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All my contacts right now are in iCloud and that's the only location showing in the sidebar.
There are a few contacts that I want to save to "On My Mac" and not to iCloud. Right now the only location in the sidebar is to iCloud. On My Mac is not shown. How do I save a contact to "On My Mac".
Not sure what you mean. Sidebar of what?
Your Contacts app will store a local copy of your hosted contacts d/b whether hosted in iCloud or google or wherever.
"On My Mac" is for local mailboxes.
Hence confusion so could you expand please.
Thanks for the reply...
I was referring to the sidebar of the Contacts app where the different accounts are shown, and where Groups for those accounts are also shown.
If one doesn't use iCloud, or any other cloud service, then the contacts are shown in that sidebar in a section called "On My Mac".
I have always kept my contacts in iCloud, so there is no section called "On My Mac" in the Contacts app...just "iCloud". I would like to keep a few contacts just on my Mac and not in iCloud Contacts. Since there is only "iCloud" showing and no "On My Mac", I can't do that.
How do I re-create the "On My Mac" so I can add contacts there and just have those contacts On My Mac?
Thanks again for the reply. Sorry for the confusion.
How do I save a contact to "On My Mac".
Open System Preferences, select Apple ID, and de-select Contacts.
The previous sidebar heading "iCloud" will be replaced with "On My Mac". You can add contacts to it, however, they will also be uploaded to iCloud if and when you re-enable it.
ooohhh...ok. Just so I understand;
Does that mean that contacts can't reside simultaneously on the Mac and in iCloud as two separate entities?
In other words, when iCloud Contacts is ON then any contacts created on the Mac get uploaded to iCloud?
If that is true then there is no option, outside of turning iCloud Contacts OFF, to saving contacts separatly on the Mac. Correct?
Quite the contrary, I think you DID help!
Had you not replied asking me to be more detailed John may not have replied.
Thank you very much for responding!
By the way, I have three Macs, one with High Sierra, another with Mojave, and another with Catalina. Based on John's reply I thought I would experiment. I turned iCloud Contacts OFF on each Mac, and "On My Mac" was created. I added a few contacts to that and then turned iCloud Contacts back ON to see if they would merge. Here's the result;
On the High Sierra Mac the On My Mac section remained and my contacts stayed there and were not merged, which is what I was wanting.
On the Mojave Mac, when I turned iCloud Contacts ON a popup told me the contacts would merge and offered a Merge and Cancel buttons. If I didn't want to merge my contacts and clicked Cancel then iCloud Contacts remained OFF and On My Mac was the only place to store contacts. If I clicked Merge then the contacts were merged with iCloud contacts and "On My Mac" was removed.
On the Catalina Mac when I turned ON iCloud Contacts the contacts in On My Mac were merged, with no popup appearing giving me an option, and the "On My Mac" section was removed.
Thanks again for the reply!,
All correct.
Thank you
Sorry I was no help - I've never turned mine off so never seen On My Mac in there. We live and learn!
Save contact to On My Mac
