Contacts: why does it show everything twice?

You're going to want to delete, then re-enable tethered sync in iTunes, being careful to only sync calendars, Selected Calendars, and the select the birthday calendar.

Thanks for taking the time to solve this problem. I could not initially figure out how to deal with this sync issue. Your instructions were great.

Dudley Warner

hi Jim,

There are a lot of disappointed people like us. It's like part of Apple's quality assurance process is to let their users duke it out with the bugs for a few months so they don't have to properly test their new products...

I'm having the same problems, immediately after updating to 3.0. Mobile Me syncs fine with my computer, but my iPhone doesn't work with it at all. I have had all the duplicate contact and calendars, only to find out that you cannot have iTunes syncing and Mobile Me on at the same time..

So far, I haven't found any solutions to this problem. Resetting the sync history does nothing; nor does toggling on/off calendar and contact syncing on the phone or in iTunes; 'replace information on this iPhone' option in iTunes doesn't work (nothing is replaced?); etc etc..

I am able to get iCal events onto the iPhone, but iPhone events do not sync to iCal. I don't get it. I see that there are two calendar 'accounts' in the iPhone: one for Mobile Me, and the other an 'untitled account' (which explains the duplicates). Mobile Me and iCal sync perfectly, and have the same events, but the iPhone isn't syncing to Mobile Me or iCal. Both methods (over the air or tether syncing) change nothing.

It's very frustrating, and these forums don't seem to help as there are a number of different posts elaborating on the same problem, with the same suggestions appearing everywhere. We really need an update to Jason L's FAQ if there are any useful suggestions out there...

I had the same problem and searched Apple Discussions for a solution. Here's what I found:

It sounds like you're syncing your contacts from both your MobileMe Account and your desktop. With iPhone 3.0, Apple supports syncing from multiple sources. Since you're already in this situation, you're going to have to do some circus act to get back into good shape.

Step One: Turn off MobileMe syncing.
Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Accounts > Your MobileMe Account > Contacts > "OFF"
The iPhone will display a dialog asking "What would you like to do with the previously synced MobileMe contacts on your iPhone?" to which you will choose "Delete from My iPhone"
Once this is complete, you'll only have your contacts that synced over from your computer.

Step Two: Disable tethered syncing in iTunes
In iTunes, select your device and go to the "Info" tab and disable sync contacts option

Step Three: Re-enable MobileMe syncing
- Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Accounts > Your MobileMe Account > Contacts > "ON"
The iPhone will display a dialog asking "There are existing contacts synced with your Mac. Would you like to merge them with your MobileMe account?" to which you will choose "Do not merge"
This will prompt another dialog asking "What would you like to do with the existing contacts on your iPhone" to which you will choose "Delete"

All done! You should now only have 1 copy of all your contacts syncing from MobileMe. The only time this is useful is when you have contacts on another computer (like at work) that you're not syncing with MobileMe and don't have access to Exchange. This way you can keep the separate, but have both available.

I copied the text so I could refer to it as I followed this person's directions. You may search for the author if you'd like or use the steps as I've pasted above. It worked and my sync process is now flawless.

ibaj wrote:
It sounds like you're syncing your contacts from both your MobileMe Account and your desktop. With iPhone 3.0, Apple supports syncing from multiple sources. Since you're already in this situation, you're going to have to do some circus act to get back into good shape.

Step One: Turn off MobileMe syncing.
- Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Accounts > Your MobileMe Account > Contacts > "OFF"
- The iPhone will display a dialog asking "What would you like to do with the previously synced MobileMe contacts on your iPhone?" to which you will choose "Delete from My iPhone"
- Once this is complete, you'll only have your contacts that synced over from your computer.

Step Two: Disable tethered syncing in iTunes
- In iTunes, select your device and go to the "Info" tab and disable sync contacts option

Step Three: Re-enable MobileMe syncing
- - Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Accounts > Your MobileMe Account > Contacts > "ON"
- The iPhone will display a dialog asking "There are existing contacts synced with your Mac. Would you like to merge them with your MobileMe account?" to which you will choose "Do not merge"
- This will prompt another dialog asking "What would you like to do with the existing contacts on your iPhone" to which you will choose "Delete"

All done! You should now only have 1 copy of all your contacts syncing from MobileMe. The only time this is useful is when you have contacts on another computer (like at work) that you're not syncing with MobileMe and don't have access to Exchange. This way you can keep the separate, but have both available.

Life Saver!

I am having the exact same problem (double contacts). When I follow your directions, it deletes all my contacts. When I turn off the mobile me contacts, it delets them and I only have one set. But when I go back to turn mobileme back on for contacts, when it asks me to merge or delete, if I select delete then it deletes ALL my contacts. I have to resynch with outlook to get them back. So after going through your directions, my options are either double contacts or no contacts! Please help.

Side note - I have spent countless hours trying to get my new 3GS back on the same page. this is my 3rd iPhone and I never had any problems synching the others. I've already lost all my notes from my previous iPhone b/c they did not synch back and now I don't know where they went. Very very frustrating!

So...this sort of worked, except that the only contacts that were left on my phone were the Contacts from my work Exchange account. How do I get the address book on my Laptop, MacPro, iPhone and Exchange account to all work together?

Sounds like you've got an Exchange Account with one copy of your contacts and another copy on all your computers. You can't really merge the two.

Snow Leopard has built in support for Exchange, but hasn't been released yet. Entourage supports Exchange, but can be limiting. MobileMe won't talk to your Exchange server, but will sync your contacts over-the-air with your computers/iPhone.

Sounds like you'll just need to make a decision on which route you'd like to go.

Worked like a charm, thank you!

Had the same problem, it was resolved by doing the mobileme "un-sync then sync" procedure from my iPhone, although the problem would come reoccur if I synced my contacts or iCal with itunes, even when I checked the boxes under the "info" tab at the bottom that says "replace data etc..". So basically, I have mobileme, a brand new macbookpro, a brand new iphone, and I'm unable to sync my contacts or my calendar from my computer to my phone because Apple can't fix this problem. I payed a premium for these products and now they won't even work right. Mobileme can sync to both the iPhone and your computer but your computer cannot sync to your iPhone and vice versa. I also discovered recently that I cannot play music from my iPhone through iTunes while it's plugged into any computer except for my own (the one that my iPhone cannot sync with properly). I was able to do this just fine with my iPod Touch. Thanks for the middle finger Apple. By the way, I called Apple's phone support to see if they could fix my problem, the only solution they had was to check the boxes in iTunes under "info" to "replace all data from iTunes onto my phone". This didn't help too much.

thank you for solving this problem.

Thank you ibaj!

I was having this problem with calendars. I never knew that the iPhone would prompt you to take care of such duplicates after re-enabling over-the-air syncing. I was too focused on getting the duplicates off before turning it back on.

Another interesting note about calendars: if you have any subscriptions in iCal that you would like to be synced to your phone (and keep updating automatically), don't sync them with iTunes.

Instead you should email yourself the URLs of the subscription calendars and click them from your iPhone's Mail app. They will be added to your calendar on the iPhone and not synced back over to the Mac (which would result in duplicates on the Mac).

This article explains:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3634