How to make mac address gmail contacts overwrite the ones on my HTC Android phone - I don't want to sync - that makes the phone scramble and overwrite my computer. I want to remove or correctly overwrite the phone information as I have done with iPad.

Question

Please help - I am beginning to hate google, my android and gmail.  I have just wasted about 5 hours in a futile attempt to try and get my current Mac contacts list on my computer updated to my phone. I'm not that computer literate but I have looked up about google phone accounts, vCards, backing up contact lists, what SD on phones are, and God know what else.  I have searched the internet and tried all sorts of things and I still have a mac with a now correct contact list (after the iPad contacts scrambled it and I spent ages manually correcting them all) and a phone with an outdated contact list.  If you try and sync them the phone wants to overwrite the computer one just like the iPad did (would it be so **** hard to give you a choice on the phone as to which overwrites which!).  After all the  advice on the internet failed, I got the bright idea to completely delete all the ones on the phone and if it was empty of contacts the computer one could be exported to it.  Not as simple as it sounds.  First I backed up (I think) my computer contacts list. Numerous futile attempts to go through the phone options to globally delete all contacts did not work - they gave a warning message and you got to choose whether to continue or not, I did, and it looked like it might be working as it changed to zero data on the phone, but then they all popped back up again from God knows where from, but without their little added bits like pictures of the people.  So, I tried un- syncing the darn phone from  google and then deleting them globally.  That didn't work either.  I tried deleting them  all again and again and google would crash and not let me do it. It is absolutely ridiculous that this is so damned difficult to do (especially if you are not computer savvy) and that you cannot choose which device overwrites which when syncing. I gave up and ticked sync with Google again (not that it appears to do anything to the phone contact list at all).  So after 5 hours I am back to where I started from, with a phone showing all the same  incorrect contacts (but the pictures are back), which wants to overwrite the computer if I try any sort of sync, and no way to fix them except go into each one manually and try and do it - and how long would that take (and I've already wasted hours and hours fixing scrambled contact lists!).  I think I will do a print out of the computer contact list and just carry it around with me like an address book - so much bloody simpler.  So now I have a headache, am fighting an overwhelming urge to hurl the phone at the wall,  hoping for a heat wave to evaporate icloud things and am wishing I had bought an iPhone instead of the stupid HTC Android.  Can any one offer me any suggestions on how to get rid of the contacts on my phone and replace them with the ones in my mac address list - hopefully after that  they can sync to their hearts content and not stuff everything up again (which was why I unsynced google a while back - because the phone's list kept making stuff ups and scrambling and duplicating my computer contacts list).  Am I the only one on the planet having this problem or is there someone else out there who has had it and solved it.

Answer 1

Without "pretending" to be yourself on the other phone (change settings) there's nothing else you can do.
iOS devices are meant to be single user and can't view iCloud.com the same way a Mac or PC can do.
You need to find a desktop or laptop machine (Mac or PC) to log in at iCloud.