(Sorry for the "duplicate" post. I tried in the iPhone apps forum, with no response. That forum seem preoccupied with app authors touting their apps. Everybody talking, nobody listening.... Amazing, I think nearly everyone has this problem, somebody seems to have a solution.)
With the MobileMe cutoff date looming, I'd imagine a lot of iPhone users are facing the same issue as me: my address book is a mess due to duplicates. I've long since stopped syncing to my Macbook because of the ominous warnings suggesting that I should replace my existing contacts with the mess from MobileMe. No, thanks. So, I am left with 3 "islands" of contacts - on my Macbook, iPhone, and iPad. I guess pretty-much the iPhone has become my primary address book but now I have at least two additional duplicates for each contact. It's not so simple as just deleting the duplicates, because some of the duplicates have different information. (e.g. I updated something.)
Unfortunately, I've read that iCloud has similar issues, so de-duplication is still going to be an ongoing problem to contend with.
There are a number of apps available to help you de-dup your contacts, but there are quite a few of them, and it's hard to choose one. Many of them aren't really that well thought-out, and then those that are can have bugs/gotchas.
I did a search here on MacRumors, and was surprised to find there really isn't a thread with good, recent info on this, so hopefully I'm not being redundant.
I am looking for the best solution for de-duplication. I'd be happy with an iPhone app, and iPad app, or an OSX app. Whatever will help me get the job done.
A secondary goal is managing groups. I need to go over my contacts and get the groups straightened-out. I don't always remember to put new contacts in the appropriate group(s).
I don't want a "solution" that is going to leave things worse than they are now. For example, I downloaded "ContactClean", which at first looked very promising. I like how it shows a comparison of the content of duplicate contacts, to help you choose which one to merge into. But it has a fatal flaw: once you have combined two contacts into one, they are no longer in the "All Contacts" group! Major fail! It also doesn't let you do anything more fancy than just combine the two into one. I should be able to, say, drag a phone number from one to the other to either replace or add an additional number.
Anybody have good experience with a contact cleaner that actually works and doesn't screw-up your contacts worse than they already are?
With the MobileMe cutoff date looming, I'd imagine a lot of iPhone users are facing the same issue as me: my address book is a mess due to duplicates. I've long since stopped syncing to my Macbook because of the ominous warnings suggesting that I should replace my existing contacts with the mess from MobileMe. No, thanks. So, I am left with 3 "islands" of contacts - on my Macbook, iPhone, and iPad. I guess pretty-much the iPhone has become my primary address book but now I have at least two additional duplicates for each contact. It's not so simple as just deleting the duplicates, because some of the duplicates have different information. (e.g. I updated something.)
Unfortunately, I've read that iCloud has similar issues, so de-duplication is still going to be an ongoing problem to contend with.
There are a number of apps available to help you de-dup your contacts, but there are quite a few of them, and it's hard to choose one. Many of them aren't really that well thought-out, and then those that are can have bugs/gotchas.
I did a search here on MacRumors, and was surprised to find there really isn't a thread with good, recent info on this, so hopefully I'm not being redundant.
I am looking for the best solution for de-duplication. I'd be happy with an iPhone app, and iPad app, or an OSX app. Whatever will help me get the job done.
A secondary goal is managing groups. I need to go over my contacts and get the groups straightened-out. I don't always remember to put new contacts in the appropriate group(s).
I don't want a "solution" that is going to leave things worse than they are now. For example, I downloaded "ContactClean", which at first looked very promising. I like how it shows a comparison of the content of duplicate contacts, to help you choose which one to merge into. But it has a fatal flaw: once you have combined two contacts into one, they are no longer in the "All Contacts" group! Major fail! It also doesn't let you do anything more fancy than just combine the two into one. I should be able to, say, drag a phone number from one to the other to either replace or add an additional number.
Anybody have good experience with a contact cleaner that actually works and doesn't screw-up your contacts worse than they already are?