Contacts not the same across devices?

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Level 1

8 points

Contacts not the same across devices?

I will try to make this simple. I can freely text to/from all of my contacts on my iPhone however there are significant differences with some of my contacts on my iPad. They are linked through iCloud.

”Sandra” is one of my contacts on my iPhone. I can find her in my contacts and text her normally, she has an iPhone too. “Sandra” isn’t even in my list of contacts on my iPad- when I type her name it comes up as lastname/Sandra (Siri found in mail). Her full contact is on my iPhone.

I have my contacts set to sync through iCloud on both devices.

Some contacts who send me a text on my phone come through as their name on my iPhone but on my iPad their message shows as their phone number.

I've never been able to figure out what is wrong. Hopefully one or more of you do and will take a minute to offer a solution.

Thank you!

Posted on Mar 14, 2020 11:31 AM

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Answer 1

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markwmsn

Level 6

14,987 points

Mar 14, 2020 9:41 PM in response to kmartinusa

On your iPhone, go into Settings > Passwords & Accounts.

Under the "ACCOUNTS" header, do you have multiple accounts with "Contacts" enabled?

If so, the contact in question may be synced to some account that isn't also liked to your iPad for Contacts.

(For example, if the iPhone is linked to contacts stored in iCloud and Gmail, but the iPad is only linked to iCloud for contacts, the iPad could not see contacts stored on Gmail servers.)

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Answer 2

kmartinusa Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 15, 2020 12:58 PM in response to markwmsn

Hi Mark,

First I’ve got no idea what might have motivated you to take the time to offer your assistance but I want to thank you for doing it. Much appreciated!

Maybe 15yrs ago I was the go to for friends and family for computer related issues and problems...might have been longer than that now that I think about it, I think it was Windows 95 and before. I simply don’t understand how devices and apps and programs interact with each other anymore and I’m completely lost now. It seems like devices should interact with each other automatically, sort of duplicate accounts/settings/apps and maybe they can but I’m uncertain how to do this. No need to explain, I’m sure when I buy my next iPad or if I were to wipe this one I could ask it to duplicate my phone for settings/apps/photos etc.

I went through each account as you described and while I did have my work email on both the account on my iPad only included email, I’m not sure what exchange is for sure but I think that by deleting what was there and adding it back as exchange rather than just an email account I probably successfully shared contacts too, probably other stuff like calendars too. It’s not working now but I suspect that it takes some time to remove/add in the background or maybe I need to reset or something but it’s definitely different than it was and I think that I’m on the right track now so thank you!

I would have never found this on my own and even if it doesn’t work as intended I’ll bet I’m close and can find a setting or something- I should have thought to go through each setting and compared to be sure they are an exact duplicate.

Thanks again and have a good one!

-Kevin

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