i have old iMac G5, iPhone4; recently added new iMac, iPad2, & Time Capsule, so i have multiple contacts & address books that i need to consolidate without having 3 duplicates of the same person every time i update? Please help? Thank You!
Mac OS X (10.7.1), across multiple devices
The new Address Book has a Search for Duplicates option and will merge duplicate entries.
The new Address Book has a Search for Duplicates option and will merge duplicate entries.
CARD/LOOK FOR DUPLICATES/ MERGE
Thank you! It was so obvious, i am embarrassed.😊 Sorry for wasting your time.
I have tried the search for duplicates option but it stated there were no duplicates. Every contact I have has duplicated for some reason...
You are not alone. Every entry in my Address Book appears twice. The Search for Duplicates does not recognize them as duplicates. HUGE ongoing problem with Apple's address book. My iPhone constantly has multiple entries for each contact. I've deleted all entries on my iPhone before, then done a synch using iTunes to replace all the info on the iphone. That works, but then once it goes through it's normal synch process the duplicates are back again.
Many thanks for that Paul, it's reassuring to know I am not alone! Let's hope Apple can resolve the problem as its so frustrating!
One more. Same deal. "Look for Duplicates" needs to get a lot smarter.
Since upgrading to iPhone 4S and using iCloud, I have eliminated the duplicates in the address book, but not the calendar. Once all devices were setup for iCloud, I had duplicates in address book and contacts on my iPhone. So in settings on the iPhone for iCloud, I turned off calendar and address book. After a few minutes I turned those back on. Then, it synced with iCloud and no duplicates. At least in address book. The calendar continues to display duplicate appointments.
It's frustrating. Maybe all of us Apple users just don't know how to do this corectly. But it seems like a bug. Otherwise, why not address the confusion in the marketplace and post online training for how to sync all your devices without creating duplicates. Since that solution/training has never surfaced, I say this is a long standing bug in the system and Apple has never figured it out. It remains one of the few complaints I have about Apple. Wish they would get it right.
If the "Look for Duplicates" feature did not work for you, you are not alone. Here's another solution. Open Address Book Preferences and view the accounts. In all likelihood you have 2 iCloud Accounts. This would have happened if you joined iCloud early without setting up a free "me.com" e-mail address like myself. When I finally decided to change my Apple ID to my "me.com" address to benefit from iCloud Mail, my entire address book and Birthday's in the Calendar duplicated. So the solution to to simply delete the old iCloud Account which is for all intense and purposes a duplicate of your actual iCloud account. Problem solved.
Thanks for the advice, I did just check the preferences section and I only have one iCloud account! So I'm afraid that hasn't solved the problem for me! Let's hope Apple get it together and resolve this issue soon! Many thanks for your input!
Same here. Since joing the cloud; did the me.com. only one account, calendar and contacts all have two identical entries. deselected in iTunes parameters like cloud suggests. still duplicated! ?
i joined icloud only to discover 110,00+ contacts. duplicates are more like multicates - some are showing 10 times. we did a lot of what people are saying to find duplicates and merge, delete manually... tier 2 support said to delete manually from icloud. the next day my contacts were back up to 12,000 - then to 6,000 - then to 3,000 - then back to 12,000... all with in a few minutes. iCloud, my iPhone 4 crash every time I try to do what they ask me to do - like taking off iCloud from my iPhone and having it delete contacts. Nothing works. Is there a solution or is this something that we need to wait for Apple to fix on their side?? Desperate. Spent over 30 hours trying Apple's solutions.
Okay, one more possible solution as this also happened to me in the very beginning. In your iCloud settings remove Address Book so it does not since. Then manually delete every contact in your address from the www.iCloud.com website. With enabling the sync feature yet, open Address Book on your computer. Go into the preference and remove the iCloud account if it is there. Once you only have the 1 local on my mac account, merge all duplicates. Once you're back to the way it should look, and your iCloud account is empty, enable iCloud Address book again to sync your contacts back to iCloud. Problem will be solved.
i actually tried this before i recieved this reply, and it worked, problem solved, just like you said! Thank you very much! just a matter of getting the settings correct between the iCloud, gmail, iMac address book, etc...
Welcome to icloud! Where only half of anything works at any time!
I have used the duplicate feature in the past but all it did was add duplicate addresses within each individual contact. I don't have time with my xxxxx number of entries to go into each and delete as I have in the past for previous upgrade glitches. I can't take a chance on deleting and reimporting this or trying dozens of solutions right now.
My solution is to wait for MobileMe to be fully turned off by Apple because I suspect that's the issue.
I don't think Apple is spending much time on the user forums to find out what the growing issues are. Best to also put in a complaint form and if a number of us do this as well, then maybe we'll have a concrete and simple fix to this.
how do i eliminate duplicates in address book/contacts across multiple devices?
