Contacts won't sync

It’s me again. I’m using an old iMac on v 13 and newish iPad and iPhone. I found an Open contact in my Contacts group on the Mac with several “delete” marks ready to use but wouldn’t respond. I edited this contact with a new name and closed it. Then closed and restarted all devices, i.e. old Mac running Sierra, iPhone and iPad running iOS 17.

This seemed to release Contacts from its Bug and all is well now.

can’t say exactly why but …… Maybe that one contact was obstructing the process.

Hello Red Ed. Thanks for the interest.

I probably had closed down the computer and the Contacts with it, while still editing a contact where my family member had changed her email address. So, that Contacts entry seemed “frozen” and I found I could not edit away those red delete buttons on the entry, nor could I edit the data. So I couldn’t close the page either.

Hard to describe further!

I shut down the computer and my connected iOS devices whike connected to the computer and restarted, and then all was OK.

I hope that answers your question!

here's a thread, incase you haven't gone through each step.

If your iCloud Contacts, Calendars, or Reminders won’t sync - Apple Support

This is an icloud sync - so making sure you have the same apple ID, and that all devices are on, helps.

You can toggle on/off contact setting on each device.

On Mach: Settings>click on your ID at top>Apps Using icloud: "Show More Apps" where you'll see Conacts and a toggle button. You don't have to unhide this on iPhone or ipad.

if you have third part contacts coming in, the more security Apple adds, the more some of these may stop working (and need to be stopped, and reenabled so the security behind the scenes allows things to work again).

I had the exact same problem and I managed to solve it like this. I am running iOS/iPadOS 17.4 and Sonoma 14.3.1 on multiple devices. (Latest versions as at the time of writing)

1. Disconnect iCloud from all instances Outlook (Mac and iOS/iPadOS). Outlook seems to mess up iCloud contacts, presumably because it gets out-of-sync amongst multiple devices (symptoms include addition of multiple duplicate fields, duplication of contacts, ever increasing total number of contacts etc).
2. Take a backup of your iCloud contacts, preferably an export as a large vCard (e.g., in Mac Contacts, select "All iCloud" and then File/Export/Export vCard)
3. On each MacOS device, delete headdress book cache. This is found under /users/<username>/Library/Application Support/AddressBook". Take a backup copy of the contents of this directory, then delete all files and clear the bin
4. On each MacOS, iOS/iPadOS device, switch off Contacts within iCloud, manually delete all iCloud contacts, and power off all but one device. Discard local copies of contacts.
5. Open iCloud.com on the Mac that is running, call up the Contacts and wait for the list to clear. This may take a few minutes. You can also manually delete the contents from the webpage
6. Reboot the Mac that was used in step 5
7. Power up one of the iOS/iPadOS devices, reenable Contacts syncing iCloud (discard any local contacts if prompted). Wait for the "All iCloud" contact list to appear in the side panel, and confirm that the list of contacts is empty. This will take a few minutes.
8. Repeat step 7 for each of the remaining MacOS and iOS/iPadOS devices.
9. Once all devices have restored an empty contacts list for iClod, reimport the previously saved contacts.

Synchronisation should then return to normal across all devices

I think the issue in my cases Outlook messing up the address book cache on my Macs. The above essentially clears the cache, lets Sonoma rebuild it afresh, and restarts contact sync from scratch

Please let me know if this works for you.

John

Good Morning:

So, I have noticed this problem too since moving from macOS Monterey to Sonoma (14.5) last week on a Mac mini M1. I have always exclusively synced through a USB cable (from iTunes days) with an iPhone. Only use iCloud for mail and nothing else.

Currently, using an iPhone 14 Pro w/iOS 17.5.1.

What I have noticed is that 2-way iPhone (iOS 15, 16, 17) contacts sync worked pretty flawlessly on macOS Monterey, that is, a new contact on either the iPhone or mac would correctly sync on both.

What I am seeing on macOS Sonoma (14.5) is that new contacts from the mac sync to the iPhone, but not the other way, which is what you described above and is super frustrating!

After hearing you spent hours on the phone with Apple Support to no avail, I would definitely agree this is a real bug.

If I get 'lucky' and start to see 2-way sync of Contacts, I will let you know -- (and what I did to coerce it to work)

You are not alone in this, most frustrating. We need a solution, please members!