"All iCloud" and "All on My Mac" contacts don't match

[anakatarina]

So I finally found a way to eliminate the duplicated contacts on my ipad and iphone. I still however have them duplicated in my computer because they are in two accounts: "All on My Mac", and "All iCloud".

Whenever I add a contact in a device, or edit one... it syncs to the other icloud devices and accounts, including the contacts in my computer "All iCloud" as I had expected.

But how do I get the contact in "All on My Mac" to be synced, too? I thought this would happen when syncing with a cable since I checked the option BACKUP TO THIS COMPUTER and not to icloud, but that didn't happen. I mean the whole point is having the same information for each contact, and not having to edit or add the contact twice, right?

Should I just delete my contacts "On My Mac" account? (Makes me nervous!)

 

[d21mike]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: 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)

On my Mac is a local file only on that Mac. iCloud is what is shared by all devices because is stored in the cloud on Apple Servers. Like your email account. Before you used POP3 where mail was copied to your Mac and therefore you could only see it there. With IMAP the mail is stored in the cloud and all device can access it. You want to use cloud storage for all this kind of data if you want you use multiple devices to access one copy.

 

[anakatarina]

Thanks d21mike. What's your opinion on how safe data is in icloud?
Im nervous about deleting my contacts in the mac and losing everything that is in icloud later.

 

[0970373]

Thanks d21mike. What's your opinion on how safe data is in icloud?
Im nervous about deleting my contacts in the mac and losing everything that is in icloud later.

Always always always create a local backup before making any major changes.

 

[d21mike]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: 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)

+1. I made backups when I first started using these types if services when I got my first iPhone (original) and I have never lost any data (so far) so I feel the advantages out way the risk.

 

[DaveTheRave]

So I finally found a way to eliminate the duplicated contacts on my ipad and iphone. I still however have them duplicated in my computer because they are in two accounts: "All on My Mac", and "All iCloud".

Whenever I add a contact in a device, or edit one... it syncs to the other icloud devices and accounts, including the contacts in my computer "All iCloud" as I had expected.

But how do I get the contact in "All on My Mac" to be synced, too? I thought this would happen when syncing with a cable since I checked the option BACKUP TO THIS COMPUTER and not to icloud, but that didn't happen. I mean the whole point is having the same information for each contact, and not having to edit or add the contact twice, right?

Should I just delete my contacts "On My Mac" account? (Makes me nervous!)

I found this very helpful and solved my problem:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16712296#16712296

 

[shuntva06]

I had a slightly different problem but also found a different fix.

The actual data (phone and eMail addresses) in some Contacts were DIFFERENT on iCloud vs my Mac ... though all the sync settings were correct. A critically important mobile phone number ONLY existed on the 'On My Mac' version of Contact and the 'home phone' on iCloud was disconnected. Found it in time to avoid horrible assumptions.

Though a bit painful here is what I did:

• Open Mac Contacts
  • Clicked on the 'On my Mac" group ... and printed to PDF
  • Clicked on the 'iCloud' group ... did the same thing
• Side by side compared the phone and eMail addresses in both reports
• Fixed the ones that were wrong

Sometimes we just have to put eyeballs on the data to see where automated synching has 'just gotten confused'