Unable to remove duplicates in Contacts.app

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Level 4

1,198 points

Unable to remove duplicates in Contacts.app

I have encountered an interesting situation. I installed High Sierra on a Mac that also has El Cap on a separate volume.

Every time I switched to El Cap and then back to High Sierra, High Sierra would forget that it had been connected to iCloud, meaning that things like iMessages and contacts would be redownloaded.

I suspect it is this that has caused me to have lots and lots of duplicate entries in Contacts.app.

There are no duplicates on either my Macbook or in iCloud.

I've run Look for duplicates in the Contacts.app several times and it now reports that there are none.

But there are lots and lots. What can I do to remove them?

Thank you in advance

Philip

Mac Pro, macOS 10.13

Posted on Aug 27, 2020 7:49 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

pullman Author

Level 4

1,198 points

Aug 28, 2020 1:56 AM in response to BDAqua

Hi BD

Thanks for replying. If I untick that the duplicates seem to disappear. I say "seem" because they drop almost by half.

It would seem the Look for duplicates function doesn't compare what's in iCloud and what's stored locally on the computer.

Any idea what I should do to be able to use iCloud and local storage?

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

239,561 points

Aug 28, 2020 12:51 PM in response to pullman

Not sure, I don't trust iCloud syncing, have seen many examples of this type of thing & the opposite... everything syncing to ZERO.

If we don't get more help in here I think you'll have to call Apple Support.

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

239,561 points

Aug 27, 2020 11:31 AM in response to pullman

Have you tried unchecking Sys Prefs>iCloud>Contacts?

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Unable to remove duplicates in Contacts.app

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