iPhone Contacts Not Syncing to iCloud

[thepescador]

I have a iPhone 4 and have preformed all the upgrades...iTunes, iOS 5, Lion, etc so that I can take advantage of the iCloud services to sync my Contacts across my MacBook, iPhone, and iCloud.

What I am currently seeing is that my the Contacts on my iPhone or any new Contact created on my iPhone will not sync to iCloud or MacBook. I can delete an existing Contact on my iPhone and it deletes on iCloud and MacBook. I can also create a new Contact on iCloud or on my MacBook and it gets created on my iPhone. Everything seems to work as expected to this point except for the sync of Contacts from my iPhone.

I have stopped and restarted the iPhone and also cycled the Contacts setting in the iCloud section of the iPhone.

Any ideas?

Thank you

 

[1989MacintoshSE]

Contacts/Address Book Errors

I, too, am having problems with syncing the Contacts/Address Book across iCloud-friendly devices. Today I was off site and updated a few contacts on my iPad. When I returned to the office I expected the data to update on my MacMini and my iTouch, but it never happened until I went back into the contacts and updated a random field within them, then re-saved them. What a pain!

Although I bought my MacMini with Lion pre-installed, I have already had to implement the iCal work-around to get all of my iCloud-friendly devices (iPad, iTouch and MacMini) to work. Looking to see if I need to implement a CardDAV patch as well...assuming someone can find one...

This has been a very clumsy release for Apple. I am not terribly pleased. The product should be great...if it only worked as advertised...

 

[thunderclap]

Having the same problem myself. Very annoying.

 

[Zebur]

My contacts aren't synching from Lion to my 3GS on IOS 5. My iPhone has an older list of contact information that is not being updated when I add new contacts to Address Book. The same is true when adding new contacts on my iPhone. None of the new contacts are being synched either way. The older list from my iPhone is what is on iCloud online.

Troubleshooting:


This problem persists using iCloud and/or iTunes.

I logged out of iCloud on both the iPhone and my MacBook. This is an attempt to remove iCloud from the problem. the problem could be with IOS 5 or it could be with Lion. I'll start with Lion.

I set up synch to just use iTunes. The problem continues.

I attempted to remove all contacts from my iPhone and put them back just using iTunes as follows:

In iTunes, I UN-checked "SYNCH ADDRESS BOOK CONTENTS" and then selected "Remove all contact information from iPhone". That function worked as all contact information was removed from my iPhone during the synch.

I re-checked "SYNCH ADDRESS BOOK CONTENTS" and then synched again. The OLD contact list re-populated on my iPhone. None of the new contacts added to AddressBook on my MacBook were synched to my iPhone.

This indicates that the synching process is using an old AddressBook contact list from several days ago instead of the current AddressBook list. It could be a disconnect between the iPhone and AddressBook through either iTunes, AddressBook, or IOS 5.

I deleted a contact off of the iPhone and performed a synch. The contact remained on the MacBook after the synch and remained off of the iPhone.

At this point I'm continuing to troubleshoot AddressBook.

The MetaData folder (User/library/application support/addressbook) containing all "vcards" seems to be the folder containing current addressbook contact files. I verified this by opening one of the new vcards in this folder using Text Edit. It contained the info for a new contact. This is the contact info I used for further troubleshooting. For reference purposes, it contains info for a Holiday Inn hotel in New York.

Next, I quit AddressBook and removed the Holiday Inn vcard file from the MetaData folder to see if this folder is the only location of AddressBook contacts. I figure that contact would be missing when I removed the vcard file. It wasn't. When AddressBook opened, it showed the Holiday Inn contact and instantly recreated a new file for the Holiday Inn vcard file which I previously I removed from the metadata folder. The file has the same exact name as the file I removed.

So AddressBook uses a different unknown location to store contact vcard files in addition to the metadata folder. Why does AddressBook have redundant data in two (at least) places? Since both locations have the latest contact data, there is a third location that contains older data that is being synched to my iPhone. That third location may actually be on the iPhone itself, but I don't know.

I shutdown all network services to see if AddressBook was still using iCloud to store and retrieve contact data even though I turned iCloud off. It wasn't.

That's all I have time for today.

Does anyone know where AddressBook keeps it's contact files now? (Other than the metadata folder)

I'll look more tomorrow,

Thanks

 

[Zebur]

Did some more troubleshooting tonight.

Restored iPhone. No help.

Contact synching still not working from iphone to MacBook or the other way.

 

[youngplaya0228]

Settings>iCloud> TURN CONTACTS OFF!!!
*It wil ask if you want to do with your current iCloud contacts. I just chose to keep them
Then TURN CONTACTS BACK ON!!! Tried it and it works, although it was a few weeks ago, so might be forgetting if they ask you anything after you turn it back on.

Edit: it'll tell you that your contacts will merge with iCloud. Just choose 'Merge'. It also takes a few minutes to update all of the contacts on iCloud.com, but they'll update one by one

 

[Ice-Cube]

Hey guys, I was also having similar problems but I found the cause of it to be my Mac. Apparently the Mac address book have 2 groups of contacts: On My Mac and iCloud. Apparently whatever changes I did on my iPhone was reflected on my iCloud and synced to all my devices but because the default view on my Mac's address book is 'On My Mac" , i never get to see the changes. I've since deleted all the contacts on my Mac and use the iCloud account as default (On the mac address book) instead. No problems ever since.

 

[arpanlib]

even i can't sync my iPhone 4 with the address book on my mac with lion and iOS 5.

beofre i got iOS 5 on the iPhone, the sync was two ways and perfect.

but since the iOS 5 the sync are not happening either ways.

can anyone help if they have found a solution to this ??

 

[Zebur]

In addition to everything above, I've tried all combinations of turning iCloud synching on and off on both my Mac and the iPhone. Still no good.

Rebooted both iPhone and Mac, no help.

Still working it though....

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One other bit of info: I did go into the online website for iCloud and look at the contacts there. It is the old list. The old list is what's on the iPhone so those two appeared to be synched. However, after turning off all iCloud settings on both the iPhone and Mac, there is still no synch through iTunes.

I think either iTunes and/or Addressbook is stuck using the iCloud contacts even though it's turned off and there's no access to iCloud.

 

[Zebur]

Fixed it.

Logged back into the iCloud on both the Mac and iPhone at the same time. Then enabled iCloud synching for contacts on both devices at the same time.

So now iCloud synching is working.

However, I'm not going to turn off iCloud synching very soon to see if iTunes synching is working. I'm going to enjoy this for just a bit before I go back to try iTunes synching.

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I think iTunes and/or AddressBook got confused as to which contact list to use for synching. There are at least two redundant contact lists on the Mac used for AddressBook. There may be a third.