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Contacts keep getting screwed up

I keep finding contact info that I’ve updated in the past has been overwritten with ancient contact info.


Sometimes it seems to happen in almost real time—I delete old info and iOS puts it back in seconds!


I’m using all Apple products. An iPhone 13 Pro Max and a 2018 iMac.


I rarely edit contacts on the iMac, almost always on my phone. WTF?

iPhone 13 Pro Max, iOS 15

Posted on Dec 25, 2021 2:20 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 25, 2021 2:32 PM

The “master” copy of all contacts is on the server that you sync them from. Go to Settings/Contacts/Accounts and you can see the accounts that host your contacts. Then go to the webmail pages to review the contacts.


It’s possible, if you have more than one server that you sync to, that you have duplicate contacts, and when you update contacts it only updates one out of all the duplicates. Further, you may not be viewing all of the contact lists, and when you update a contact you are actually updating it on a server that isn’t currently displaying contacts. Here’s what to do:


  • Go to Settings/Contacts and see which contact server is the default, and change it if it isn’t the one you expected.
  • Next, open the Contacts app, tap on Groups in the upper left, and make sure all groups are checked. It’s my guess that one or more are not checked.
2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 25, 2021 2:32 PM in response to Dogenfrost

The “master” copy of all contacts is on the server that you sync them from. Go to Settings/Contacts/Accounts and you can see the accounts that host your contacts. Then go to the webmail pages to review the contacts.


It’s possible, if you have more than one server that you sync to, that you have duplicate contacts, and when you update contacts it only updates one out of all the duplicates. Further, you may not be viewing all of the contact lists, and when you update a contact you are actually updating it on a server that isn’t currently displaying contacts. Here’s what to do:


  • Go to Settings/Contacts and see which contact server is the default, and change it if it isn’t the one you expected.
  • Next, open the Contacts app, tap on Groups in the upper left, and make sure all groups are checked. It’s my guess that one or more are not checked.

Contacts keep getting screwed up

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