Address Book on Mac not updating to iCloud

I have managed to successfully set up iCloud across my iPhone, iPad and iMac. The issue I am having relates to the Address Book on the iMac which are not syncing to iCloud. Items changed on other devices do not appear on iMac Address Book an likewise changes on iMac do not sync to iCloud and other devixces. I have tested to make sure changes on other devices sync to iCloud and down to iPad/iPhone, and this works withou issues.
Any ideas for how to correct this.
Thanks
Sean

I have to say, the migration to iCloud is a nightmare. This bug is the kind of stuff that will drive you nuts.
I made a change to a contact on my mac yesterday. This person's mobile number had changed. I just assumed iCloud was working as it should be. Today, I was driving to an appointment and I needed to return this guy's call. I looked him up on my iPhone and his new mobile number was not there. It was clear the update I made yesterday never made it into iCloud and never pushed to my iDevices. Darn it!!! What good is iCloud if the thing won't work properly? No good.
If it's necessary for everyone using a mac to delete and refresh their calendars and contacts then at least give us a heads up! Better yet, fix the darn thing so it just works, as it should.
This is just stratching the surface of the difficulties I've been having with iClould over the past few days/weeks. I'll spare everyone all of my stories. Suffice to say I'm not a happy camper.
Apple is not living up to customer expectations when it comes to iCloud. It looks like they might need to fire some folks and start over with someone who gives a ****. When it comes to web services, you have to be perfect in your execution. Dropbox is. Apple's iCloud is just not there.
My 2 cents.

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At the bottom of my post is additional catagories which I included 10.7 but its OK cuz I turned off iCloud on my Mac and then turned it back on. EVENTUALLY the Contact info was reflected on my iPhone and iPad. I believe this is called "resetting" iCloud.
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Address Book and iCal not updating in iTunes

After I make changes to my address book I try to sync the changes the old groups, information, and photos are not updating to iTunes and therefore nothing is changing on my devices. I followed directions from this link http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2481 and now it's cleared all my contact and calendar data in iTunes and therefore cleared all my contacts and calendar data on my iPhone and iPad. Anyone know how to get iTunes to recognize the current data in my apps?

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Best Solutions For Offline Address Book on Workstations Not Updating Frequently Enough?

We use Exchange 2010 SP2 and we set Outlook 2010 to Exchange Cached mode by default for all workstations. This seems to work OK for the majority of email most of the time, but because we are very frequently adding and removing external mail contacts
and and adding and removing them from distribution lists, the GAL and distribution lists memberships are frequently out of date in the middle of the work day.
Sometimes the users can manually download an updated OAB assuming it has been updated on the server, but sometimes the OAB is not updated yet and redownloading the OAB solves nothing. It is a lot of hassle, confusion about bounced messages and
missing contacts and phantom names in distribution lists with this method.
I notice that for mail contacts, there is an All Contacts address book that is live, but it does not include include anything else other than contact addresses. Distribution List memberships are still out of date until the OAB is updated on the server
and then downloaded to the Outlook client. This is taking too long.
Is there a keyboard shortcut to force the client to do a GAL address lookup in online mode rather than using the cached OAB?
Can Outlook display both an online and offline address book for the GAL and let the user manually select online version of the GAL if a contact or new mailbox or DL has not synced to the OAB yet?
If we set the registry key to force online address books even when Outlook is in cached Exchange mode, is there any performance downside for PCs on the LAN other than the GAL being unavailable when the network is not available?
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Hi,
If users are accessing the GAL without OAB cache, definitely it will increase in server load and network traffic. If you are in cached mode, one suggestion is to define that in Send/Receive Settings:
Go to Send/Receive Groups -> Define Send/Receive Groups
-> Select the account and Edit -> Select
Include the selected account in this group, and check Download offline address book -> Click
OK -> Go back to Send/Receive Groups, select the frequency for automatic send/receive(Schedule an automatic send/receive every x minutes.), and then close.
I hope this setting can help in your scenario.
Regards,
Melon Chen
TechNet Community Support

ICloud not syncing with Address Book on Mac

I've updated my Address Book and now it won't sync to iCloud, which means my contacts are no longer on my iphone either. Why won't iCloud sync with the address book on my computer?

Wanted to post an update for those of you who use Entourage for contacts, have iCloud, and like to sync with your iPhone.
I have Entourage set to update to the Address Book (Entourage Preferences - Sync Services - Sync to Address Book - Combine Data) and after fixing the original problem noted above, I later decided to have my iphone backed up and synced through iCloud.
Well - iCloud and Entourage don't play nice together - so none of my contacts were updating either direction and I had duplicates in Address Book again. Apple did not have answers for me when I called, so I spent the day trying to fix it and came up with the following and figured I'd pay it forward and post for anyone else with the same issue.
The only option at this time is to sync your Contacts with iTunes instead. Even though Entourage used to update wirelessly with MobileMe - it does not work with iCloud due to different CalDav systems. You can still do iPhone backups and sync your calendars and photos over iCloud (which I am still doing), but Contacts just won't work.
Steps:
1. Backup your good list of contacts somewhere (I ensured everything on Entourage was right and did an archive)
2. To be extra safe, be sure you have a good phone back up too (either over iCloud or iTunes)
3. Uncheck sync to Address Book in Entourage
4. Delete everything in Address Book and uncheck sync/account to iCloud
5. Go into System Preferences - iCloud, and uncheck sync Contacts. When it asks you if you want to delete what's on your mac - you can say yes - it will not delete anything in Entourage. By now all your contacts in Address Book, iCloud and on your phone should be gone (it's scary I know)
6. Go to your phone settings - iCloud and turn off Contacts there too
7. Entourage - Preferences - Sync Services - turn on syncing with Address Book/Mobile Me (I chose to Combine data assuming this would allow data to travel both directions in the future). It should populate address book in just a minute or two
8. Plug your phone into your computer and open iTunes
9. Check "Sync Contacts" and hit Apply. I'd suggest syncing it right there with your phone plugged in.
After that, you can either sync each time you plug in and open iTunes, or you can sync over your own wifi network when your phone is plugged in. It will not sync over any wifi like it used to do with MobileMe - so still far from an optimum solution, but hopefully Apple and/or Entourage will fix this soon. The only other solution I could think of was to switch to Mail & Contacts since I like to use them both in same place, but I really didn't want to do that (mail isn't that great and I didn't want to take the time to make the switch).
If anyone has anything better to suggest, please let us know!!!

I have Outlook 2011 installed on my Mac Pro, but I can not install it icloud. I can only get through imail, iCal and Address Book in Mac native anyone know teach me how to work with Outlook 2011 icloud? thank you

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How do I move/copy contacts from Entourage to iCloud Address Book without creating duplicates? Address Book on Mac, iCloud, iPhone and iPad is now empty

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Thank you for letting me know!
Going to give it a go. Had a back up of all my clients files stupidly not my software as I have the originals disks. Just realised that amongst the software is ibiz and have lost al my accounting and billing files for the last 7 years want to cry so losing my contacts now will really tip me over the edge!
Fingerscrossed this works!

HT204053 my mac is updated but icloud is not showing up in my system preferences...

my mac is updated but icloud is not showing up in my system preferences, only MobileMe which looks like it charges a fee. Are icloud and mobileme the same? i thought they were different. if they are different why can't i see icloud on my mac?

Your Mac is 3 versions of OS X out of date, current release is 10.9.1, minimum required for Lion is 10.7.4, you have 10.6.8.
Download 10.9.1 (Mavericks) from the App Store

Address Book doesn't sync UP to iCloud, but syncs back down..

(Sorry, Winston, and maybe Roger, I must be developing Alzheimer's ..I just cannot understand how this iCloud system works..)
I've searched through hundreds of queries and answers, but cannot find a similar problem ..but maybe I simply haven't looked hard enough.
Question on behalf of my good lady ..and I've been tearing my hair out over this for WEEKS..
She has 3502 contacts in her Address Book on her OS X Lion 10.7.4 MacBook Air. She has two iPhones. They're both running iOS 5.1.1. She has enabled iCloud on ALL these three devices, using her @me.com identity and appropriate password.
She updates Address Book contacts ONLY on her MBA - for sync'ing to her phones - and she does NOT update any Contacts info on her phones in order to have them transferred BACK to her Mac. That's how she prefers to work.
The only way that her Address Book contacts will sync UP to iCloud from the Mac appears to be to select 'All on My Mac' within Address Book, and to Export as vcards to a file on her Mac, and then, in the online iCloud Contacts webpage, to Import that file of vcards. All well and good, but that seems to ignore all her various Groups; everything ends up bundled all into one group. (Perhaps each Group in her Mac's Address Book needs to be separately Exported and then Imported, but surely it shouldn't be as long-winded as that.)
(About 402 of these contacts are not accepted by the online iCloud Contacts, although they seem to fall within the requirements of not being too many, not being too large, etc. But that's a separate problem which I'm still investigating ..maybe the names are formatted incorrectly; I'll keep working on that separately..)
Anyhow: by explicitly Importing all those Address Book contacts into the iCloud Contacts, they then immediately start to get distributed - correctly! - to her iPhones ..but also back into the Address Book on her Mac, thereby DUPLICATING them all in Address Book! (They CAN be seen as SINGLE entries by choosing 'All iCloud'.)
I cannot understand the opaque instructions in all of the iCloud documentation. NONE of the documentation which I've studiously read (online, in System Prefs, in every Help file I can find) seems to indicate a DIRECTION for this iCloud sync'ing.
WHERE - if there is such a place - does one specify that contacts should go only UP FROM the Mac, and not BACK DOWN to the Mac?
There seem to be options only to turn ON sync'ing (or off), but not the DIRECTION of sync'ing, or which device(s) take precedence. (..In iTunes - when sync'ing phones to a Mac with a cable - there's a preference to over-write EITHER the host Mac with data FROM a phone, or to over-write an iPhone's data with data FROM the Mac..)
So I'm asking..
(a) Can one specify a DIRECTION when turning on sync'ing for a device?
(b) With iCloud sync'ing turned ON on a Mac, is there any known reason why Address Book contacts should not send themselves UP to the iCould, instead of having to be manually Imported?
(c) Does one Export Groups individually? ..But what if a name is in more than one Group ..does it get duplicated online in iCloud?
(d) Is there not the intelligence within the iCloud facility for the system to NOT distribute back, or duplicate, contacts to the device which is the SOURCE of those contacts? Should it not do a comparison between iCloud and a device, and then recognise that those contacts already exist on the remote device, and therefore NOT distribute them BACK again to the SOURCE? (..Or am I having too high expectations?..)
Many thanks in anticipation, and I'm so sorry to be such a nuisance if this has already been answered a zillion times before.
(Yes, Winston; she has almost as many iPhones as you have AppleTVs!)
All best wishes,
David.

David, nice to hear from you again, hope you are well.
This user tip might help you understand how accounts work with Address Book.
I believe you have duplicates because you have two sets of contacts. "iCloud" and "On My Mac". Once you have created all your contacts in the iCloud account, you should delete them from On My Mac.
You can move contacts simply by dragging and dropping from one account to the other, you don't need to export them all to the desktop (although doind so will serve as a good back up if all goes wrong). You should note that this copies them though rather than simply move them, so you'll need to delete the old set when you are done.
As for preserving groups from the On My Mac Account, you can't but you can simplify recreating them by copying contacts (drag and drop) from an on my mac group to an empty group in iCloud.
Not sure about the contacts that you are struggling to move.
Many aspects of iCloud are difficult to understand, have a mull through what I've said so far and come back if everything still doesn't fall into place.

Any ideas why my address book is out of sync with iCloud

I migrated my mobile me to icloud a few days ago. I started with the website, verified that my iOS versions were correct on my iPhone and iPad. Then I turned the service on for my mac, iphone and ipad. The only choice I had was to merge my contacts with icloud, so I accepte it. I have 5,815 contacts. My address book backup is 367MB. Ever since I turned this on, they have been out of sync. iCloud shows 2,355 contacts and my iphone is not update. Also, it took "my card" and seemed to combine it with another business entry I had.
Bottom line, sync is not working and my Mac goes to 100% CPU ever 8 minutes. My system drops to a crawl and I have to wait for it to finish. iCal, Mail and Address book are consuming all the CPU as it seems to be trying to sync. But nothing ever works.
This is very similar to what happened when I turned on MobileMe sync. It completely screwed up my address book and caused a $1200 phone bill while I was traveling in Europe because it would erase my entire address book and try to sync it over and over again.
I just turned off the iclould sync for address book my mac so I could work on my laptop without the CPU going to 100%.
Any ideas?

Welcome to the Apple Community.
It sounds as though you may have exceeded some of the limits of Address Book in iCloud.
Total number of contact cards: 25,000
Maximum size of a contact card: 256 KBMaximum size of a contact photo: 224 KB
Maximum size of a contact group: 256 KB
Maximum size of all contact cards:
Card text: 24 MB
Card photos: 100 MB
Supported file types for a contact photo: JPEG, JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF

MacBook Address Book Application Does Not Run

MacBook OSX 10.5.8 - Address Book application will not run - it shows up in Applications Folder but will not run - either double click or command File - Open. I have reinstalled the Address Book application with the original installation disk, which indicated the application was installed, still will not run. Rebooted, reinstalled again - same result -- the Applications Folder shows the file size as 1.4 Mb - updated today - the installation disk showed approx. 53 Mb was being installed - not sure if the Application Directory is only showing a command file or what - also ran the hardware diagnostic and found no problems. Software update shows current software is up to date.
Haven't used Address Book so do not know if it ever worked. Need it now to sync with IPhone 4. Any Ideas?

rjackjr,
After reinstalling an Apple application from the installation disk, it is also necessary to reinstall the latest Combo Update for the installed system. In your case that would be Mac OS X 10.5.8 Combo Update.
Try that and see what happens with your Address Book application.

Why have my Address Book contacts disappeared after uploading to iCloud?

I am using my MacBook Pro w/OSX Lion.
After having many, many problems with contacts, calendars and bookmarks in MobileMe, migrating to iCloud, encountering a huge mess of duplicates and even completely missing contacts I decided to start over. So I disabled the iCloud account on all Macs and IOS devices. I then ensured all contacts, calendars and bookmarks were deleted from the MacBook Pro. I then used the Address Book export I'd made just prior to the migration from Mobile Me to iCloud and imported this onto my MacBook Pro. I've completely gone though the Address Book and removed or merged duplicates and cleaned up all contacts with detail. I backed up my Address Book again at this point. I then logged into iCloud.com using my original Apple User ID (NOT the MobileMe/me.com account which I'm going to vacate) and ensured that there were no contacts in the cloud and I deselected the default calendars here as well. My intention was/is to begin by starting small and deal only with the MacBook Pro Address Book and iCloud Contacts. So after I confirmed there is no data in the cloud I go into the MacBook Pro System Preferences > iCloud > Account Details ensuring I was signed out of the me.com user and entered my original Apple ID I've had since I started using iTunes many years back. I quit the browser and the Address Book and verified the non me.com user was saved under the System Preferences. I then selected Contacts under these iCloud System Preferences and I was asked If I wanted to merge my contacts with those in the cloud. Because there were no contacts in the cloud I selected yes. The spinning indicator indicated that the upload was occurring. Now, there are no contacts in the cloud and the Address Book contacts are missing. Thinking that my doing the Address Book backup may have removed all the data from the Address Book, I deselected Contacts in the iCloud System Preferences, reimported the backup into Address Book that I'd just done, confirmed the contacts I just imported appear in Address Book and I reselect Contacts in the iCloud System Preferences and again I get the spinning indicator. Again, there are no Contacts in the cloud and the contacts are missing from Address Book.
What the heck am I doing wrong? I've simplified my original attempt with iCloud by concentrating my efforts to just contacts AND I'm only using the MacBook and the iCloud cloud and I've still got problems. I thought this approach would narrow down where the issue lies and allow me to monitor the process more easily but I seem to be worse off than before I'd tried to resolve the initial migration problems because now I have no contacts.
I'm new to Macs so if you have a solution, please help and please give specifics because I'm still learning the structure and don't understand a lot of the acronyms and jargon.
Thanx

If you have a back up file, I'd try turning off iCloud contact syncing on all macs from system preferences > iCloud –
DONE
as well as any secondary accounts from system preferences > mail, contacts and calendars –
DONE (this was confusing but I figured out that you meant System Preferences > Mail, Contacts & Calendars which is what you said in lowercase. For some reason without the capital letters I didn't clue in that Mail, Contacts and Calendars was an icon option under the System preferences and so I overlooked it multiple times. I see your use of "secondary account" which I note used also as a term in the User Tip link you referred me to view. Although, I still don't understand what this 'secondary' account is, I'm not interested in any secondary accounts because I've got my hands full with just iCloud for now. I did delete all accounts under the Mail, Contacts & Calendars).
If you have any iOS devices I'd do the same on those as well. –
DONE (not even introducing other Macs or IOS devices to the equation until I get the iCloud and MacBook syncing contacts correctly)
I'd log into iCloud.com and check my Address Book was empty and empty it if necessary –
DONE (it was empty already)
and then delete all contacts from every Address Book on every device
         DONE
Then I'd turn Address Book syncing back on –
DONE (This assuming that by ‘turn back on’ you mean System Preferences > iCloud and check marking the box next to Contacts)
and import my contacts from the backup file –
DONE (This assuming that by ‘import my contacts’ you mean importing the previously exported Address Book back up file back into the Address Book. I see contacts listed in the Address Book when I did this.)
No syncing seems to happen at this point?
you might also take a look at this User Tip, to ensure you understand the differences between the different accounts in Address Book before adding the contacts back.
         I did read this but understand is probably not an accurate term for my interpretation of what I read. I get that On My Mac will not sync with what is in the cloud and iCloud will sync with the cloud. In Address Book under the single head red ribbon I see neither account heading that is mentioned. I also was not asked at the time of import to select which ‘account’ I’d like the contacts setup under.
A) If there is no indication as to what Address Book account the contacts fall under, how does on find this out?
User Tips states
Your Address Book when synced with iCloud will have more than one account.
     My assumption is that I'm not synced with iCloud if I don't see either account option listed. I also would think that if I'm not synced and thus don't have more than one account then perhaps the All Contacts default to an On My Mac account but don't reflect an account heading of 'On My Mac’ as seen on the screen shot of the User Tips example.
Furthermore, User Tips also states
Default Account
Your 'default'account is set in address book preferences > general (the option is only displayed if you have more than one account).
         It would seem relevant to list which account your defaulted to even if you do not have more than one account because elsewise how are you supposed to know which account it is setup under?
B) How do you change which ‘account’ your contacts are setup under if they are under the wrong account?
         Assuming again that my contacts are ‘On My Mac’, then how do I move them to the ‘iCloud’ account of which is not listed?
C) Will any of this be affected by groups?
The five listings under All Contacts are groups that I set up as a sort of invitation list (so Christmas cards is one I’d probably setup this time of year). Although this question is secondary I would like to confirm that my interpretation of groups is accurate. I understand groups to be a sort of tagging of selected contacts from All Contacts but that the contacts in these groups are not duplicates to those in All Contacts. Is this correct? I ask because the User Tips states
To quickly duplicate a contact, drag it to your desktop, navigate to 'Groups', select the account you wish to duplicate to, double click the contact on your desktop.
            When reading this tip, I interpret that dragging and dropping contacts from All Contacts into a group would be similar to what is suggested in this tip which would indeed ‘duplicate’ the contact. I did drag and drop when I setup my groups so I’m concerned I duplicated the contacts in Address Book. I do not see two copies of the same contact under All Contacts though.
By the way, don't take it personally –
I don't, I have reading difficulties galore and am happy to accommodate if I can. I hope this is better. Helping you helps me if you're not struggling to read when thinking about the solution.
Thanx

I want iPhone Contacts to override Address Book on Mac #2

I have updated my Address Book in my MacBook Pro and have synced it with my iPhone - so I'm finally good there.
However, I am trying to update my iMac and need to update the Address Book there. I don't want to sync it at this point - I want to wipe the iMac Address Book clean and start anew with the iPhone.
Any tips on how to do this?

Hi Im running on Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 with the updated version of iTunes.
I just recently changed from using Outlook for Mac to using iCal and Mail. Outlook for mac was my main platform for contacts and calanders. When switching over, i managed to sort out my calanders into iCal, but my contacts do not seem to copy into my address book. All my updated contact are in my iPhone. iTunes still shows options to sync to groups i created in outlook even though i have totally deleted outlook.
I basically want to syc all my iPhone contact to my Address book and override the contacts I have in there already, and use address book as my contacts platform.
Help!

How do you bcc groups from the address book in MAC OS X?

I am tryign to do a group email from the address book in MAC OS X, everytime I highlight and drag the contacts to my email they don't attached. The only way it appears to work is when I email group but this goes into the TO field.
Any ideas in what I can do?

Mea culpa. Yes, the Cc/Bcc disclosure button IS to the left. I mis-typed that. (stupid keyboard!)
I'm at a loss as to why this is not working for you.
I will tell you the versions of the players involoved that I am using are:
• OS X 10.8.1
• Mail 6.0
• Contacts (Address Book) 7.0
And while I realize that you are running OS X 10.7.4, the process has been similar for some time now.
I would run Software Update and make sure that my System, Mail and Address Book apps are all up to date. That is NOT to say you should upgrade to Mt. Lion, just ensure that there are no outstanding updates available for your current setup.
Then run Disk Utility and perform the Repair Permissions routine on your startup disk. When that process is finished, reboot your machine and run the Mail app again.
It would be nice if it's just a permissions issue or can be fixed with a software update. Let us know if any of this helps.

Let's say I sync my address book with .Mac. Now...

...if I add to my address book using an Internet browser on another computer, will my Mac be updated with this new address as well? If not, how do I make it so it is?

Welcome to Apple Discussions.
If you log onto your .Mac account and change data displayed in your address book on .Mac, then—following the next scheduled synchronization event—the change will be reflected on all of the devices included in that event.
What Apple hasn't explained outside of the developer community is that you are not actually synchronizing applications [like iCal or the Address Book] or servers [like .Mac] or devices [like your mobile handset or a Palm organizer] when you initiate a synchronization. What you are really doing is triggering an interaction with one or more of these and the SyncServices engine, which maintains what is termed the 'truth database'—or simply, the 'truth'—to which is pushed, or from which is pulled, the current state of data maintained in fields and records for one or more specific data types. Because of the way this process works, it is not necessary to have all synchronized devices available or attached when a synchronization event occurs.
So you can make a change to your .Mac address book records and, during a subsequent synchronization, exchange the most current data maintained in the truth with the updated information from .Mac, and then, hours later, plug in your iPod, an action which will trigger iTunes to pull the latest data from the truth and write it to the iPod, updating your contact and calendaring records. The same is true for other applications, servers and devices.

Address Book on Mac not updating to iCloud

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