CONTACTS: Random Duplicate Accounts, Addresses, Notes

Question

CONTACTS: Random Duplicate Accounts, Addresses, Notes

This is not intended to be a duplicate thread on the forum:

• Not all of my contacts have been duplicated

• Some contacts duplicated once, others 20+ times

• Several contacts have addresses duplicated mulitple times

• Several contacts have notes duplicated 2-4+ times

• Changes occur at random - not just during transition to iCloud

About my contacts:

• I maintain 1,900 contacts

• Address Book is backed up regularly

• I make changes daily with new accounts and notes (I'd rather not restore)

How I'm syncing with iCloud:

• 1 MacPro

• 1 MacBook Pro

• 2 iPhones

• 1 iPad

• All hardware on latest OS

• All devices show the same information

• Mostly, I'm making changes on the phones and MacPro

• I don't use the web portal

• I don't sync devices though iTunes any longer

• I backup iPhones wirelessly, not through iTunes

QUESTIONS:

• Why is this happening?

• How can I prevent these random changes?

• Is anyone else experiencing this?

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 8 Core 2.26GHz, 16GB, 4TB, Dual 27"

Posted on Feb 2, 2012 6:13 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 2, 2012 6:20 AM in response to William Franklin

The "Look for Duplicates..." feature in Address Book can't be used in my case:

• Some of my contacts are intentionally duplicated because they are affiliated with different organizations

• Address Book will not let you add mutiple orginizations to a single contact

• Address Book will not let the user specify which contacts are to be merged (it merges all of them)

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Answer 2

Feb 16, 2012 7:03 PM in response to William Franklin

I have the same problem. I spent a day or so cleaning all the duplicates after iCloud conversion. When I deleted some and merged some i believe I was off net. I'm sorry that I feel Address Book was hastely thrown together and has never been properly cared for within Apple. It was a similar fiasco when we first went to MobileMe. Too bad. Now to make matters worse Outlook in Office Mac 2011 doesn't synch with Address Book, and we must turn synching off.

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Answer 3

Feb 23, 2012 11:37 AM in response to William Franklin

Hi guys - I am using iPhone 4s with latest IOS 5. I have set up a completely fresh and new mail account that syncs with an exchange server (small business server 2011).

I have originally 2570 contacts on my Exchange server - but after a few days of syncing the Iphone has 280 thousands (280,000.00+) contacts - and it keeps duplicating.....

What is the matter?

A solution anyone ? Please! :-)

Brgds Jesper

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Answer 4

Feb 23, 2012 12:42 PM in response to William Franklin

I don't know what's causing the duplicates. It seems to be different problems for everyone. Yours seems to be some kind of feedback loop. Mine is random and could involve a contact or a simply notes.

Complicating the issue is using non-Mac sources such as Exchange. Dealing with Microsoft is bad enough on a good day, but incorporating it in with my Apple process is infectious.

Since there is no solution, I could only suggest restoring from backups and deleting everything on the server. Back up regularly - every day or every week. It only takes a few seconds.

Alex

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Answer 5

Apr 18, 2012 6:45 AM in response to William Franklin

Hi all, experiencing the similar issue after iOS upgraded to 5.1 on iPhone 4S and iPad 2, actual contacts are approx. 4,000 that multipying randomly every time I configure Exchange account on iPhone 4S and iPad 2, rest of the contents i.e., calendar, emailing are working fine, have Blackberry 9780 under BES and Macbook Air with Office 2011 for mac that also working fine, ANY SOLUTION?

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Answer 6

Apr 18, 2012 6:47 AM in response to William Franklin

for the moment, shut the iOS devices off and using Samsung Note (Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread)

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Answer 7

Nov 11, 2012 7:07 PM in response to William Franklin

This has been a bewilderment to me for years, and (as I can see here), no one knows or wants to respond. My guess is it's an inherent thing that apple chose to sweep under the rug. It's very frustrating, and I am scared to try and clean-up for fear of screwing it up. It's good to know I'm not the only one. Well, I mean that it stinks, but I know it's not me screwing up, it's something in the machine. Hopefully I someone will figure this out.

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Answer 8

Nov 21, 2012 10:18 AM in response to William Franklin

I'm having a similar problem. I was having difficulties syncing (the icloud wheel kept spinning on my iMac) so I did things like remove duplicates, and I also exported and imported my contacts. Anyway something fixed the spinning wheel but now I have different numbers of contacts,

I have 1779 contacts onmy desktop and 3229 contacts on iCloud.com and also on my iOS6 devices.

It appears that the duplicates are related to the fact that I use groups extensively but not everyone that is duplicated is in a group so that may not be an issue.

I can live with it but I'd like to clean it up.

(I only switched to iCloud because I could not get WiFi sync to work.)

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