contacts "in the cloud" vs. "on my mac" not in sync.

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Level 1

122 points

contacts "in the cloud" vs. "on my mac" not in sync.

So I was using contacts on gmail, and at some point had imported contacts into my mac. Bunch of mess so I decided to abandon gmail and go with Apple. On my phone I had one set of contacts (from gmail) and on my mac I had duplicates from gmail and "on my mac" (imported from gmail at some point, and I did a fresh import before disabling contacts on my gmail account).

I did a fresh import of contacts from gmail to my mac. I turned off gmail contacts on mac and phone, then enabled contacts under iCloud on mac and phone.

Now on my mac I still have two sets of contacts with a ton of duplication and different counts, one set "iCloud" (193) and one set "On My Mac" (232).

So I can get the contacts in the cloud, which corresponds to the contacts on my phone. But why is there still a separate set of contacts locally "on my mac" which includes contacts that are not in the cloud? Isn't this the point of the cloud, to sync it, and why is it showing me two sets. How do I get the additional contacts that are "on my mac" into the cloud? And then do I just delete all the contacts "on my mac"?

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 16, 2020 12:41 PM

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Answer 1

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Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Jan 16, 2020 1:04 PM in response to ringspa

Select the On My Mac cards that aren't in iCloud. You can select multiple cards by holding down on the command key while clicking the cards. Once they are all selected, Contacts/File/Export/Export as vCard. Exporting the cards to your Desktop makes them easy to find. Then Contacts/File/Import and choose iCloud. Once you are sure you have all the cards in iCloud, go back to the On My Mac section and select the top card. Hold down the shift key and select the last card. Then Contacts/Edit/Delete.

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