Struggling to Sync iPhone contacts to iCloud? Here's a possible solution!

Question

I was struggling all day trying to figure out why my contacts were appearing on my iPhone 5, but not on my Macbook Pro Late 2011 Edition. To make a long story short, I was able to add contacts to my Contact app on my Macbook and have them sync immediately to my iPhone, but was not able to do it vice-versa.
Here was the cause:
I opened up my Contacts app on my iPhone 5
I hit 'Groups' at the top left side of the app.
I was given three options; Show All Contacts, All Outlook, and All iCloud.
I had All Outlook and All iCloud checked.
I created a fake person on my Mac Contact's app and it showed up immediately under my phone.
After thinking on it for some time, I came back and unchecked All Outlook.
By doing this, only my one fake contact appeared.
This was then a red flag to me that I had stored all of my contacts as Outlook contacts, not as iCloud contacts. If you're having a similar problem, it could be that you are storing your contacts under your email, not as iCloud, which is a huge problem for Mac users who want to integrate everything together. I like to go to my Messages app on the Mac and have a name to go with each conversation, and when my phone is charging pick up the conversation on the Mac. First, go into your iPhone settings and assuming you're running iOS 7, others may differ, hit 'Mail, Contacts, Calendars', scroll down to the sub category 'Contacts' and make sure your Default account is set to iCloud. Mine was set to Outlook which is why all of my contacts were stored in Outlook.
I found a very easy, quick fix to migrate the contacts from my Outlook to my iCloud! This solution works as a Verizon user.
Download the Backup Assistant app from the App Store on your iPhone.
Run the Backup Assistant.
Log into your Verizon account and hit "Manage Contacts"
You will then be brought to a page with contacts from your phone.
From here, Select All Contacts and hit the 'Gear' icon.
Click "Export Contacts"
This will create a file for you to refer to in the future so remember where you save it and make multiple copies.
Head over to your iPhone and download MultiDelete contact app. This app is used to delete multiple contacts instead of going one by one.
Once you have finished deleting your contacts from everything, including iCloud and your email program (mine was Outlook), you will have a clean and empty contacts book on your iPhone.
Go to your Mac now and open up Contacts.
Find the MyContacts.csv file and within Contacts, hit 'File' - 'Import' and browse to where MyContacts.csv is.
This will then add all of your contacts back into your phone, but as iCloud contacts, not as Outlook contacts or association with any other email address
Open up MultiDelete one more time and search for duplicates. Once you have found that there are no duplicates, you are all set.
Some people just like to turn off Contacts under their Mail, Contacts, etc... folder on their iPhone but that's not deleting them. This deletes them from the email program on the phone and makes them into iCloud contacts. Now, if you navigate to iCloud.com and log in, hit Contacts, all of your contacts are available. This is especially nice to have because if you ever use Messages on your Mac, you can text message right off your Mac!
This solution is only used for people running newer versions of both iOS and OSX. I am running iOS 7.1 currently and running the latest, most up-to-date version of Mavericks at the time this article is being written.
I figured after all of the trouble I went through today, I would share hoping that maybe somebody in a similar situation can get the fix they desire. Always enter your contacts app on your phone and uncheck your email version to test and see if they are iCloud contacts. As an Apple user with mutliple devices, this is especially helpful. You want all of your Apple devices integrated together from iPod touch to iPad, to Mac, to iPhone, as long as everything is in iCloud, you can sync them across multiple devices effortlessly.
Also, if this solution doesn't help, I'd start by troubleshooting and checking the following:
Making sure your iCloud is set up on each device and that you have turned on exactly what you desire to share between devices (whether it's contacts to calendar events)
If that's all set up, definitely look into my solution above.
If you're still having trouble, contact Apple Live Chat or give them a call. They were stumped by this issue I had, however after brainstorming a bit I figured it out myself.
I hope this helps a few people!

Answer 1

Hi,
You could also try resetting your airport express.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107418
Worked for me.