Duplicate contacts? Linked contacts?

[Rafagon]

Today I suddenly found duplicate contacts in my contacts list, for no apparent reason. I certainly didn't do anything to cause it.

I went down the list and removed the duplicate contacts. The duplicates that were created today had no contact photos, whereas the real ones did have their contact photo.

I thought it was fixed and was relieved that deleting the duplicate contacts wasn't too painful.

A bit later, I noticed that now some of my contacts had Linked Contacts... to themselves, just one in iCloud and one in Gmail. If I remove those links contacts, the contact card splits into two again! And I have to delete the duplicate again!

Is there something I did to inadvertently cause this, or is iCloud having issues today?

Here's a screenshot of one of my contacts who has two linked contacts, both pointing to the same person.

If it's something I inadvertently did, I'd love any info you may be able to provide so I don't do this again.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Apple_Robert]

On your Mac or PC, go to iCloud.com > contacts and see what it looks like. I am guessing there will be duplicates there as well. If so, try cleaning up the contacts there and see what happens.

 

[zqbobs]

I had the same issue and indeed, iCloud.com>Contacts had every entry in duplicate.
But, any easy way to get rid of the duplicates on a Mac was to go to Contacts>Card>Look for Duplicates... All were found automatically and Contacts lets you merge/delete all of them in one step. And, the iCloud content was automatically fixed at the same time. Easy-peasy, at least in my case.

A remaining question is: why does this happen in the first case?

 

[Roadster Lewis]

Only duplicates??? I have 4 of each contact on my work iPhone...