Double Contacts and Doubled Birthday Calendar after Big Sur update

Hi mererowe,

Thanks for reaching out using Apple Support Communities. Here to help.

We understand you are seeing duplicate contacts and birthdays in your Contacts app on the Mac.

You mentioned you do not see the duplicates on iCloud.com, is that correct? If this is the case, there may be another internet account which is displaying these contacts. Have you checked for other accounts enabled? The articles below may assist with this. Disable any contact accounts aside from iCloud and see if the duplicates remain.

Add contacts from iCloud, Google, and more to Contacts on Mac

Use your internet accounts on Mac

If the duplicates do not seem to be contained in another account, the article below recommends the process you were taking in merging the contacts to be the best option.

If you see duplicate contacts after setting up iCloud Contacts

Hope this helps. Take care for now

About my Mac on Desktop and what version of Big Sur ?? If up to date should read out Big Sur 11.5.1. If not on this version - suggest run the updates to get to that version. And make a Time Machine Backup  Before attempting. Once that is done, if required, check again afterwards in Contacts are still Doubled.

Contents from link you can not open >> but not being able the open the link may indicate a More Serious Issue beyond the Double Contacts.

Below is from the link verbatim

Fix corrupted Contacts database

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Last modified Sep 3, 2016 6:32 PM

Almost every problem involving Contacts (and its predecessor Address Book) can be fixed by forcing it to rebuild the database it uses to display your contacts. If you are having problems with edits not saving, deletions not deleting, missing contacts, additions not adding, or not being able to change the name of a new group, this procedure will likely restore correct functionality.

This procedure is only useful for "On My Mac" contacts. Other cloud-based contacts can be easily "rebuilt" be removing the account from Contacts and re-adding it.

Background

Contacts stores your contact data individually as vCards. In order to present a quickly accessible list of contacts, it indexes these vCards into a database. When you make changes to an individual contact, the database must be updated and the vCard must be updated. If the database is corrupt for some reason, the changes can't be saved.

Procedure

The process is simple and only involves deleting the index files. Contacts will do the rest.

It is best to always have a backup before attempting something like this, so I would suggest making a Contacts Archive before beginning.

From the File menu in Contacts, choose Export > Contacts Archive and save the file. It is merely an exact copy of the folder you will be editing.

1. Open the AddressBook folder that is in the Application Support sub-folder of your user Library.

The easiest way to get there is to use Go To Folder in Finder (Go menu).

Copy and paste this path into the path field and click Go.

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

2. In that folder you will find three files,

• addressbook-v22.abcddb
• addressbook-v22.abcddb-wal
• addressbook-v22.abcddb-shm

Move all of these files to the trash.

3. Open Contacts and your list of contacts should quickly populate as the index is rebuilt.

If anything goes wrong, restore from your Backup.

Use wrote " The doubles are not in iCloud itself " so the listing was Only ON the Computer and iCloud was Not Enabled Before the upGrade to Big Sur ?? If that is correct - they are Now as you say iCloud is Enabled. Thusly - there is a Local Copies and iCloud copy = Doubles.

Thank you. I have followed the instructions (and it did eventually open on the mac). And nothing has changed. However, my contacts are also doubled and undeleteable on iCloud. As they are on all my devices. Help!

Fix corrupted Contacts database from a Reliable and Trusted ASC Contributor

When setting up Big Sur - you may have enabled iCloud and not known so. System Preferences >> Internal Accounts and see if Your Account for iCloud is enabled.

Welcome and it would have been niece if @Barney-15E had been awarded the Solved Badget

I cannot open this link. I have a serious problem with doubling on all my devices and I cannot delete any of the doubled groups.