Contacts "On My Mac" vs. "iCloud"

Does anyone know how to get "All Contacts" into both "On My Mac" and "iCloud" without duplicates?

You can't. If the same contact exists in both locations, then it exists twice. If you are syncing all your contacts with iCloud, you don't need to have contacts "On my Mac". Only use "On my Mac" contacts for ones you don't want to sync.

Is there a way to have the default be to create the contact in iCloud?

Address Book > Preferences > General > Default account: iCloud

luigiview there is an even easier way to do it. instead of sending each individual contact to ur email and then opening it in another device.

all you have to do is click on the group called "all on my mac" then "select all" contacts, right click and export to vCard. export this to the desktop. then, returning to the Address Book make ensure you click on the group called "all on icloud" then after doing this, go to the desktop and open the Vcard file you just created. this worked for me just fine.

The replies are also helping me. I have another tip to add. You don't need to export the "On My Mac" cards and import them to get them "moved" from "On My Mac" to your iCloud contacts using Contacts on a Mac. It confused me that I couldn't drag all of my contacts from "On My Mac" to my iCloud in the group navigation bar – but I could drag them to some other "groups".

So I tried doing that with a single "On My Mac" contact, and Contacts still wouldn't allow it. Then I realized that the contact in "On My Mac" had been linked to a contact already in iCloud (as well as a contact linked to my company's LDAP address book). I then edited the "On My Mac" contact and clicked the red "minus" icons next to each of the links to that contact in other locations. That left the "On My Mac" contact as an "isolated" contact record. That contact could now be dragged to iCloud and subsequently deleted from "On My Mac".

It's occasions like this that make me glad Apple includes such features – dragging and dropping, linking and merging contact cards, synchronizing reliably between every device, and finding duplicates – without complicating the visible user interface. Unfortunately, that user interface design strategy often leaves us scratching our heads when trying to accomplish certain things. If only the original attempt to drag those "On My Mac" contacts to iCloud had shown a tool tip saying something like "Can't do that because one or more of the selected cards is already linked to cards in the destination".

On the other hand, the very existence of this issue points to a serious design flaw in Contacts that impacts usability: if Contacts is so good at merging and linking cards while maintaining the differences between linked cards (something no other contact management software I've ever used has done, or done well), then why on earth doesn't that take advantage of the "merge or link" and "detect duplicates" functionality they've already implemented to avoid this confusion in the first place?

easier still... (in mountain lion anyway):

-'View' -> Groups

- click the group 'all on my mac', command A (select all)

- drag the onto 'all on icloud'

- follow prompts

- backup your contacts for safe measure (file, export..., archive)

- select all 'all on my mac' and delete

then you'll likely need to clean up some duplicates.

Cheers.

You will not see the preferences option

Address Book > Preferences > General > Default account: iCloud

unless you have two accounts enabled.

Chris.

I have some contacts On-My-Mac that does't appear in iCloud and and I just find out an easy way to copy from one to another... send yourself the contact to your email account, and then open it up in the one you want to add it, that way you don't have to write all the info again... for example, I sent myself a contact from my mac to my email, and then in the iphone, I open up the email, and add it to my contact list, and then instantly, it's in all my mobile devices.

I hope this little trick can hel.p

March 2015, this comes up as the first entry when i Googled the issue. And this thread answered all my questions.

Thanks to all who contributed 🙂

My software is up-to-date with Mountain Lion. Following your steps, but when I Select All, the highlighted group changes from All on My Mac to All Contacts. Your next step is to drag, but I don't see what to drag. Help?

Please start your own thread, this one is very old and is marked solved. You won't get much attention here.

(The specific poster you replied to was last here in Dec 2012, you may not get any answer at all)

Thanks much for this old post

it worked really big help since I had failed to note that I had set the preferences to keep new contacts by default on my mac and not on iCloud

Thanks for taking the time to post this

Richard

also you are now free to remove all the contacts in the group called "all on my mac" so same thing again, just select all and then command delete. done. any questions or quires pm me

You do realize that you are addressing a post that is 2 and a half years old?

Time Does Not Exist!

The thread is still helping people like me today. Thank you all for your input :-)

yes, time does not exist. This just helped me, too!