Just a few days ago i noticed my pictures I had assigned to my contacts started disappearing. After further investigation i noticed that item1.X-ABADR:us was being added to the country of the address i had listed for my contacts. It showed United Statesitem1.X-ABADR:us as the country. I deleted it, and re-entered the country, added back my contact photo, only for it to happen again and again. How do i make this stop?
iPhone 13 Pro Max, iOS 15
Conclusion
As of this morning, all my changes to my contacts are in tact, and I do not see any further corruptions. I believe the issue was caused by Outlook syncing with iCloud contacts. Once I removed Outlook's "application-specific-password" at appleid.apple.com, all the contact corruptions stopped and have not returned for over 36 hours. This solution should work for folks who don't require Outlook to sync with iCloud contacts or mail. Note: I actually had the 'sync contacts' feature turned off in Outlook and it still created contact corruptions.
So Happy to help! I was so happy that, for once, I could contribute a solution rather than just using this forum to find solutions for myself! I'm glad it worked for you as well. After a week, the problem has not recurred.
I'm glad I could help!
David
This was helpful. Thanks.
I don't think this is a good solution, as Outlook and Apple should "coexist", especially if you are going to pay for the Mac version of Outlook/Microsoft 365. Apple needs to fix this if they are going to have Microsoft products in the App store for sale.
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!
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. 🫠
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.
Still no fix in sight for me. I'm not using Outlook at all, I've restored my Contact data from iCloud 3 times so far, I've fixed the data that has been corrupted and deleted (Birthdays, Anniversaries, and Photos) each time, but alas within 24 hours the problem occur again.
Nothing at all alas. Everything else is okay apart from Contacts data. I do use Thunderbird and eM Client on the Mac, but even if I don't use them (and don't let then sync any data) so I'm just using Mac Contacts and Mail the issue comes back within 24 hours.....
In Settings/Contacts/Accounts (on the iPhone) all I have active is the iCloud account.
I'll go through the list again during the day and look to disable apps which I know aren't trusted, I may actually look to disable all non-Apple apps (if I can) and see if the problem remains. It is worth mentioning though that I'd all the same apps in place that I'm using now and prior to uplifting to the latest versions of iOS and macOS 12.5 I didn't have the problem at all.
So glad I found this thread. This issue has been vexing me for weeks. I also thought it was Outlook related and after disconnecting all synchronization with Outlook, I thought I have it solved. I even blocked iCloud contacts in Outlook on my MacBook. However, the problem came back, hence me finding this thread.
I have now revoked the app specific password and hopefully that will fix the issue.
Any problems since you did that to your contacts?
Contacts on iphone
