What does "All on My Mac" mean?

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Level 1

10 points

What does "All on My Mac" mean?

I'm trying to get my head around how the Address Book works in Lion and iCloud.

A bit of background:

I have two Macs (Air and Mini), iPad and iPhone. I use iCloud to keep the address book in sync across the devices. On the iPhone, I also have an Exchange profile to get to a client's Lotus Notes Traveler email and an Exchange account for my work email. I also sync with my gmail address book on the Air. Thus there are many address sources.

I'm trying to understand what does and what does not sync via iCloud.

Based on a bit of digging about in the guts of my Mac and the iPhone, I can see that the address book is actually stored in a sqlite3 database. It would also seem that logically, all the address book sources are kept seperate.

Now, the question.

On my Air, the Address book groups page shows a number of sections:

All Contacts (pretty self-explanatory)

On My Mac

All on My Mac

iCloud

All iCloud

Directories

When I view "All on My Mac" it shows a slightly different set of contacts from "All iCloud". If I create a new contact, it is created in the iCloud Address book. So, what is this "On my Mac" address book? It appears to be the gmail address book, but I'm not sure.

If it is the gmail address book , how do I create addresses in it?

Gareth

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Mar 16, 2012 1:31 AM

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Answer 1

Eric.

Level 6

12,260 points

Mar 16, 2012 2:30 AM in response to Guff

More of less these are three independent databases.

On My Mac

All on My Mac

"On My Mac" are contacts physically stored on your computer.

"All on My Mac" are all the contacts physically stored on your computer

- Underneath these are groups that you can create; these can be subgroups of "All on My Mac".

To get them into your iPhone for instance, you typically go through iTunes, either syncing them all or individual groups.

iCloud

All iCloud

"iCloud" are contacts stored on iCloud

"All iCloud" are all contact stored on iCloud

- Underneath these are groups that you can create; these can be subgroups of "All iCloud".

Once setup, changes in Address Book are pushed to iCloud and eventually to the other devices that have access to the iCloud account.

Directories

These are "network"/company directories that you connect to, e.g. Microsoft Active Directory or Apple's implementation of Open Directory.

You can add, delete, modify contacts to any of these (Directories however may require you have permission). If you like to maintain the divisions between the 3, then when adding contacts, it's best to make sure you have the particular area (Mac or iCloud) selected (double click it from the list), so the contact added ends up in the right place.

But if you're pretty much using iCloud, then note that there is a "default account" setting too take make this easier:

Go to "Preferences" -> "General". Look at the very bottom, "Default Account". This sets the default accont where you want contacts to be added. If you want all your contacts generally added to the iCloud -- set iCloud there.

That's just the default setting, you can add a contact to the Mac, iCloud however you want.

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You may have similar contacts in "All on My Mac" and "All iCloud" as result of setting up iCloud. When you do that, Address Book typically copies the contacts on your Mac "All on My Mac" to iCloud. You end up with doubles, but you can either clean them up manually - and use "Look for Duplicates" under the "Card" Menu.

Also there may be reasons why you want different Mac and iCloud lists. When I set up iCloud, I had some mystery contacts. I left those "on my Mac" and they're not in iCloud until I could figure out who or what they are -- I don't want them on my iPhone.

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