Syncing contacts merge/delete/duplicate

Hello,
I am syncing an iPad and 2 iPhones with one user on our macbook. We have roughly 1500 contacts which constantly get edited/deleted/added. Now I was told at the apple store that when syncing the newest version of the contact will be the one that's kept. However that's not the case, in fact there is no "real pattern" on what happens when synced.
If a contact gets deleted on one of the 4 devicde (iPad, mac or 2 iPhones) it will always return when the other devices sync, if we edit a contact it will most times duplicate the contact and we now have 2 or 3 versions of it and WORST of all it will merge contacts which are not to be merged (let's say we have 2 Simons, 1 with just a number and 1 with more info like email, address and birthday) it will just add the other contacts number to the excitisting contact and delete the second.
What's happening? What am I doing wrong? How can it be fixed?
Thanks in advance!

Hey
I'm Michael and I work for connex.io, an address book service.
To my knowledge, there is no option to do this in Outlook itself. Depending on the service you use, there might be a de-duplication feature available.
If you want, you can try connex.io. Our app can automatically de-duplicate, complete and clean your contacts for you and sync them with many devices (including Outlook). If you want to check it out: https://connex.io/tour-1-what-does-connexio-do or if you need more help you can mail me: [email protected]
Good luck!
Michael
'I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.'

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HT1386 Re-syncing Contacts after deleting iCloud

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Check your iCloud account on icloud.com on your computer and see if your contacts are still there. (When you delete an iCloud account from your device it remains in iCloud.) If they are, set up the same iCloud account on your phone again and turn iCloud syncing for contacts to On. When prompted, choose Merge.
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Hey
I'm Michael and I work for connex.io, an address book service.
To my knowledge, there is no option to do this in Outlook itself. Depending on the service you use, there might be a de-duplication feature available.
If you want, you can try connex.io. Our app can automatically de-duplicate, complete and clean your contacts for you and sync them with many devices (including Outlook). If you want to check it out: https://connex.io/tour-1-what-does-connexio-do or if you need more help you can mail me: [email protected]
Good luck!
Michael
'I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.'

Deleting Duplicate Contact Group

So... I sync'd my contacts "from my mac" while I was already syncing with MobileMe, and now I have duplicates of all my contacts, and as such I would like to delete the "All from My Mac" group.
In searching for a solution, I found various older posts all of which basically said that you cannot delete an entire contact group on an iPhone. But as the most recent post I found was 6 months old, I am wondering if anybody out there has any new insight they can provide to solve this mildly annoying situation?
Lance.

To get rid of the duplicate contacts caused by syncing with both MobileMe and your computer:
1. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > MobileMe account > Contacts > "OFF"
2. You will be asked what you want to do with previously synced contacts - select "Delete from my iPhone".
3. Connect your phone to iTunes, go to device page, info tab and disable sync contacts.
4. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > MobileMe acct > Contacts > "ON"
5. You will then get message: "There are existing contacts synced with your Mac. Would you like to merge them with your MobileMe account?" Choose "Do not merge."
6. You will then be asked: "What would you like to do with the existing contacts on your iPhone?" Choose "Delete."
7. In a couple of minutes your phone will sync back your contacts from MobliMe, without the duplicate copy from your computer.
If you also have duplicate Calendar entries, do the same process with calendars - can be done at the same time.

I have iPhone 4, wife has 3GS. Each have our own PC but one itunes account and icloud. Now have realized that our contacts have merged and appear in duplicate on devices and PC's. If i delete contact it deletes on hers as well. ***! Over!

Also, if we both have iMessage on and someone sends me message she gets it as well and vice-versa

CFN2 wrote:
Also, if we both have iMessage on and someone sends me message she gets it as well and vice-versa
This happens when you try to use the same Apple ID for iMessage. One of you needs to change by going to Settings>Messages>Receive At, tap the Apple ID at the top, sign out, sign back in using a different Apple ID. If you don't have one, you can create one here: https://appleid.apple.com (you will need a separate email address to create one).
On your merged contacts issue, this happens when you sync contacts both phones to the same iCloud account. To correct this, on one of the phones go to Settings>iCloud and turn off syncing for each of the services (contacts, calendars, etc.), when prompted choose to keep the data on the phone. Then scroll to the bottom and delete the iCloud account (it only deletes the account from this phone). Then set up a new iCloud account with a different Apple ID and turn on syncing again. You will need to go to https://www.icloud.com/ for each account and delete the unwanted contacts. Then you should be good to go.

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Check icloud.com to be sure you contact list is correct there. If it is, just go to Settings>iCloud on your device and turn Contacts to On to sync the contacts to your device. If contacts are already set to On and you still see duplicates, you may be viewing a duplicate contact group in addition to the iCloud contacts. Open Contacts, tap Groups, then tap any groups other than iCloud to uncheck them, then tap Done. See if the duplicates are still there.

Contacts- icloud sync + deleting duplicates?

I am ripping my hair out.
I have lived with duplicate contacts on my iphone for years. Today I started to clear out the duplicates by hand. But as soon as I would delete one duplicate contact on my iphone, I would be brought back to the list of contacts, I would see the remaining contact that now does not have a duplicate, then there would be a loading icon in the top bar, and that contact would then vanish!
I quickly went to my macbook, turned off the wifi, and exported a copy of my address book to my desktop.
I turned wifi back on, on my computer, then navigated to the "Contacts" application that is syncing with icloud and saw that both duplicate contacts were also vanishing from here. So, I sighed and, imported my saved list of contacts, to replace. But alas!!! the contacts that I deleted by hand would display for one second, the list would refresh and the contacts would again vanish!!!!!
So, I navigated to icloud.com where my list looks ok. The duplicate contacts are lost here. BUT there are no duplicates displaying on icloud.com.
How do I force icloud contacts to put preference on my desktop contacts. Or what can I do? to stop this deletion of my important contacts? Do I have to live with duplicates?

Thanks for trying to help oscarluke. Yes I'm fully up-to-date with the latest version of IOS7.0.2 and no, I don't have any linked accounts. My point, that Csound1 failed to understand, is that I don't even have my PC's Outlook contacts any more - the only address book I'm operating from is my iCloud one which my iPhone, iPad and PC all sync from. So logically when I directly edit an address in iCloud (on the iCloud website) they should all show that one, updated address. As you posted in Feb, unfortunately my iPad and my iPhone just add a duplicate contact - a corrected version - but leave on the old uncorrected version next to it - even though iCloud only shows the latest, most up-to-date one.
I have linked my computer's email account to my phone and pad to receive my emails there but I have only linked it for mail and notes, not contacts. I wonder if the problem is something to do with the hierarchy of which bit of kit updates what. If I update a contact in my iCloud address book on Outlook and then hit the refresh button it updates my phone and iCloud. But if I don't manually force Outlook to sync and update it like that straight away, then the next time I go into Outlook my PC contact has been 'updated' by my phone back to the old address even tho' the system is supposed to work both ways.
My phone seems to have the ultimate control, but as you said before, if I delete the incorrect address on my phone then anything to do with that contact vanishes and then they start vanishing from iCloud, my PC and iPad. The only guaranteed way I can do it is to write down on a piece of paper (I can't believe I'm even typing this) the correct contact details, delete them from everywhere and then key them afresh on my phone. As I have about 500 contacts I never seem to get very far with the job.
iCloud certainly works a lot better than the bad old days of MobileMe which I also suffered through, but sync is still far from perfect. If you can think of anywhere else there might be a hidden link or changeable setting that I can try I'd welcome any advice.
As for Csound1, your advice is not helpful, and the comment you made with regard to my post about Outlook is wrong. With regard to the first - there are no groups in my Contact app - only one long list of iCloud contacts called All Contacts. And with regard to the second - when you link an SMTP email account through Outlook, iCloud takes over all your contacts and your Outlook address book vanishes. Not only that, but because the Outlook database formats differently to the iCloud part of some addresses were chopped off so there are random street names and numbers missing. I have had to make a contacts backup to keep on my desktop which I update from time to time because if I didn't and the Apple servers went down I would have no Contacts at all, anywhere. In fact iCloud has made a total mess of my contacts and I wish I could figure out how to stop it starting with these wretched duplicates.

Without syncing my iphone, is there a way to delete duplicate contacts without going one by one?

Without syncing my iPhone, is there a way to delete duplicate contacts without going one by one?

So the answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to my 2nd question is no?
You selected which email account under the Info tab for your iPhone sync preferences with iTunes and this means you are not syncing contacts with a supported address book app on your computer?

How can I delete duplicate contacts on my Iphone?

I am using outlook and syncing contacts with my I phone. A number of contacts have come up duplicated onmy I phone.
How can I delete a contact or re-sync to eliminate duplicates ?

Thank you randers4 for answer above. I highly recommend using the info. in the two apple links below:
Archive or make copies of your iCloud data - Apple Support and
If you see duplicate contacts after setting up iCloud Contacts - Apple Support

How to delete duplicate contacts in icloud

How do you delete duplicate contacts in iCloud so that they will not appear on all of my devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook)?

Hey mzhill78
Remove you icloud contact information on all your IOS devices, go to the icloud setting on you ios device and turn off the addressbook syncing, when it asks you "do you want to remove keep the address on your ips device you say NO... So now your MacBook is the only thing syncing too the icloud.
Go to Addresbook and look for the menu option find duplicates.
After that wait for your laptop to sync this too icloud. to check give it about 2 min depending on how many changes log into your icloud account at www.icloud.com and check too see if the syncing has updated whats in the cloud.
If it has then urn on your addressbook syncing in iclouud settings on your IOS devices and all should be back too normal.
Hope it helps,
If this has sloved your problem please mark it as Solved thank you..

Will contacts deleted on iPod Touch truly sync and get deleted in AB?

I have many, probably 100, duplicates of contacts in my Address Book and thus on my iPod Touch, which I would like to delete on the iPod Touch and then sync and have them also delete on my MacBook Pro. Is it possible to do this? Or will the computer try to 'save' or 'keep' these contacts? (I want to delete them from the Touch and sync it to the computer - rather than vice versa - because I am without my MB Pro for a month and would like to handle this now.)
The Touch manual says "contacts are synced both ways between your computer and iPod Touch. New entries or changes made on iPod Touch are synced to your computer."
This is not entirely clear because the computer could decide that these are not "changes" but deletion on the Touch and might just keep them in the OS 10 Address Book application. Another unsuccessful possibility could be that the MB Pro syncs them back onto the iPod Touch which it might consider as doing it's side of the syncing job, which would defeat the purpose of what I'm trying to do.
Any clear definite answers to this so I won't have to do this process of deleting duplicate entries twice should they not delete on the MB Pro?
Thanks.

Instead of deleting the duplicates on your touch, delete them on your Mac. After that, use the feature to replace all contact info on the ipod during the next sync in iTunes. You can find this option in the info pane, advanced section with your ipod connected.

Sync contacts and calendar without deleting....

I want to sync my contacts and calendar in my iPhone with a macbook. The macbooks contactlist and calendar are empty. Hasn't been docked with it yet because a friend told me that all my contacts and apointments would be deleted since the iPhone is slave to the macbook.
- Is this true? How can I go around this problem?

Copied from my previous post.
+*Before syncing contact info with the empty Address Book on this MacBook, enter one contact in the AB on this MacBook. Make the contact up if needed, which can be deleted later. This will provide a merge prompt when syncing contact info, which you want to select.*+
+*After this initial merge, the AB on the MB and your iPhone's AB will be kept synchronized.*+
The same applies before syncing an iPhone with a supported address book on a PC, if the supported address book on the PC is empty. After the initial merge when syncing the first time with a supported address book, contact info will be kept synchronized between the two. The same applies to calendar events when syncing calendar events with a supported calendar application on your computer.

Is there a way to merge or delete duplicate bookmarks?

I imported bookmarks and now I have duplicates. Is there a quick and easy way to merge or delete duplicate bookmarks, like there is with Contacts?

Open the Bookmarks section of your browser and delete the ones you do not need or want. I know of no macro commands that one can use to delete them.
Ciao.

Syncing contacts merge/delete/duplicate

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