IPad Calendar doesn't sync back to iCloud nor Mac

Question

Hello all,
I have a strange issue that, since a few days, the iPad-based, iCloud-linked calendar doesn't sync back to iCloud. Hence, for that reason, the calendar on the Mac isn't in sync, and this is, as you can guess, pretty annoying. iPad runs iPhone OS 6.1, and the Mac runs Snow Leopard. I manually configured the calendar portion of iCloud as indicated, and sync between iCal (Mac) and iCloud doesn't suffer any delay.
Additional information: when initially reinstalled, the iPad has two sets of calendars: one locally synced with the Mac, the other being iCloud, and there's overlap between the two, thanks to this pesky sync problem. I really appreciate the convenience of iCloud, but can't go without the safety of local sync. I may go days without manually syncing the iPad with iTunes but still, iCal is my lifeline, and any defect in keeping updated or worse, losing events will result in serious profesional consequences. It already happened in the days before iCloud.
iCloud-related information: my Apple ID is an email that has been dead for years. Since I used it heavily before the mailing privider ceased activities, I couldn't practically restart from scratch, so I am currently using this "fossil" login along with an updated Yahoo contact adress, and recently added an @me.com adress from iCloud. The latter is the adress is the one used to connect to iCloud's calendar from iCal, and works nicely.
However, the iPad, despite being configured with iCloud natively, doesn't update. I restarted it, but since the most up-to-date calendar is on the iPad and un-synced, so far I didn't try deleting and re-adding iCloud to the iPad as it would delete events added since.
What could cause the iPad to lose sync with iCloud, and how to solve that and prevent it from happening again?

Answer 1

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.