Contacts on iphone

I tried a lot of other things (see above). In theory, we should be able to use Outlook for e-mail without it touching our contacts. There is even a switch for that selection in the preferences. However, no matter what I did with that switch (on or off) Outlook online continued to sync (and mess up) my contacts in iCloud, which would then flow through all my devices.

A word of caution - if you are seeing the same behavior I saw, eventually Outlook will start to alter your iCloud data base, and you won't be able to go back to that without fixing all the errors. I'm not sure how your system is set up, but if you provide Outlook access to your iCloud mail, I suspect you will eventually see your iCloud contacts getting changed.

I just changed my Outlook from the "new" Outlook for mac to the old version. Interesting item I noticed. In the "new" version, my iCloud contacts were showing up in Outlook, but when I reverted back to the old version of outlook, no contacts are shown. Going to see if the new version is causing the issue. Will post back tomorrow on the results.

I am having the exact same issue and of course, the first thing I thought was that Outlook is to blame!

Did this resolve your issue and did your contacts remain as they should without reverting back to missing photos and garbled lines of data?

I bought a new Mac and had to buy a new license for Outlook for Mac 2019.

I can revoke the app-specific password but not sure how I am going to use Outlook at that point.

Maybe I can just turn off the Outlook/iCloud sync, somehow...

I tried turning off the outlook cloud sync. Either I did it wrong (which is possible) or it didn't fix the problem. If you read through my step-by-step trouble shooting above in this thread, you can see everything I tried. I have to admit. . it's a bit of a boring read so I don't blame you if you don't have time :)

I did notice that depending on which version of outlook I used (there's a switch in the outlook for Mac application) I got different results. Differences I noticed were with calendar and contacts. Having said that. . .I didn't specifically check to see if changing between 'old' Outlook 'look and feel' and 'New' outlook look and feel on the Mac made any difference.

Interesting data point! Please share your results if you find anything!

Yes. All the problems stopped as soon as I revoked the application-specific-password for Outlook. I haven't had any problems since then. I wish I knew about your solution to restore contacts from an earlier copy! That's a great tip! I wound up fixing all mine by hand. Ugh!

As long as it is fixed!

I need to get rid of Outlook. There are just too many issues and I have forced myself into obsolescence. Apple Mail works just fine, but I have been using Outlook for so many years—and I cannot figure out how to get my logo into my signature correctly in Apple Mail. Not a good enough reason to not use it. I used to really like Outlook/Office for my workflow. If this Contacts sync problem comes back, I am going to have to delete Office from my Mac. I just paid for a new license, but it's not worth the headache.

Glad you got yours sorted.

I was in the same boat. I've used Outlook for decades at work and recently retired. I like Outlook's e-mail editing power and their calendar interface is more intuitive for me. But, like you, it caused too many other problems and work-arounds.

Re: the Logo in Apple Mac Mail. . . I was reading an article yesterday about Apple's Mac Mail app, and it implied that it really isn't designed to support sophisticated (or even moderately sophisticated) editing. Apparently it serves as a basic mail app and that's all. That is really a shame as I plan to use my Mac for my personal consulting business, and I'm struggling to make professional-looking e-mails with the native Mail app.

In any case. If you have any other pointers I'd love to hear them. It's been great collaborating with this community on this issue!

DLZab wrote:

Re: the Logo in Apple Mac Mail. . . I was reading an article yesterday about Apple's Mac Mail app, and it implied that it really isn't designed to support sophisticated (or even moderately sophisticated) editing. Apparently it serves as a basic mail app and that's all. That is really a shame as I plan to use my Mac for my personal consulting business, and I'm struggling to make professional-looking e-mails with the native Mail app.

In general, Apple’s built in apps are rather basic; there are better 3rd party apps for almost any purpose. This is probably so Apple isn’t competing with their 3rd party developers.

Check out MailSpring. You can add several different accounts and they seem to have more features and it is entirely open-source. I could not get my GoDaddy/MS 365 account to load but think I will be calling GoDaddy in the AM to get it up and running. Also, take a look at eM Client. I was poking around in both before I tried to retreat back to Outlook and corrupted my own contacts. 🫠

Old Outlook vs. "New" Outlook. As I mentioned, I was having the same issue as all on here. I noticed that "new" outlook had all my contacts from my iPhone, which the "old" outlook did not have any contacts. I switched back to "old" Outlook yesterday, and as of this morning, all contacts are GOOD. No "X-IMAGE....." etc. All photos remain in the contact. It appears the issue is with the "new" outlook. Cautiously optimistic at this time. Will report back tomorrow.

Below is what I received from microsoft re: the corruption the iCloud contact syn issue. As I stated above, I have reverted back to legacy "old" outlook, and so far, have NOT had any corruption in my iCloud contact app. So I am staying with the legacy version until I believe there was a fix. If someone wants to try the below from Microsoft, and report back here, please feel free.

Thank you for your response, 

Please switch to "New Outlook" and Select the inbox of the account you are facing issues with and right click and click on "Sync Now." I would kindly request you to reset the account by navigating to Tools in the menu bar - Accounts - Select email - click on Gear icon and Reset Account. Once the account is reset, please quit and re-launch the application.

Note - It will empty the inbox and download what is present in server.

More Info - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/clear-the-cache-in-the-new-outlook-for-mac-ddd2d077-84d5-4d2a-8cda-59ca58a645aa#:~:text=Clear%20the%20cache%20in%20the%20new%20Outlook%20for,icon%20and%20select%20Reset%20Account%20from%20the%20list. 

Let me know how it goes, thanks.

Thanks to DLZlab I was able to ascertain that Outlook was the cause of the issue. My contacts were corrupt in New Outlook and Legacy Outlook and my issue persisted regardless of which version I was currently using. I found Microsoft support to be worthless. I unchecked contacts from my Exchange account on my iMac under Internet Accounts (I also unchecked Gmail), switched to iCloud as the default account under Contacts on my iPhone, exported all my contacts from Gmail to iCloud (you can also do this with your Exchange contacts if you like but just know it is csv to vCard/vcf), and then restored all Contacts under the advanced section on iCloud.com to the day before I bought my latest and greatest MS Office license for my new Mac, which was last week and the source of my corrupted Contacts pain. I circled back and double-checked all aforementioned settings after the restore and so far my contacts are all intact with no item1.X-ABADR:us or missing pictures.

More suggestions from Microsoft:

Thank you for your response, 

I did some research, the issue could also appear due to the account type which is configured in "New Outlook". Please switch back to "New Outlook" and remove the affected email address and let's try to re-add the account as Direct Sync and check if it helps -

1. Navigate to Outlook menu bar at the top of the screen

2. Click on "Tools" -- "Accounts", click the email account and click the (-) sign and follow the prompts.

3. Now click on the "+" sign

4. Type in the email address and click on "Continue"

5. Click on the "Not (Google/Yahoo/iCloud/IMAP)?" on the top right of the next window which appears

6. Toggle the switch next to "Sync with Microsoft Cloud", so it turns to gray from blue

7. After which, select "iCloud"

8. Type in your password for the email account

9. Click on "Add Account"

Let me know how it goes, thanks.

Well, after doing some of the things Microsoft suggested, and about 24 hours of no "corruption", contacts corrupted again, and I have given up on outlook. Not going to continue to rebuild my contacts. I have downloaded Mail Spring, and will use that until there appears to be a solution to the "IMAGE" issue.