Contacts on my mac, the cloud and google

I just can't get a grip on the way my contacts synch between the mac, the cloud and google... on my phone and iMac.

After I updated to Maviericks, contacts on my iMac now has three categories under ALL CONTACTS... iCloud, On my Mac and Google. It used to have only Google. The problem is that they don't have the same number of contacts. Fortunately, I don't have a lot of friends so I was able to go through all 273 contacts to see where they were missing in each category. Most contacts have "three cards" to their name, but a few only have two.. they are not listed under iMac contacts. That seems to cause the main discrepancy count. I don't know how to get those few extra contacts to appear in the iMac cateogory because I don't know where it came from. I assume it was something in the upgrade, but can't be sure.

I have my contacts in google (from the days of Android) and thus when I got my iphone I continued to do the same. When I got my iMac, I followed suit. When I connect to iTunes, I don't synch my contacts.. I allow Google to take care of that backup. So I am not sure why there are now two additional categories on my computer.. iMac and iCloud. I thought Google did it all.

Don't mean to ramble.. but if someone could explain the relationship between Google and iCloud on the phone and iMac I'd sure appreciate it. I'm not so much concerned about the few missing contacts as they were not important, but if I don't know why they are not all synching together, I might lose important information one day.

MJT57 - I have the same setup, but I also have an "on my iMac" account. So there are three of them. And they are not all the same. Close, but off by a few contacts. I don't know why the icloud account has any contacts in them because I have never entered data, nor have I synched it. I have thought strongly about doing what you did.. make sure all my gmail contacts are there and "disconnect". If I were to do that, where is the backup.. incloud and iTunes? And if I don't do that, will gmail continue to synch with iCloud (which is seems to have done) and keep icloud up to date? That's where I'm confused... where did the icloud contacts come from in the first place? As well as those "on my mac". Prior to Maverick upgrade, the only contacts I had were Google.

I looked a little deeper into Contacts and as ApfelKuchen suggested, I do have iCloud contacts turned on in addition to Google.

A little background. I have two iMacs and they both use the same contact list. When I updated the secondary computer to Mavericks (decided to try it out on the least used computer) I noted that I now had an iCloud account in contacts. I didn't know how it got there as I was only using Google to synch contacts. But whatever.. it was all working.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, decided to upgrade my main comptuer to Mavericks. Now that computer ended up with an iCloud account. So I think it definitely had to do with the upgrade.. something that happened automatically. Or I checked something without knowing what it was going to do.

I am wondering, though, if the iCloud account is now stagnant and does not update as the information in those contacts seem to be lacking. And to answer BrianBaughn, there were some duplicates when I listed "all contacts" but I merged them together. Still not sure if icloud is updating. Too confusing to read through all my contacts. I suppose I can disconnect the icloud contacts, but it seems like it's a good backup if Google has a breakdown.

Appreciate everyone's input. I have a better understanding of what is going on.

ApfelKuchen said:

Easiest way to see "pure iCloud" is to sign into iCloud.com - no doubts if some setting is wrong somewhere, and it'll help troubleshoot a variety of issues (are the duplications in the cloud, or just on a particular device).

Check your Contacts preferences to see which account is designated as the default for adding new contacts - if Google is the default, it'll explain why iCloud isn't being updated.

I wouldn't keep both iCloud and Google contacts just for the sake of backup. The time spent making sure both sets of contacts was up to date, that you put the right person on the right list, etc. doesn't seem worth it. If you have better reason to run both (keeping business and personal totally separate) then the added complication may be worthwhile.

Click to expand...

Learned something new today. Never knew this was an option. And yes, preferences were set to icloud which was evidently why additions on the mac did not make it to Google. I set it to Google for the time being. I also disenabled the icloud account.

This led me to my calendar app on the mac where I did the same thing. But this time it came with a strange error message that I can't seem to get rid of.

The request for account “Google” failed.
The server responded with
“400”
to operation CalDAVAccountRefreshQueueableOperation.

Everything seems to be synching, but inevitably, this pops up. Not sure how to get rid of it. Search on the net says issue has been around a while.

ETA: I went back through my settings, making sure that icloud contacts and calendar were not selected in System prefences. Deleted the Google account (mail and calendar) and put them back. Closed and reopened calendar and so far the message has not shown up again.

otomo said:

How do you tell where a card is from (Google, iCloud, etc) in the "All Contacts" view?

Click to expand...

When you highlight a name in Contacts, the details are on the right pane. Under the person's information it says "cards". This is where it lists this information. All my contacts say both On My Mac and Google. Google because I keep my contacts there. When I had some names in the Cloud, it listed all three. I had inadvertently listed iCloud as my default (during some upgrade I think) which meant I was not getting full Google sync. Contacts made on my iMac did not sync with Google. Those entered on my phone did however. By removing that default, all contacts sync with Google.