Best way to organize contacts...?

[gravytrain84]

I just went back to iOS after a brutal 2 years with android. I'm quite new to the whole clowd thing... What is the best way to edit and organize my contacts??? I just spent 2 hours going through my entire list and getting it just like I wanted on my iPhone, but how can I make sure it stays that way? When I look on my iPad, the contacts are once again a mess.


I know they are fine on my phone right now but next time I backup from cloud, they'll be back to their original I think.

 

[jlake02]

I just went back to iOS after a brutal 2 years with android. I'm quite new to the whole clowd thing... What is the best way to edit and organize my contacts??? I just spent 2 hours going through my entire list and getting it just like I wanted on my iPhone, but how can I make sure it stays that way? When I look on my iPad, the contacts are once again a mess.


I know they are fine on my phone right now but next time I backup from cloud, they'll be back to their original I think.

I backup/sync my contacts (and calendar) with Google but with iCloud it may be easier to just use that now.

 

[gravytrain84]

I guess my question would be, how would I make my phone the "master list" and have my iPad and other devices look like it?

 

[Weaselboy]

I guess my question would be, how would I make my phone the "master list" and have my iPad and other devices look like it?

It has nothing to do with "backing up" with iCloud. The "master list" for contacts is the cloud.... so changes you make to any device will get pushed to iCloud, then back down to all devices. So if you configure iCloud properly to sync everything (and turn off contacts sync in iTunes) when you get your phone setup just how you want that will automatically mirror to all iCloud devices.

 

[DimeTech]

Something I always wondered about syncing contacts. If you accidentally delete or edit a contact on any device, doesn't that mean you effectively lose that contact on every device? So if I accidentally delete them, how the heck am I supposed to get their number back?

 

[Lotso]

If you made all the changes on your iPhone and you want that to be pushed to all devices then all you have to do is delete your contacts on all your other devices and then sync your phone with iCloud and resync your other devices.

 

[Weaselboy]

Something I always wondered about syncing contacts. If you accidentally delete or edit a contact on any device, doesn't that mean you effectively lose that contact on every device? So if I accidentally delete them, how the heck am I supposed to get their number back?

Yep... you delete a contact with iCloud sync and it is gone on all devices. If you use Time Machine on OS X you could restore back to an older version.

What I do is export to vcard format from the OS X Contacts app and keep that as a backup. There are some iOS apps that will allow you to export vcards from iOS that would do the same thing.

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If you made all the changes on your iPhone and you want that to be pushed to all devices then all you have to do is delete your contacts on all your other devices and then sync your phone with iCloud and resync your other devices.

If all the devices have iCloud sync on, you should not need to do that. All the changes/deletions etc will just get pushed from iCloud to each device.

 

[gravytrain84]

"and turn off contacts sync in iTunes"

How would one do that?

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Thanks for all info fellas.

 

[Weaselboy]

"and turn off contacts sync in iTunes"

How would one do that?

Start iTunes and plug your device in. Click the device on the lest then click the "info" tab. Uncheck "Sync Contacts" like in my screenshot. Also uncheck Sync calendars of your are using iCloud for calendar sync.

 

[fredaroony]

I backup/sync my contacts (and calendar) with Google but with iCloud it may be easier to just use that now.

I've always used Google and it works perfect.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I've always used Google and it works perfect.

Me, too, and you can export your contacts at Google for backup if you want.

 

[kronborg]

I've always used Google and it works perfect.

When I used Google for my contacts, all addresses were horribly messed up. Google had one single field for all the address data, while Apple used several fields. And a few special fields did not sync at all. But with Google now offering syncing of contacts via the CardDAV protocol, I would think they finally solved that problem.

Regarding backup for iCloud, you can export your contacts as a vCard via icloud.com.