Linked Cards - "Unified" and "Unknown"

Your procedure and the CleanUp app by Wim de Nood fixed the "linked card" problem for me, too.

I just transitioned my MobileMe account to iCloud. My Contacts were correct on iCloud.com, but I had lots of "linked card" duplicates in Contacts on my new iPhone 4S.

The Contacts app was empty after I used Settings to turn iCloud Contacts to Off and deleted the iCloud contacts from the phone by choosing "Delete from My iPhone". I restarted the phone, after deleting the contacts and deleting Contacts from the Multitasking menu.

The CleanUp app found over 500 entries in the corrupted contacts database. The Contacts app could not see those entries. The invisible contacts were the cause of the "linked cards" problem. I used the CleanUp app to delete all the "invisible" entries. Now the contacts database on the phone was truely empty.

Finally, I used Settings to turn iCloud Contacts to ON. It took a few minutes for all contacts to be restored from the cloud. And now, No More Linked Cards!

No more duplicate birthdays in the Occasions app, now that the duplicate "linked card" contacts are gone.

Thank You for sharing your successful solution!

I had a problem where I could not get the assigned ringtone to ring correctly. Tried removing and restoring the contacts from MobileMe several times and resetting sync to copy the computer contacts to replace the MobileMe contact. Still no luck. Then I looked at the All Contacts number and it was larger than the total number in my Contacts list on the computer. So there were extras I couldn't see. When I turned of the MobileMe Contacts, some where still left anyway.

I then tried to cleanup the list by looking for hidden contacts. I tried the cleaner app I had, called Group, which removes duplicates, but it dod not find anything. Then I tried your recommended Cleanup up, and, lo and behold,it found a lot of contacts that should not have been there still. Cleanup removed them all, leaving the list squeaky clean.

Then I turned on MobileMe Contacts again, and after the Contacts list populated, the number agreed with the number on my computer. The choice of assigned ringtones now works correctly.

I also now cannot find any instances of Linked cards or Unknown links.

So, I basically did what you recommended, but since I am not using iCloud to sync, (since I haven't switched to Lion), I did the same thing using MobileMe.

Aggravating issue. Still don't know why it happened in the first place.

Enormous help. Technically I don't think that app is needed, because when I turned off my syncing accounts all my 'hidden' contacts were suddenly there in the Contacts app, but deleting all 209 one by one would have sucked so I used that app to remove them all at once. All "Linked Cards" appear to be gone! Whew!

Oddly, when I turned off my syncing contact accounts on my iPad it found the 209 hidden contacts as I said... but when I hit the "Groups" button and then hit the only group, "All Contacts," the list was completely blank, they were just suddenly hidden. Bizarre. Wish I'd run this app when they vanished to see if it could find them!

Thanks again!

The BEST advice EVER. Not only did it fix the weird contact crap that hours and hours of Apple tech contact could not even begin to address, it ALSO fixed what we thought was the unrelated problem with personalized ringtones not working. Many, many thanks!

Great - thanks

Will give it a go 🙂

UPDATE

Appears to be sorted - all I did was turn off contacts sync, which prompted whether I wanted to delete all contacts left on iPhone, selected "Delete", waiting for the job to finish, then turned syncing back on. All unified contacts now gone as far as I can tell

Result

Worked for me too! This problem was causing every one of my contacts to appear three times in my contacts for Line 2 app. I downloaded this Cleanup app, turned off my iCloud contact synching, selected all and deleted. Then I turned my iCloud contacts back on and all linked cards were gone and contacts now only appear once in Line 2. Thanks!

When there are two or more contact accounts on your iPhone with the same contact in two or more accounts, the contact cards become automatically linked and show up as linked cards between the various accounts. There are only two benefits from this that I see. One, it alerts you that you are managing the same contact in multiple accounts. And two, when viewing a contact with All Contacts turned on it displays all the unique information about that contact in one card (e.g. if there are three cards with the same name and each one has a different phone number, then the display for that contact while under All Contacts will show all three phone numbers). If you don't want linked cards, then either use only one email contact manager or only manage contacts in one account.

YJSoon, I am still having the same

Exact problem you described above. I was curious if you ever found a resolution? I visited the Apple Store Genius Bar today and they told me that the only way I could fix this was to backup my phone and reset it to factory defaults but not to then restore it because the issues would likely return after the restore.

A pretty lame solution I'd say.

Thank you.

Justin

This is a fix I found in another section of the forum...... this worked for me..... I didnt need to run the clean up program - thanks to Srini

"After researching I found the solution to my porblem. What is happening is data is synching between two accounts. One is from your address book in a laptop/desktop and mobile me.

Make sure to sync with one device which I choose mac. Then disable the sync with mobile me through iphone. To do that follow the steps. Settings --> MobileMe --> Switch off the contacts. Prompt you to delete then delete from your iphone.

After that you won't see the linked contacts. If all the data wipes out then sync with your mac. You don't loose the data, you will have the data either in mobile me or in your mac.

Thank You,

Srini"

None of the above solutions worked for the problem that I was having regarding this... I finally found a solution which follows below:

I ran into a incredbily frustrating problem recently whereby any number that I attempted to turn into a new contact, either using the "Add Contact" button under SMS / iMessages or the "Create New Contact" button under the Recently Called list (Recents), would not appear in my phone's main Contact list or in my Contacts app.

The detail information added simply did not show up.

After banging my head against the wall, taking my phone to the Genius Bar only to have them tell me there was not solution, banging my head against the wall again... I finally found a solution!!

In order to fix this problem:

1) Go into "Settings"

2) Go into "General"

3) Scroll to "Reset"

4) Select "Reset All Settings"

The phone will prompt you indicating that all your settings will be lost but your data will remain.

5) Authoirze the "Reset"

The phone will power down, take a few minutes to power back up and voilà the next time you add add a contact from SMS / iMessages or from your recently called list it will work as it's supposed to!

... at least it did for me ( ;

NOTES:

This is for an AT&T iPhone

In my research on trying to determine why this happens, I discovered that it happens to Verizon phones as well but the problem is caused by a completely different bug and the solution is consequetnely completely different. For that problem search for *228 and you'll find what you're looking for.

azz3879, thanks for the suggestion. I tried this, and went through the reset, but it unfortunately didn't work for me. (I'm on an international GSM iPhone 4S.) Did you do any other steps before this, e.g. empty out the on-phone contacts? I did that too, but I'm just wondering what else it might have been.

I'll be glad to hear if it worked for anyone else.

I wanted to add to this thread as I found it worked too. My contacts between iPhone, iPad and Outlook 2010 were in a complete mess. I think this is because although I have my mail and contacts linked via exchange, I had ALSO left the contacts box checked to sync within iTunes. This had created lots of duplicate/erroneous entries and also problems where some entries would sync when amendments made but others wouldn't. a real pain and very frustrating - defeated the whole point of having an exchange to sync.

I started deleting manually but with iPad and iPhone it was a really slow process.

Following your instructions and turned off exchange server sync (and unchecked iTunes contacts sync permanently) and then went for it by deleting all residual contacts on iPad and iPhone with the cleanup app. Was a bit nervous doing this but it worked almost perfectly - just left one odd duplicate for some reason.

Saved me lots of time. Thank you very much. Now everything matches and is all syncing correctly.