not talking about backups. This is one Apple account. On each device I had to sign out of the iCloud then sign back in, finally turn off the devices . Is that what everyone does now to syncronize all their device contacts List? Otherwise, syncing did not happen completely. I had missing contacts on two of my devices.
 
That’s not what I’m asking, email accounts can also sync contacts between devices. Do you have email accounts that are not iCloud emails?

Under settings > contacts - what is it showing in the account list? This is not in the iCloud settings.

Sync will happen automatically, no need to turn off the device or sign in and out.
 
I use two google email addresses, 1 comcast email address, 1 yahoo email address. My Apple account name is a google email address.

there is also the email address Apple gave me, but i never use it for email.
 
On your Mac in the Contacts application (with View>Show Groups active), what do you see in the Group list on the left?

And…on your iPad and iPhone in the Contacts app, what do you see when you go to (touch) Groups?
 
3 devices, each device has the same accounts input except one which I want to trash. Each device sees the same accounts, right?
 

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Going to my iMac/Contacts App/Groups I manually drug all contacts from email accounts into the ALL iCloud Account. But in the future, how doing I force my device I am adding a contact to store in the All iCloud Group? Since I want my Apple Account in the iCloud to store my contacts for syncing to my devices, where do I say add to the ALL iCloud Group? Or do I have to periodically drag manually everything into the All iCloud?
 
In the Contact app settings on each device you need to make sure the default is set to iCloud.

Once you have moved all your contacts to iCloud, remove those additional accounts from the Contact apps.
 
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How do I make iCloud default? Delete the others? Uncheck the others? I tried selecting them to delete, they won’t. How do I delete them from contact groups in macOS Monterey?
 
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There are no prefs for iOS Contacts just unchecked all except iCloud. Hope that works. Thank you for your help.
 
The same options for Contacts is in the Settings App in iOS.

Settings > Contacts > Accounts
 
I have had similar problem with missing contacts on my iMac. I use one apple id on iPhone, iPad and iMac. On iPhone and iPad I've had all the contacts there but on iMac I couldn't get all my contacts from the Google account despite I've logged to Google account during the initial startup setup.
For some reason the Google account was not present in the Contacts apps Group section, which was odd. It helped to remove the Google account from the "Settings --> Internet Accounts" section and re-adding it back.
 
I am not so big of a fan of needing to upload contacts from all devices to some cloud server in order to sync between devices. Apple should allow an iPhone,Ipad and MacBook to easily sync between each device and merge latest updated contact together. This should be easy and straight forward with an option for the rest to use Cloud server if they want to but the default option should be to sync between devices as it was once in the past. What happened to basic features of iTunes sync..?
 
After trying the "Look for Duplicates" on my Mac mini the other day, I'm finding there are contacts local to my Macs that don't show up on my iPhone/iPad. Maybe this was true before running "Look for Duplicates," but I'm not sure.

I can't find an Apple-recommended way to merge them all. Maybe I could export all contacts then re-import them but I'm hesitant to wind up with loads of duplicates, and I'm also hesitant to retry "looking for duplicates" since doing so a few days ago on my Mac mini seems to have really fouled things up. Plus running "Look for Duplicates" provides no option to see the duplicate contacts before clicking to merge them, which seems like an obvious fear-reducing function that should be given to the user (nice job Apple).

  • When I 'select all' on my MBA, there appear to be 840 contacts
  • On my Mac mini there are 804.
  • Signing into iCloud shows 441 contacts. 441 contacts show on my iPhone/iPad, according to the Lists screen, where the only contacts list I have is All iCloud.
Every device is connected to iCloud with the same ID and I'm not using any contacts from other email accounts (Contacts are not selected for all Accounts on all devices other than iCloud). I've tried deselecting Contacts under iCloud on my iPhone & iPad and reloading but still some are missing.

So it would seem there are some contacts that are only local to my MBA and Mac mini. As far as I can tell there's no easy way to show only the local contacts on my MBA or Mac mini (nice job Apple).

Has anyone run into this and found a foolproof way to merge contacts apparently local to your Mac and not in iCloud?
 
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Tozovac said:
So it would seem there are some contacts that are only local to my MBA and Mac mini. As far as I can tell there's no easy way to show only the local contacts on my MBA or Mac mini (nice job Apple).
Click to expand...
macOS Contacts hasn't changed significantly in years. The way you show where you contacts are is to, in the Contacts app, make sure that the "Lists" are shown (menu item View>Show Lists).

Sounds like you have 441 contacts in iCloud, 363 in some other list (probably under "On My Mac") on the Mini and 399 in some other list on your MBA.

I don't know of a magic way to fix duplicates. Perhaps someone else does. I haven't dealt with that issue in many, many years.

Set your default account, in Contacts preferences, to iCloud on your Mini and your MBA to prevent newly created contacts from going to some other list.
 
BrianBaughn said:
macOS Contacts hasn't changed significantly in years. The way you show where you contacts are is to, in the Contacts app, make sure that the "Lists" are shown (menu item View>Show Lists).

Sounds like you have 441 contacts in iCloud, 363 in some other list (probably under "On My Mac") on the Mini and 399 in some other list on your MBA.

I don't know of a magic way to fix duplicates. Perhaps someone else does. I haven't dealt with that issue in many, many years.

Set your default account, in Contacts preferences, to iCloud on your Mini and your MBA to prevent newly created contacts from going to some other list.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I should have mentioned that I did check out Lists before posting, which only resulted in more uncertainty.

First, the Lists appear differently on my Mac mini vs. MBA. Both are updated to Ventura 13.2. 2ndly, only the MBA shows the "On My Mac" option. 3rd, when selecting On My Mac on the MBA, only my contact shows up.

Mac mini shows:
iCloud > All Contacts --> 820 contacts*
Smart Lists > Last Import --> empty
*I believe this was 804 just 1 hour ago, so yet another mystery here. I have been monkeying around with contacts for a day or two and not sure why it would suddenly change. But my iPhone/iPad still shows only 441)

MBA shows:
iCloud > All iCloud --> 840 contacts
On My Mac > All On My Mac --> this shows only my contact card info, and with a different icon than when looking at the same contact under "All iCloud"
Smart Lists > Last Import --> empty

But as far as selecting the account(s) on my Mac mini & MBA, I have "Enable this account" selected only for iCloud CardDAV. None of my other email accounts have that selected. However I'm not sure what you mean by selecting a "default account" in the Contacts Preferences.

Thanks for the (ongoing) help !
 
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