iCloud Contacts Will Not Sync

I had problem sync contacts to Icloud after installing IOS5 on my 4GS. Only 10 of 95 contacs where synced. What I did was to delete the account in the folder called Icloud (not the Icloud folder in mail settings) Then I activate it again and chose to make a copy to Icloud. Then all contacts where copied.

It seems like the two setupfolders for Icloud work different? If I turn on Find Iphone in the folder called Icoud directly underneeth setupfolder, it wont work. I have to acitvate Find Iphone both places?

Sorry for bad english!

I seem to have identified the (or at least one) problem. Several people in this thread have mentioned Outlook. Outlook (on the Mac) does not work with iCloud as of this writing, however, Outlook on the PC is the ONLY way to get icloud to sync contacts.

Outlook uses the contacts from "On my Mac" while iCloud puts the contacts into a seperate folder iCloud. This is the reason that iCloud also does not sync with Gmail contacts.

Outlook also makes a royal mess of all of your other contacts, however many people are adicted to using Outlook.

The process of fixing your contacts, then exporting to a vcf file then deleting your contacts then importing them back then cleaning duplicates works for fixing the contacts, but as soon as you open Outlook you are back in the mud.

I am still working on a solution to Outlook but no joy yet. Remember: Outlook was never intended to me an email program, it is intended to be a front-end for Exchange.

We use Lotus Notes at the office and some users (guessing 30%) have the same issues. What mail programs (none-apple clients) are without problems so far? None? Anyone with issues from Windows Live for instance?

I've had zero problems syncing contacts from iCloud to Outlook 2007. All my problems were with iOS and are solved.

The problems are with Outlook on the Mac, not Outlook on the PC. Outlook on the Mac will not work with iCloud contacts.

The only working configuration I have found so far is Outlook on the PC and Mac Mail on the Mac.

The big problem here is that Apple can't get their heads around the fact that your contacts are YOUR CONTACTS. It keeps iCloud contacts seperate from your contacts on Google, on your PC, on your Mac. It does not synchronize. It moves your contacts to iCloud.

Turning contacts off and on again in icloud under System Preferences seems to work for me.

has anyone determined what the problem is or a fix for it? my situation is similar to others. i have several macs syncing to iCloud. they all have local contacts in both Outlook 2011 (my primiary application) and in AddressBook (sync'd from Outlook as I wasn't sure if iCloud would connect to Outlook directly). only four of my 3,000 contacts are making it to iCloud. i've tried to sync from three different machines and none of them work. the contacts in iCloud - viewed from the website or from my iPad or iPhone - only have four entries. Thus, contact sync from my macs is not working at all.

any ideas? i'm assuming (based on the number of posts here) that this is a genuine bug rather than some type of user error on my part.

-M

DanielSJ's post was gold. Never would have thought to pull contacts in via traditional v-cards. (Thanks, Daniel!) With over 3k, it took some time, but I managed to finally get iCloud to respond properly and sync contacts from the address book app.

One tip for those of you who were recovering from a mess of duplicated or dated contacts on various iOS devices. Obviously, turn off any mail account handling sync and ensure you have a properly backed up edition of the contacts before you do so, especially iCloud, but you'll want to delete all address book entries on that device in order to replace them with the fresh contacts added to the app. While a tad buggy, I found this $0.99 app did the trick: DeleteQ. (Many of the delete apps will also create an archive, which is handy in these instances.)

Once I deleted the old contacts, turned iCloud contact sync back on and waited a few min, the correct editions downloaded. Finally.

I'm still running into issues with the address book accepting new v-cards, mind you, but I can upload them via the online interface and adding fresh contacts in any of the interfaces seems to be working fine. (I'm curious if anyone else is encountering the same? Using Lion 10.7.2.)

The sync between iCloud an my Mac and my iPad went well, but even after using the solution outlined above, my contacts will not sync to my iPhone 3G. How can I get them to transfer back to my iPhone?

Thank you so much for your post! This is exactly what was wrong with my phone, and I followed your steps and this worked perfectly for me!

One thing to add before making a backup of your vCards. If you use notes or pictures in a vCard, the setting is defaulted unchecked for export. So if you use either make sure to check them before exporting.

Address book.

Preferences.

Right tab of vCard.

check the appropriate box's you want to include in the export.

Anyone know if there are any plans or solutions to the problem of syncing with gmail. Very frustrating.

missingsc,

Not sure if it is relevant, but I had similar troubles with some contacts not being synchronized. I found that it was due to contact size restraints imposed by iCloud. Some of my contacts had large amounts of notes which made the Contact too big for iCloud. Also, large-sized contact photos can cause problems. For the iCloud size constraints, see “iCloud: Limits for Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and Bookmarks” at: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4489 .

P.S. I have sent feedback to Apple saying that the contact size restraints are arbitrary & reduce the usefuleness of iCloud. The sizes should be left to the discretion of the USER (not Apple). Hope Apple listens & then acts upon it.

I have read about the vcard workaround to this problem.

My current status is that if I make a change to a contact on my Mac, the change does not make it to iCloud, and doesn't make it to my iPhone.

I may be able to solve this problem with the vCard workaround. But my question is this: why should I trust the system after trying the workaround? A well designed system would tell me that it wasn't able to sync with the master list. This system, apparently, does not do that. Therefore, even with the workaround, the system itself is untrustworthy. I'm going back to syncing with iTunes.