DUPLICATE CONTACT INFORMATION, ON MY IPHONE, ICLOUD

Question

this is NOT about duplicate contacts but about on the iphone>contact>groups
has redundant lists
ALL CONTACTS
ON MY IPHONE>ALL ON MY IPHONE + CATEGORIES
ICLOUD>ALL ICLOUD + CATEGORIES
i don't understand all these lists. since everything is synced via icloud
why the whole list on 'on my iphone'? is it because the iphone list sits
in the memory on the iphone and the icloud list is actually accessing what is in icloud
(so for example if you lost contact with icloud there would be nothing there?).
just don't understand the concept. and how to simplify all the scrolling by eliminating
for example 'on the iphone'

Answer 1

If you synced your phone with iTunes on your Mac, check iTunes/Settings/Devices and see if there is a recent backup of your phone listed. If yes, use it to restore from, contacts are part of the backup.
Also check if syncing contacts is selected in the Info pane in iTunes with your phone connected.
If it says that your contacts can be or are synced from your address book on your Mac, and your address book does have your contacts listed, your contacts will be synced again to your phone the next time you sync it.
Just make sure to have at least one contact listed on the phone, syncing to an iPhone without contacts listed will erase the info on your computer as well.
Contacts
To sync contacts with your computer, choose "Sync Contacts with" within iTunes for Windows, or "Sync Contacts" in OS X v10.8, or "Sync Address Book Contacts" in OS X v10.7 and earlier.
You can sync your contacts with:
Microsoft Outlook 2003, Microsoft Outlook 2007, Microsoft Outlook 2010 (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8)
Windows Address Book (Windows XP)
Windows Contacts (Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8)
Address Book (Mac OS X v10.7 and earlier)
Contacts (Mac OS X v10.8)
Microsoft Entourage 2004, Microsoft Entourage 2008, or Microsoft Outlook 2011 for Mac
Notes:
When syncing contacts, you can choose to sync all of your contacts or only selected groups. The option to sync selected items may not show up until after the first sync.
You can select a group of contacts to which all new contacts created on your iOS device will be added.
Additional options for syncing include syncing your contacts with Yahoo or Gmail/Google Mail. You will need to configure it with the user name and password for your Yahoo or Google account.
copied from iOS: How to transfer or sync content to your computer