Contacts "On My Mac" vs "iCloud"

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Level 1

58 points

Contacts "On My Mac" vs "iCloud"

I suspect my contacts are a mess. Most on my Mac show as being in in both with a few not having a field for either [despite being on my Mac]. I suspect this comes of having had Macs for decades and having some transfer data to newer machines with varying degrees of success.

Questions:

Is there any reason for having both?

Given I have a Mac, iPad and iPhone will not iCloud do for all?

Can I easily merge them all to iCloud and then [uneasily] sort out any duplication?

Thanks,

Colin

Posted on Dec 30, 2018 4:15 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Roger Wilmut1

Level 10

131,158 points

Dec 30, 2018 4:45 AM in response to Colin Cohen

Click 'All on My Mac', then click any address, then hit command-A to select all. Drag these to 'All iCloud'. Wait for them to upload. You will have to sort any duplicates manually.

It makes more sense to have them on iCloud so that they are the same on your other devices when you make changes. You can back them up for safety if you want: select all, then menu File>Export>Export vCard.

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Answer 2

Dec 30, 2018 6:24 AM in response to Colin Cohen

I don't know why the peculiarity of the 64 let behind or the duplicates. When you add a new contact you should do it under 'iCloud'.

You should be able to see them on the iCloud website in the 'Contacts' section:

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Answer 3

Colin Cohen Author

Level 1

58 points

Dec 30, 2018 5:55 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thanks Roger, all done, but ...

A select all on my iMac gave 473 cards. Once they had been copied to iCloud for some reason it left 64 cards randomly selected on my iMac. A did cmd-a again and this gave 147 dups which I merged to de-dup, which is a clean-up pain to be confronted later.

Now, under All Contacts I have All iCloud and All on My Mac in the extreme LH pane of Contacts [Groups] which don't seem to be the same [but seemed correctable by drag'n'drop], but when I click on All iCloud or All on My Mac they seem to be the same in the individual listing.

Questions:

Can I now safely delete All on my Mac? Or do I just have to be sure always to add new cards in All iCloud, rather than On my Mac/On my iPhone/My iPad?

Where are they in iCloud? I can see them on my iPad and iPhone in Contacts, but not when I open iCloud. Some time ago, via a third party app, I think on iOS, I spotted a lot of material taking up space in iCloud which is not visible under OSX/iOS.

Thanks again,

Colin

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Answer 4

Colin Cohen Author

Level 1

58 points

Dec 31, 2018 5:43 AM in response to Colin Cohen

Thanks Roger.

I can see them in the app on all platforms, but even in Finder, let alone iOS, I can't see the file. The Mac app is 11Mb, but I have no way of telling if this includes the data or not.

I'd simply like to get rid of On my Mac [or even collapse it in the LH column as you would expect from Finder, Mail etc], but suspect selecting and deleting them one-by-one in the LH pane [no cmd-a here] I'd screw things up...

Cheers, Colin

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Contacts "On My Mac" vs "iCloud"

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