You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

User profile for user: Ribonerd
Ribonerd Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Beachballing, duplicates in Apple Contacts app

Any edits or deletion of individual contacts causes long delay with the spinning beachball. Also, many if not most contacts are duplicated, but the Find Duplicates command does not find them. I'm running Big Sur 11.4 on a 2018 15' MacBook Pro. I tried restarting in safe mode, resetting SMC and NVRAM as advised in a previous response to a similar problem on this forum, but problem remains. I have plenty of storage and RAM space, and don't have performance problems with other apps. I do have several thousand contacts, which would go down substantially if I could eliminate duplicates. Help would be much appreciated!

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Aug 18, 2021 11:44 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: brbo
brbo
User level: Level 8
36,083 points

Posted on Aug 18, 2021 10:02 PM

Hi Ribonerd,

Welcome to the Apple Community.


Seems the duplicates may be from sync of contacts with other devices, (or e-mail accounts etc.) with iCloud.

If the contact duplicates contain any slightly different info. they are not considered duplicates for deletion.


Try this article:

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

Scroll to see "Choose your default contacts account"

amongst other useful topics ... remove an account ... etc:

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/contacts/adrb7e5aaa2a/mac


Or

Seems in your case, the "duplicates" could be merged, instead of deleted,

so that one contact is hidden, and the info is combined in the contact that remains visible.


If you see duplicate contacts after setting up iCloud Contacts

( NB In "Remove duplicate contacts" > Step 4 "When asked, click Merge".)

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT203565


If nothing here has helped, you might want to try the:

Contacts User Guide

(You can click "Table of Contents" at the top to see topics and details)

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/contacts/welcome/mac


Cheers :)

View in context

Similar questions

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: brbo
brbo
User level: Level 8
36,083 points

Aug 18, 2021 10:02 PM in response to Ribonerd

Hi Ribonerd,

Welcome to the Apple Community.


Seems the duplicates may be from sync of contacts with other devices, (or e-mail accounts etc.) with iCloud.

If the contact duplicates contain any slightly different info. they are not considered duplicates for deletion.


Try this article:

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

Scroll to see "Choose your default contacts account"

amongst other useful topics ... remove an account ... etc:

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/contacts/adrb7e5aaa2a/mac


Or

Seems in your case, the "duplicates" could be merged, instead of deleted,

so that one contact is hidden, and the info is combined in the contact that remains visible.


If you see duplicate contacts after setting up iCloud Contacts

( NB In "Remove duplicate contacts" > Step 4 "When asked, click Merge".)

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT203565


If nothing here has helped, you might want to try the:

Contacts User Guide

(You can click "Table of Contents" at the top to see topics and details)

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/contacts/welcome/mac


Cheers :)

Reply

Beachballing, duplicates in Apple Contacts app

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.
Learn more Sign up