iPhone & Mac *overwrite* each other; they don't

[RaphaeliteGirl]

iPhone & Mac *overwrite* each other; they don't *Sync* :-(

I often update my iPhone's contacts - emails/phone numbers while away from home.

Equally I will add contacts from emails I receive while at the computer.

When I come to Sync my phone with the Mac, I want them to merge details so as the new iPhone contacts are copied to the computer and vice versa.

I don't want to update one at the expense of the other.

More than once I have the message "syncing will change more than 5% of your contacts on this Mac"

Or I end up with three copies of every phone number on my iPhone and other contacts that have disappeared when I thought they were in my phone.

I've read countless troubleshooting guides and none of them seem to address this.

My experience of the Syncing process is that it is in fact an overwriting process from one product to the other.

As a result, I am loathe to Sync my phone with my Mac in case I lose data from both products, yet I'm aware that I should be syncing or at least connecting for back-up purposes.

And I want to keep both phone and Mac up-to-date with each other which is what I understood Syncing to be all about.

Am I being thick? Have I missed something obvious?

All advice greatly appreciated.

Many thanks



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RaphaeliteGirl - G5 Desktop - MacBook Air - iPhone 16GB 3GS

 

[CSMchris376]

Well, after reading your post, I thought I understood syncing. To synchronize the data. I would imagine that changes to a single contact on the computer and the iPhone would result in a merging of the data. I've made changes to information on the computer and on the iPhone and done a sync and everything went fine, but that was not changing the same thing. So, I had to do a test.

I just went to a contact on my PC (Outlook 2007) and added a phone number to the Home setting. I went into my iPhone to the same contact and added a different phone number to the home setting. I then did a sync.

I looked in Outlook and the contact had both phone numbers listed, one under Home, and one in a newly formed Home2. I went on the iPhone and looked and it showed both numbers listed under Home.

Since I'm not as familiar how a Mac works with Address Book, iCal, etc., I cannot answer questions about that, but it seems as though my information did what it was supposed to do, syncronize, so both sets are the same. I'm not sure what you are defining as overwriting, since there has to be somewhat of an overwriting to get both to look the same.

 

[RaphaeliteGirl]

Hi Chris

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, that's the type of thing I thought would have happened when I synced, but it didn't...

The last time I did a sync, after doing so, 1/2 of my email contacts seem to have disappeared from my Mac's address book, overwritten with contacts from my iPhone which are mainly phone numbers with additional email addresses on some.

Also doesn't explain why I've now got several duplicate copies of the same phone number on my iPhone...

And am unsure why I get the "if you sync now more than 5% of your address book contacts on this Mac will change" pop-up. Knowing that it's more than 5% doesn't really help - which 5% and how many exactly?!

I'd like to vet the changes before they take place - it's a bit late when the sync has erased so many of my contacts altogether...

Grateful for any further advice and thanks for doing the test-run for me!

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RaphaeliteGirl - G5 Desktop - MacBook Air - iPhone 16GB 3GS