iCloud Contacts Will Not Sync

I am seeing a similary thing. However, I am only using my Mac Mini's address book, and trying to sync with my iPad 2 and my iPhone 3Gs. Not all of my Address Book contacts are making it to my IPhone 3GS. I am only getting about 62 or my 117 Contacts. Any ideas or suggestions would help?

Same here, I can sync from the iPhone 4, but my Mac refuses to sync contact, in the options it strangely allows to sync with google and yahoo and lists iCloud as a separate group that don't seem to merge. Why would I want to separate groups on my Mac and on iCloud? On top of this silliness, the address book app refuses to import into its iCloud group an addressbook archive. Any suggestions on resolving this are greatly appreciated.

Ok It seems I figured a solution out: export all contacts in the Addressbook App as a VCard.

Then - make sure you got another backup - delete all contacts in the addressbook app. In a final step drop the Vcard export (not the addressbook archive, it doesn't work) onto the iCloud group in your addressbook windows on the left and magic it all syncs.

I hope this helps

Running iCloud and all up-to-date software upgrades on my iMac and iOS 5 on my iPhone 4. During the move from MobileMe to iCloud, all went well. iPhone 4 and my iMac synced with no issues from the address book. I made some changes in my address book on the iMac, but the changes won't sync to my iPhone. My address book is perfect on my iMac, but not on iPhone. Only "some" of the contacts sync over to my iPhone.

I deleted my iCloud account from my iPhone to start over. Once I set my iCloud account back up on my iPhone, again, only some of the contacts sync over from my iMac. Any suggestions?

Yea - me too.

iCloud is not ready for primetime. It is incorrectly synching my Contacts. Example, a long note in one contact is truncated, in DIFFERENT places, on : iCloud, MBP, iPhone, and iPad. Two 1/2 hours on chat with Apple 'support' has produced no resolution. And, typically, no way to fall back to MobileMe.

Glad to see I am not alone. Strangely, only the phone numbers appear on my iPhone 4 without the names for a lot of my contacts. So why not both? If the number is still there, why not the name. Why did only the names get deleted?

I have a tech phone call scheduled for 5:15pm (PST) on Tuesday the 18th (tomorrow). I will let you know how it goes.....

🙂 THIS TOTALLY WORKED LIKE A CHARM!!! Thanks DanielSJ!

Ok It seems I figured a solution out: export all contacts in the Addressbook App as a VCard.

Then - make sure you got another backup - delete all contacts in the addressbook app. In a final step drop the Vcard export (not the addressbook archive, it doesn't work) onto the iCloud group in your addressbook windows on the left and magic it all syncs.

I hope this helps

I would like to try this, too, but I'm confused by the step of dropping the export onto "the iCloud group in your addressbook windows on the left ". Is this in the preferences window, or are you refering to the groups page on the left of the 'book'?

Thanks!!

I would like to try this, too, but I'm confused by the step of dropping the export onto "the iCloud group in your addressbook windows on the left ". Is this in the preferences window, or are you refering to the groups page on the left of the 'book'?

Thanks!!

Just got off the phone with Apple Support. Lara19 is correct.

Open your address book/contact on your computer (hopefully this is where your most correct/up-to-date list is). Select all contacts (command+a), then go to "file" on the top menu bar and select "export" , then to vCard. Save this file to your desktop.

Once you have all your contacts saved as a vCard (and backed up elsewhere if it makes you feel even more comfortable), delete all of you contacts on your computer. Then go to iCloud.com and delete all contacts from there as well.

Basically, you are looking to save all of your contacts to a file (vCard is recommended), then clean out everything (Macs, iCloud and all iOS devices). After iCloud is wipped clean, log out of iCloud. After wiping your iOS devices clean, turn off contact syncing in iCloud.

Once everything is wipped clean, upload the vCard back to your computer (open address book and double click on the vCard file). Merge the vCard back into your contact list.

Log back into iCloud and you should see your correct contact list that is on your computer in iCould. Then turn back on iCloud syncing on your iOS devices and it should all be good.

Worked great for me! Good luck!!!

Thank you for your post. Exporting cleaning and merging vCards back into the contact list worked great! I've been trying to solve this for hours.

Thanks MarkyMark -

Just hoping to fill in a few details/steps which are a bit unclear.

1. How do you delete all contacts from Address Book? I've selected All Contacts, and done the export to vCard. However, on Edit menu, Delete is grayed out?
2. In reference to this line from your post "After wiping your iOS devices clean, turn off contact syncing in iCloud."
   1. How does one wipe the iOS devices?
   2. turn of contact syning in iCloud - you're refering to iCloud web site, right, or are you referring to the Settings>iCloud on each iOS device?

Thanks - this is sufficiently convoluted that I want to do everything correctly, in the right order.

Hi Bruce:

Ok...here we go. Remember....back up your contacts first please. The vCard worked great.

1. After selecting all of your contacts (on both your computer and in iCloud.com), simply hit "delete" on your keyboard. That should do the trick for deleting everyting.

2. I apologize, I got that one backwards. On your IOS device, go to "Setting", then "iCloud" and switch "Contacts" from "on" to "off". When you flip the switch to "off", you will be prompted asking if you want to "keep on my iPhone" or "delete from my iPhone". I selected "delete from my iPhone". I wanted my iPhone clean because I wanted it be restored from iCloud.com after the restore.

So once both my computer and iCloud.com were both wipped clean and my iOS devices had the syncing turned off, that is when I restored my vCard back to my computer. When I logged back into iCloud after the vCard restore to my computer, iCloud was synced and populated perfectly.

Then I went back to my iOS devices and flipped the switch back to "on" for contacts and it all synced up.

I hope this helps Bruce and I apologize for the confusion.....

While this may work it is a BS workaround. Technically I am still a paid subscriber of MobileMe. Regardless of what gorups I have in address book, if I am telling it to sync with iCloud then it should sync all my contacts. Fix it Apple!

I tried this workaround and it did not fix my problem. I have an iMac that is running Snow Leopard. My iPad2 is running IOS 5.

The contacts on my iPad sync perfectly with my contacts on the iCloud Web site but the contacts on my iMac are not syncing at all with those on the iCloud web site or on my iPad. The same problem exists even after performing the workaround.

Ouch