ICloud/Solution for cleaning up address book duplicates

I so identify with anyone who has this problem of having address book duplicates. Took me at least five tries to get it right!!!!
The directions that Apple gives only really work if you only have one device. There are very few articles that deal with the problem of coordinating multiple devices so it was a trial and error effort to make things work.
I have 6 desktop and mobile devices attached to my account and wanted them all to sync using ICLOUD. I'd get one or two set up and then the next one would add in the duplicates. Was making me crazy. Here is what I finally did to solve the problem:
1. Using your desktop app, export a clean copy of your address book to your desktop. If your file is contaminated with duplicates already, go back and find an older copy.
2. Using your desktop app, delete all of the entries. Then go to System preferences and turn on the Cloud for Address Book. It should be empty.
3. Turn the cloud off for each and every device you own. It will ask if you want to save the contacts or delete them. Choose delete.
4. Every device will now be empty of data.
5. I was unsuccessful at bringing my data back in using the Cloud web site. So I went back to my desktop app and brought it in that way. Then, I turned the Cloud back on. If you've done it right, all you should see is the Cloud symbol above where it says ALL CONTACTS. Immediately, all of my devices filled up with the same information. I double checked by adding a new data entry. And all of the devices updated with it.
The next day, I noticed that my desktop app was not doing the cloud updates, although all of my other devices were. So I went to the desktop app preferences, deleted the entries and then turned the cloud back on. Immediately the desktop app updated with cloud contacts. Now, it syncs just fine.
BTW, everything is done by an "air sync" and if you actually connect your device to ITUNES, the address book will be greyed out. Don't change the setting. You don't ever want to sync the data with ITUNES again -- or you'll get your duplicates back!
The iCloud is genius. Sure makes life simpler and easier. So if you have problems in the beginning, don't give up. The end result is so worth it!!!
Good luck!

Hi guys,
This hasn't helped with me as the MobileMe account won't allow me to disable it or even delete it from the desktop app.
Here's my issue (https://discussions.apple.com/message/18525465#18525465):
I am having real problems with Address Book after transfering from MobileMe to iCloud.
I have two accounts running at the moment:
MobileMe - xxxxxx
iCloud - xxxxx (using my Apple ID as they suggest)
This means that I have two accounts in my Address book with duplicate details.
I have turned off the MobileMe account on my iMac - and they still show in Address Book.
I have gone in to Address Book preferences and tried to disable the MobileMe Account by unchecking the 'Enable this account' button ... but it simply checks itself again. So I still have duplicates.
I have removed the MobileMe account altogether from the Address Book Accounts pane, but when I restart the app they just come back again!
I have gone on to the MobileMe Address Book online and deleted all of the contacts - but they have not been deleted off of my Address Book.
Can someone please tell me how I can remove this account from my Address Book as it's driving me mad, I dont want it anymore and it also means that I now have a duplicate Birthdays account in my iCal as well!!!
Any idea of any fixes for this?
<Edited By Host>

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CLEANING UP Address Book Duplicates and Errors

*I'm looking for a way to clean up duplicates in Address Book.* The built-in solution doesn't seem to work
Are there any plugins or 3rd party software for Address Book that does better than what its doing now....nothing!
Any other suggestions? It is getting out of hand....Thanks in Advance!

The built-in solution doesn't seem to work.
Not very helpful, that. Provide details and maybe someone will pop in with a solution.

Address Book duplicates some names.

The address book duplicates parts of the names of those I sent to.
Example:
Babineau Babineau Cheryl
Currier Nita D. Currier D.
Miller Harvey Harvey
But not every person to whom I send has their name duplicated as above.
I have used "Edit" on these and cleaned them up many time and finalize with Save. Duplicates always reappear. I want this to stop.
Using: Address Bk 4.0.3 and 10.4.6
iMac, G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

With AB open and active, click TM in the dock to enter it. Go back in the timeline until the addresses you are looking for appear in AB. Select all addresses you need and click restore. You will be asked then to import the addresses into AB.
Once done, I would suggest you uncheck contacts from the iCloud preferences and delete the contacts from the computer, then recheck contacts in iCloud. This will rebuild the iCloud database files on the computer and should resolve any issues if any exist.

Lion - Address Book Duplicates

Almost every one of my address book entries is duplicated. Some are identical and most of the others simply have the phone numbers in a different order. I went through a Card/Look for Duplicates. It said that it found about 2,000 duplicate entries. I told it to merge them, and it crunched for a while, but nothing seemed to change. Running it again doesn't find any duplicates, however.
I still have about 2,000 duplicate entries. If I try to manually merge two identical entries, by highlighting them both and clicking Card/Merge Selected Cards, I get the message 'The cards could not be merged because they came from different accounts'. I would really like to know *** that means.
Any help appreciated.

--russell wrote:
I posted this in another thread on Address Book duplicates and iCloud. Did this start after the iCloud hoopla? After I tried iCloud, I ended up with duplicate contacts on my computer. The "Look for Duplicates" command in Address Book gave me soemthing to the effect, "No duplicates found," which raised my blood pressure as I could see them right there.
Going to System Preferences did the trick for me. Click on iCloud under Internet & Wireless. Untick the checkbox for Contacts. You'll then be given a choice of keeping your iCloud contacts on your computer, with the options of Delete from Mac or Keep Contacts. No, you don't want to delete the contacts from your box, so choose Keep Contacts. Let it do its thing, then re-tick the Contacts checkbox.
Like I said, at least for me this solved the problem with no more duplicate entries on my box or my iPhone.
You realize that your contacts will now no longer sync between your Mac and your iPhone right?

Address Book duplicates, what is duplicated

I have finally cleaned up Address Book after a near disaster with Outlook 2011 for the Mac. I sync with Google Apps and have no duplicates there. I now find after a few days I have 2 duplicates in Address Book but not in Google Contacts. Before I merge these duplicates, is there a way to see what is duplicated and which records have duplicate datad?
PS, Before anyone begins to use Outlook for the Mac, they should backup their Address Book. File>Export>Address Book Achive will do this. Time Machine is another option. I also foud that Outlook makes a mess of notes in a Contact record. I nolonger usse Outlook.

Here is a possibility to consider.
Open Contacts and select the first contact then scroll to the last contact and hold down the shift key and select it. At least for me, the Select All command does not work but the above method should select (highlight) all of your contacts.
Then open Numbers. Do a Command Tab so that the Contacts window is visible above the Numbers window. Click and drag the contacts onto the Numbers window.
Now your contacts are in a spreadsheet and you have a lot of options for formatting.

Contact / address book duplicates

WHile led I see lots of suggestions how to fix Contact / address book duplicates - I don't know what causes them.
I only have 1 mail account - exchange. What am I doing wrong to see duplicates constantly being created?
thanks. Be gentle!

Hi, have a similar but bigger problem. card --> Look for duplicates does not solve it.
from original 2000 adresses I now have 550,000 many of them massive duplicates. Causes MASSIVE time waste and delays.
Event correlates with me installing Outlook for Mac2011 sync programme.
now want to just delete address book and sync again and stay with Mac Address/Cal and disconnect from Microsoft.
question: can I simply delete address book in Finder? what happens when I go back into it? does it get newly created?
any other suggestion how to tackle?
thanks for desperate help

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Is there a way or software to check for doubles in Address Book ?
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Address Book>Card>Look for Duplicates.
hpr3

HT204150 Hi, I made a mistake by allowing facebook to download all my contacts in my address book. Now i need to clean my address book and keep only my original contacts. If i do it on my macbook, will it reflect on my iphone?

Hi, I made a mistake by allowing facebook to download all my contacts in my address book. Now i need to clean my address book and keep only my original contacts. If i do it on my macbook, will it reflect on my iphone? Or will my iphone redownload all the contacts i deleted when i connect it to my macbook or through the cloud?
when working with icloud, is there a primary device (macbok, ipad...) on which if the changes are made, they reflect on all other devices?

I see. If you are syncing contacts with iCloud on both your Mac and your iPhone, deleting a contact from either device will delete them from icloud.com and all other devices.
What's really going on with iCloud is that your contacts actually reside on the iCloud server. Your Mac and iPhone are merely reading the current contact list as it exists on the server. When you delete a contact (or make any other change) on either device, you are making these changes on the server. As a result, all other devices "syncing" contacts with the same iCloud account will read this change. When you log onto icloud.com, you are viewing the server from your browser.

What are the correct privileges for Wheel in address book.app 5.0.3?

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Hide function in Login Items doesn't work for iChat and Address Book app.

There is a problem with the hide function for iChat and Address Book application in Login Items. If you go to System Preferences, click on Login Items, add the iChat and Address Book application to the Login Items, activate the hide function for iChat and Address Book application and restart your Mac iChat and Address Book application will start with opening a window. Normally this shouldn't happen if the hide function in Login Items is activated for iChat and Address Book application.
Message was edited by: Roman Patrice Gego

Hi,
Your link refers to changes to 10.6.3 prior release as tested by Developers.
The numbering system tells us that. (Build 10Dxxx).
Therefore it is an Update and not an Upgrade, therefore no-one is going to get charged.
If the article is the so called Release Notes then they mention nothing about correcting any issue with Login Items Hiding.
If you think an issue is being missed there is a place to report that, from this icon view list http://www.apple.com/feedback/ which includes Hardware and Software.
I personally have not tested Login Items Hiding as I tend to think there is no point in having an App open if it not on the Desktop.
As Kappy pointed out there was little progress on a similar issue with Leopard.
This could be interpreted that Apple feel that the issue does not effect enough people or that other issues are more important.
As anyone and everyone can report Issues and contribute their ideas to the OS and it's improvement via the Feedback links it would seem to be a question of enough people bringing it to Apple's Attention.
I would tend to work on Issues that stopped an App functioning first, linked with integration with the OS and any changes to the major parts of it such as a Quicktime.
Lesser issues that maybe more cosmetic in appearance would tend to fall down my list of things to do.
Presumably Apple have a grading system on such things that may not fit with either of our views.
As Apple don't reveal any details about the OS Updates or even Upgrades then anything any of us think we interpret as a pattern is just that - an interpretation.
Consequently anything we say on the subject is then likely to be seen as speculation under the Terms of Use of these Boards.
8:28 PM Sunday; May 9, 2010
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

When setting up me new iphone - it is asking me for an iCloud password for an email address that doesnt belong to me - it is asking this info in order to retreive previously purchased items on itunes, etc. Help?

When setting up me new iphone - it is asking me for an iCloud password for an email address that doesnt belong to me - it is asking this info in order to retreive previously purchased items on itunes, etc. Help?

These are a couple different issues
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The iCloud account can be an Find My iPhone issue.
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Address book duplicates icloud

I just updated to the new 10.7.2 with iCLoud - now I get many duplicates in my address book and also in iCal (birthdays and events) How do I reset it so it doesn't keep updating duplicate contacts - I have done the Check For Duplicates and gone through and erased the duplicates but then it just updates and puts the deleted contacts back...

I have an iPhone where I create new contact details and a MB Air running OX X 10.7.3
In Address Book I see duplicate entries across the whole book. The other day I was traveling without my MB and needed to urgently reach someone who's number I knew was in my iPhone contact list for sure but searched and search and couldn't find it.
Turns out that when I had been going through the Adress Book on the MB Air trying to eliminate some of the duplicates I had chosen --without even knowing it or realzing it-- the card that I guess sync with my iPhone. It was gone. Sure enough, when I got back and looked it up on the MB Air it was still there not syncing to my iPhone. So it seems that since I actually paid to subscribe to Mobile Me then iCloud one of the benefits was that all the time I spent manually removing duplicates meant that I wouldn't have the contact info when I most needed it. It's great when you can get someone to actually pay for that kind of service.
So tyring to be diligient I used Address Book / Card / Look for Duplicates ... all the Duplicates still there.
Then I followed the Help suggesting and pressed Control / select to highlight two duplicate cards and even though the First / Last / Company / phone numbers / etc. are all the same I get the message: "The cards could not be merged because they came from different accounts."
I have checked with guys from the office who have the exact same problem with no idea how to solve the problem. Is it that in order to use Address Book on both an iPhone and an OS X machine you've just got to be smarter, more sophisticated, more IT oriented? Or you have to go to 3rd party software?
Seems like a pretty easy thing not to be struggling with. Ok, I admit I'm naive but it seems pretty basic to me. If I have an Address Book it should synchronize between OX X and IOS.

HT2486 Why does icloud really mess up my address book?

Need therapy or Help. All my macs are supposed to link and cotnacts saved, yet i have 2 icloud acocunts in my address book and cannot create groups with out it immediatly adding an icloud group...puzzled. It is me or is address book moving from a really easy App to use to a nigtmare....with mass duplicates, slow workings etc? but it could be me...lol

Apple's answer, via the Genius Bar at the 5th Ave Store in NYC, is as follows:
"You have to use a differnent @me.com e-mail address because Notes syncing is designed to remain compatible with Lion (10.7). Even though it is inconvenient, you just have to make up a new address solely for the purpose of syncing Notes. You don't have to ever use the address/log in/check mail; just type it into your iPhone once and Notes will sync."
Once you enter this address and turn on Notes syncing in the iCloud System Preference panel on your computer, and in the iCloud Settings panel on your iPhone, Notes will sync. You will then have two Notes accounts on your phone, "iCloud" and "On My iPhone." For new notes to sync, make sure you switch the default account to "iCloud" in the Notes settings on your phone.
Unfortunately, this will only sync new notes going forward. I have not been able to get my existing notes to sync, other than by copying each one and pasting into a new note (and deleting the old one). If you were syncing notes under 10.7, you might be able to change the account the notes are associated with (i.e. move them from "on my phone" to "iCloud') using the Mail application on your computer, but if you have not synced notes before I think you're out of luck.

Delete Address Book Duplicates with less info?

I was wondering how you would go about deleting duplicate contacts in Address Book 4.0.3? I want to keep the contacts I have which contain at least the "Company" field filled in (contacts with more info) but then delete the ones with less. If a bunch of vCards have the same name but different email addresses will will they merge into only one vCard (by default I think another program put multiple emails with the same name and when I merged vCards there was only one email address for that name)? Should I merge the ones I don't want?
What do you guys think is the best solution? Should I merge the cards and make sure the names of the contacts are all different (except the ones I'm merging)? Use some other program? Please respond if you have an idea because I don't. Thanks.

They also sometimes appear with a dash or minus sign infront of them.

ICloud Deleted Local Contacts From Address Book

Okay, so I tried setting up an iCloud account so a family member could receive texts and messages via iChat. That was the original goal. I successfully set up an account, but iChat does not allow me to login via the iCloud account that I had set up. After sever attempts I decided to put that on the back burner until I had a little more time to look into it. In doing so I seem to have caused some other collateral damage which I didn't anticipate (see below).
Unfortunately, as I logged out of iCloud on the iMac, it wiped/deleted every last contact that was in the address book. My question is: How can I get them back?
I suspect that there is a "previous" or "prior" image of the data what was there. I'm guessing that Apple put some type of safeguard in place for just such an occurrance, though I could be wrong.
The Machine is a 2011 27" iMac running 10.7.5. The last backup of the address book that I can get to is from 2011. Actually it's the Address Book Folder in users>Library>Applications Support. I made a copy of the entire system drive AFTER everything was migrated over from the old system that was replaced, and have it on an external drive.
Some notes:
- Time Machine was not active or on
- iCloud was never activated until just recently
- the person does not own an iDevice with any of the contacts
- iCloud does not seem to show any contacts to even bring back onto the iMac
It seems like a really silly thing to have any local data removed AT ALL upon signing out of iCloud. What's on the machine should remain on the machine unless the enduser literally goes out of there way to purposly delete the information stored there. There should be no dialog box what so ever even indicating that data will be removed, and even if the data was removed there should be an easy way to undo the action in case the enuser misinterpreted the action. Before any of the data is removed from the local the information (or at least a copy of it) should have been automatically stored to the cloudspace PRIOR. Why on earth would Apple set it up in such a way where the default is to delete any local data at all?

No. Absolutely not. We'll just have to agree to disagree. iCloud should be able to be turned on or off on any given device associated with said account. Local stores should be synchronized and that synchronization should happen continuously if connected. When not connected, local stores should maintain their state. What would be the purpose of even bothering to "sync". Or are you saying that in effect everything is copied to a central location (ie the cloud) and any devices wanting access to that data need to be "signed in", and in effect becoming nul terminals with no local store? Why should the default assume users would want to delete the synchronized data upon sign out? iCloud should be a "use as needed" tool and not an "either/or" tool. In this case *it* should have backed the data up to begin with. That is the purpose after all. I (wrongfully) assumed in haste that the information was backed up or copied elsewhere and that even if I chose to delete it from the local device, I would still have access to it because it was stored "somewhere". And if the data wasn't synced/backed up to "the cloud" upon sign-in, then a friendly reminder alerting the user that now data had yet been saved would certainly go a long way. But this derails the entire thread. All I want to know is whether or not there is a way to retrieve the data that was erased from the iMac?

ICloud/Solution for cleaning up address book duplicates

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