Address book "card" Group means Duplicates on the way

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Level 1

11 points

Address book "card" Group means Duplicates on the way

I have a user that I support that has a 15" MacBook Pro and an iPhone 4S. She runs Lion and using her AppleID syncs her calendar and contacts to the web and from her Mac to her iPhone. Since we updated her about 3 months ago she has been troubled by a problem with group duplication in Contacts/Address Book. We migrated her contacs from her local address book on her Mac to her phone using iCloud. Now it appears that everytime she adds a contact and group called "card" shows up. When that shows up she's sure to get duplicate groups as well. When they grow to 6 or 8 duplicates I will log into the web based iCloud on her account and delete all but the first of each group and all the "card" groups. There appears to be no problems with the contacts. They never duplicate and the information syncs quickly. We simply are getting duplicate groups on a regular basis. All updates have been run on both sides. Thank you for your help.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.1

Posted on Apr 24, 2012 12:27 PM

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Answer 1

imafromKC Author

Level 1

11 points

May 2, 2012 12:17 PM in response to imafromKC

So over the past week here's what I've done. First I logged into icloud.com on the web and deleted the "card" groups and the duplicate groups. I also changed the setting in Address Book Preferences to make her Default Account: "iCloud" instead of "On My Mac". It was working for a day or so.

Today she opened Address Book on the Mac and had only 2 of her 20 groups and one card entry in the group list. The number of contacts is the same, 1069, on iPhone, iCloud and MacBookPro. We removed her Address Book from iCloud and choose to delete Contacts from my Mac. So we now have 0 contacts on the MacBookPro. iCloud showed one card group entry and a dupilcate entry for the only 2 groups that were left on her Mac before we deleted them. We deleted the second listing of each group and the card entry.

We will now wait a couple of days before reconnecting the MacBookPro to see if anything happens. I have in the past cleaned out any preference files that I can see (I'm sure there are some invisible files in the LDAP system). I may try this again to see if it helps before I turn the cloud back on.

I'll post my results here for the public to see.

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Answer 2

imafromKC Author

Level 1

11 points

Jun 4, 2012 1:36 PM in response to imafromKC

Since May 2nd Apple released 10.7.4. I was hopeful that a good update and some maintenance on the OS would create an environment for success. Success meaning no more group duplicates on iCloud.

So for the first week after the 10.7.4 update we indeed did have success. But alas the "card" entry showed up again and once again we began to get duplicate groups (and card groups). This time we had 4 on the phone and cloud but only 1 on the Mac.

So we move on. We are now attempting to delete ALL icloud based groups. That has been done (after printing out lists of them all of course). We are now leaving iCloud alone as long as possible then we will begin adding new groups.

More to come. Stay tuned.

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Answer 3

Sep 24, 2012 7:13 AM in response to imafromKC

actually this is the same problem, like i do have.

i am running mac Server here, and we do have some srver clients running. and same happends there.

only that we do not only get 2-5 or 10 copys of groups. we are getting around 50-200 and more groups.

and THAT Slows iPhone and adressbooks really down, some even till they crush.

and the worst problem is, that since OS X Lion, u cant mark more then group. so u have to delete each one by one.... and since there always is a delay, it takes ENDLESS....

and by theway, it happends to iCloud cal groups same as to server based card DAV groups...

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