After syncing with iCloud all categories of my 400 Outlook contacts were lost.

Csound1 wrote:

Now how is that Apples problem.

And yet it is Apple who promised integration, among others with Outlook.
"iCloud works great with popular applications including Mail and iCal on a Mac and Microsoft Outlook on a PC", see http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/calendar-mail-contacts.html et.al.

It does not work great:
It is not elegant - it is a tedious process
It is not seamless - it changes your workflow significantly
it is not transparent - it requires digging into Outlook

In other words: It's totally un-apple-ish.

I'm new to the Apple universe: 1 year iPhone, less than 6 months iPad. No Mac.
Up to now I've experienced Apple as a company striving for elegant solutions.

ttf01 wrote:

Csound1 wrote:

Now how is that Apples problem.

And yet it is Apple who promised integration, among others with Outlook.
"iCloud works great with popular applications including Mail and iCal on a Mac and Microsoft Outlook on a PC", see http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/calendar-mail-contacts.html et.al.

It does not work great:
It is not elegant - it is a tedious process
It is not seamless - it changes your workflow significantly
it is not transparent - it requires digging into Outlook

In other words: It's totally un-apple-ish.

I'm new to the Apple universe: 1 year iPhone, less than 6 months iPad. No Mac.
Up to now I've experienced Apple as a company striving for elegant solutions.

Quite right, Outlook is an ancient dinosaur that works very badly with modern standards, especially on a Mac. Very un-Apple-ish, but that might be because Outlook is NOT an Apple product.

Hey Skored -

I copied all my iCloud contacts to my personal contact folder and all seems kosher now...

I did create folders for each of the categories under iCloud and am excited to see your fix work. The only problem is that when I try to move the contacts I've selected from my personal contact folder, I get a message "can't complete the move. The items may have already been moved or deleted"...Any assistance you can give me with this would be great.

Otherwise, I'm just going to have to ditch iCloud alltogether. I really do need my categories - I have about 2000 contacts categorized...

With the problems I'm having with Outlook/iCloud I'd like to get back to life b/4 iCloud install. How would one do that?

I rolled back my work computer to the day prior (via Back up for work groups). Then re-installed iCloud, this time without syncing my contacts. Everything seemed to work great all week long until this morning in my Outlook Contact folder at work and I tried to search in my contacts folder for a patient by the name of "Michelle..." It yielded "no results found" yet.... if you scroll down to letter "M" ther are 5 michelle's listed.. . .

This iCloud really corrupted my up my Outlook program!

The ghost of Steve Jobs is haunting us all... :-(

DrPaulMarsh wrote:

I rolled back my work computer to the day prior (via Back up for work groups). Then re-installed iCloud, this time without syncing my contacts. Everything seemed to work great all week long until this morning in my Outlook Contact folder at work and I tried to search in my contacts folder for a patient by the name of "Michelle..." It yielded "no results found" yet.... if you scroll down to letter "M" ther are 5 michelle's listed.. . .

This iCloud really corrupted my up my Outlook program!

The ghost of Steve Jobs is haunting us all... :-(

I discovered there was a problem when trying to search in "Contacts in iCloud" folder, 2 things, "instant search" doesn't work also make sure you click on "Contacts in iCloud" folder then go to the search box > type what you want to search for > then click magnifying glass. Good this iCloud syncing isn't it 😠

I found the way to solve this:

• First, copy all your contacts from iCloud to the old pst folder, then all the categories will be retrieved same as they were before.
• Second, delete all the contacts in the iCloud
• Third, create new folders in the iCloud contact folder to be named similar to your original categories.
• Lastly, copy your contacts from the pst folder, one category at a time, to the iCloud contact folder which has the same name.
• Finally, you're done but don't forget to delete the contacts in your pst folder after you make sure that all your contacts are copied (right click, preperties, show number of items)

Thanks, Fadi2000 - This worked for me. But there is a caveat - Understand that if you have contacts that are in two or more categories, you well be copying duplicates into the iCloud contact folder. I just used this opportunity to delete some of my really old contacts that I really didn't need to keep track of since I could always just find the current info on the web. I do miss the old way but I am willing to do this as a gradual change-over from MS to Apple.

That said, Is there a good Mac software package for managing contacts? I'd like to get away from Outlook all-together if possible...Any recommendations?

Cynthia

I see it as Apple's problem because they created something to work with Outlook that clearly does not. Don't tell me it will be compatible if it is not.

Has anyone had an issue with the first address field disapearing (like the mailbox number) in Outlook contacts? Since the move to the cloud it has a contact's address where it should be (for example home) but minus the first address line, then the entire address is under 'Other'. Any idea on how to fix this?

This is why I have a problem with whole Cloud idea and they way IT companies are selling them. See this is the business model Apple has planed in action. I synced my contacts only (wanted to go one step at a time, thank goodness) and then the next day after loging off all my contacts were gone. Then logging back into the Cloud they were back in the iCloud foulder. So bascially if I want to access my contacts I need to be conected to iCloud which would be great if I never left my office or bought a constant cell conection of my laptop. Overall I undrestand becuase Apple really wants you to buy their stuff and use their cloud and keep all of your data there so they can sell you more space and products. Problem is that Apple is not that great at business software, sorry but that is the fact. Even if they were that greatest business software out here is the other problem THE BUSINESS WORLD USES MS OFFICE! So really if we the customers want to make money so we can buy Apple things maybe Apple should think about the business process verus the how to consume our data to fit their products.

I really wish MS phones did not suck so bad otherwise I would be there in a hart beat, syncing my data with my old Palm back in the day was sweet. This *****.

I did the same everyone has done here....but wanted to voice my complaint to apple....this should be corrected from Apples side since they are the ones that create the file that goes into the icloud not the other way around.

Even for personal use a database of names is useless unless you can group them somehow to organize them into separete groups....how are you to find your plumber or electrician if you cant remember their names ?'

HELLO APPLE !!! YOU GUYS ARE SMARTER THAN THAT COME ON.....REALLY ?

Apple is the one creating the file for the cloud not MS. And even for personal use a database that does not allow for categories is useless.....so Apple needs to listen to users and add this feature and option into the way they do this service and create the file. thanks.

HRThomann wrote:

Addendum/correction: The bug is slightly different:

- when opening a contact, then I see its categories. So the categories are retained.

- when creating a view (a table) including the "categories" field, then that column remains blank.

- using the categories field as a grouping criterion does not work, there is a single group "no categories"

- resetting the existing view or creating a new one does not help.

Now the killing effect:

- when copying contacts into an Outlook folder other that "iCloud contacts", everything works fine.

---> The bug occurs only in this bloddy "iCloud contacts" folder.

Why did Apple need to create a new folder? What's wrong with the iCloud folder?

Please fix and help!

H.R. Thomann

I'm having the same problem. I NEED to see my categories to effectively reach / sort my contacts. I've had apple support contact me last week for more information, but I havent heard anything since.

When I first chatted with support I had to stress I wasn't having problems with GROUPS but I was having problems seeing CATEGORIES. My Categories before the merge were in subfolders in outlook based on geographical location. The icloud merge, put them in groups (no problem there), but my subfolders in outlook (Groups in icloud) were also broken down in categories (meeting opportunities, newsletter, etc).

I really need my categories back please apple.

I experienced the same problem. This has to be a major design bug.