Address book different on iPhone and mac

Question

I want the same address book on all of my devices and had that before my recent upgrade to lion, os5, and icloud. Now some contacts have vanished from my iPad and iPhone. I thought they were all supposed to synch?

Answer 1

first you should choose in Settings-->Mail, Contacts, Calendar-->Contacts, Sort Order and Display Order.  You have the choice of First, Last or Last, First.  This is how you prefer your contacts to appear on the iPhone Contacts app.  Then you should do the same in the Mac by opening Address Book and going to Preferences.  I would recommend that you use the same criteria on both.
That, of course, will be the settings for all your contacts.  I have chosen First, Last for Display and Last, First for Sort Order.  I particularly like that one which  sorts by last names alphabetically but shows the first name first on the display but you should play around and find the order you like best.
For people like John and Mary Smith, even though their home number is the same,  their cell phones and emails addresses may be different and I prefer to make a different contact card for each one and list the common phone number in both of them.  If you do this and you have the same sort criteria in your Mac, there are likely to be less confusion.  Just take care when you enter the details in every new contact card to put each name in the right place.
Hope this helps