Linked Cards - "Unified" and "Unknown"

Reading and researching for 6 days. Apple keeps calling back again and again. I admire their punctuality but they keep rushing me through the same solutions over and over again. I am really disappointed that they have an instruction manual they do not diverge fron. Today was the 4th day they called. I had deleted my phone twice following their suggestion and reset all settings which brought my iphone back to an awkward, unfamiliar state. Nothing worked.

I used all apps that have been suggested here ('Spring Clean' and 'Cleanup'). Did not work. They kept returning a message that said I have NO contacts on my phone. My correct set of contacts contains 499 backed up on iCloud and of those 388 unfortunately duplicate against themselves thus creating a set of 'Unified accounts'.

After all this research, inablity to manually delete one by one, back up from itunes during sync, deleting and restoring phone, the app that worked for me is called 'MultiDelete'. I found all the apps, did a test drive on a couple and worked. Applied to all. All contacts were erased. Turned iCloud contacts back on... I still am in awe. Very please and surprised that a problem I have had for more than a year is resolved!

No more duplicate contacts when calling from Viber, Skype and any other contact-related app! Yes!

Thanks! 🙂 They should pay me. I agree, not a single response from an Apple "Genius" on any of these posts. Several people having this problem too. Seems there is a corruption somewhere on the iPhone's Address book database.

How can I get credited 10 points for fixing this? 🙂 Does someone have to click on something to acknowledge me as the solution provider? 🙂

I found the root cause of this problem on my iPhone.

New contacts were being assigned by default to my old MobileMe account, in error. The contacts assigned to MobileMe were orphaned contacts, since I no longer had a MobileMe account. In Settings, I had to change my Contacts "Default Account" to "iCloud".

The setting that allowed me to choose a Default Account did not appear until I temporarily added a second account for Contacts. I used the procedure outlined here, followed by restarting the phone.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3676941

Now, all new contacts on my iPhone are assigned to my iCloud account. They show up on iCloud.com and on all my devices.

Success! Thank you to the Apple Support Community for sharing their solutions.

Well... so much for my "Solved" claim.

After reading your reply and then running a test I am right back where I left off with any contact added from SMS or Recents not showing up in Contacts.

It did in fact work as described, but I ran the test only before syncing contacts with iCloud. It's iCloud that's screwing this whole thing up.

Grrrr...

Here's what I've discovered upon further investigation.

If, under Settings > General > iCloud, I turn iCloud syncing off for "Contacts", select, "Keep on My iPhone" and then add a contact from SMS / Recents, the contact shows up under the general "Contacts".

As soon as I switch iCloud "Contacts" syncing back on, the newly added contact disappears from my contacts list and can only be found by doing a Spotlight Search.

Being that this is a problem that is somewhat related, but ultimately different that the problem that this was initally created under I have created a new discussion about it, which can be found here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3676941

Yjsoon, it would be great it you'd chime in, there so that any insight you discover can be added to the discussion.

Thanks a lot, CJPocoLoco. I'd been trying to do this manually, and it was a huge pain.

I do have a question for everyone on this thread though, and I'd really appreciate any help on this. When I add a new contact without using the + button, it still goes into the "Unknown" pile. Does anyone else experience this? To replicate this, try:

• Add a new contact, say an unknown number from your recent calls list, or from an email. Save it, and go to the home screen.
• Go to your Contacts tab in Phone
• Go back to "Groups"
• Choose "All Contacts"
• Try searching for this new contact — I don't see it
• Go to your spotlight screen (home, then swipe left)
• Search for this new contact — it'll show up, and you can select it

Does anyone else see this and/or know how to solve it?

I also have a bunch of Unified contacts on my iPhone, but I'm just a bit uclear of the process outlined. Can I ask for some further clarification please?

1. I currently have only my iCloud account on my iPhone syncing contacts. Do I just turn off the contacts sync or the whole account?
2. Then, download "CleanUp", select all and delete all remaining (ie unsynced) contacts left on the iPhone?
3. Then turn back on the contacts sync or account sync from step 1?

Sorry for all the questions, just a bit nervous about messing it up

Stats

Fixed my (same) issue - Thank you!

C.

This happened to me this week also, after I decided to turn contacts "on" for my Hotmail account on my iPhone. After I noticed the "linked" cards I turned contacts "off" for the hotmail account and then the duplicates disappeared (it gives you a warning asking if you want to delete all "exchange" contacts, which was a little scary; I I thought it would delete ALL my contacts, but I said "Delete Contacts" and my old contacts were still ther).

Same thing, I have these weird "UNIFIED" and "UNKNOWN" llinked cards.

I even deleted my MobileMe account, made sure iTunes is not synching to iphone these contacts, but these stupid Linked Cards keep showing up!!!

I wonder if this issue has to do with certain apps duplicating the iPhone contacts?

I have the Viber app installed and I can visually see each contact appearing twice on the Contacts list, but iPhone's contact app doesn't have this issue since it combines the duplicate contacts into "linked cards" even though one is them is "Unknown"

Very frustrating!!

just out of curiosity, do you have "TalkBox" installed on your iphone too? I wonder if any of these other apps could have caused this?

I am having the same problem:

Following a Microsoft Critical Update for Word for MAC, Outlook suddenly decided to sync its old contacts with my address book and mobile me. Long story, but i've fixed that, but now:

> I have duplicate contacts on iphone

> If i disable sync to mobile me, I am left with all the contacts still (single entries)

> the "iphone" contacts is empty, and I cannot locate these entries anywhere

> When sync back ON to mobile me, entries are again duplicated, and linked (UNIFIED) to the contact in the 'UNKNOWN' database.

What is 'unknown'? How can I find its contents and bulk delete. I can only edit each entry one by one, go into the 'unknown' linked entry and delete it, then do the same for the rest. 1076 to go... FUN!

How come Apple cannot answer this?

FIXED IT!!! It occurred to me to switch off ALL accounts syncing contacts, to leave only these erroneous hidden duplicates on the phone.

Then I went to the iphone app store, downloaded (for 69p) an app called Cleanup. It found 100% of my erroneous entries which are not visible using native apps.

I selected "select all > delete", and bingo! All gone.

I have switched mobileme sync back on, and problem resolved.... 🙂 I thank you!

CJPocoLoco, you're genius!!

Your method FINALLY fixed this mysterious Linked/Unknown cards issue on my iPhone, while Apple stays silent this whole time!!!

Even though it costs $0.99 with the "CleanUp" app, but I think it's worth it. Having said that, Apple still shouldn't have created this problem to begin with!!!!