how to delete contacts from iCloud?

Welcome to the Apple community.

You can delete contacts from your iCloud account by deleting them from your contacts app on your mobile device.

What if I want to delete existing iCloud contacts before they clobber the contacts on my new device?

I have the same question and have yet to find an answer.

iCloud sync changes made on devices to all other devices connected to the same icloud account. It also makes the changes to its own database which is used to sync to other devices. I'm not sure if I'm interpreting your "before they clobber the contacts..." but once you delete a contact (this is in the "iCloud" section) on a device, that will delete it from icloud's servers. I suppose you could turn on airplane mode to prevent a delete command from reaching icloud immediately. Is that what you'd like?

Thanks pvonk -

Here's what I think I mean... 🙂

I had a device using my icloud account, and it now has old contacts in it. I have a new device to which I have manually added relevant contacts. If I allow the new device to contact my iCloud account, will it not want to "sync" everything? This is my apple fear quite regularly, actually - been the same with iTunes for a long time as well. It does too much syncing without my control!

I have tried that several times toi alter the contacts in my iphone but each time I turn on icloud backup for contacts it merges the content of the backup file with my phone adding back all the contacts I deleted. Any suggestions as to how I alter the contacts in the cloud?

Nevermind, I found that within the icloud contacts settings one can delete all contacts. I'll now try resynching with the phone.

There is no iCloud backup for contacts. The setting you are turning on in iCloud settings is to sync your iPhone contacts with iCloud server contacts. That's why it merged your contacts. Leave Contacts to ON in iCloud settings and delete the contacts that you don't want from your device. They will be deleted from iCloud to.

I have so many duplicate and old contacts on my iPhone. Isn't there an easier way to remove them and clean up my iPhone contact list than one at a time?

There are apps that will identify and remove duplicates, such as My Contacts Backup Pro. Or, if your contacts are on a Mac you can go to Card>Look for Duplicates.

Thanks for the response. With respect to a Mac, what is "Card"?

Open Contacts (Address Book), go to the Card menu and select Look For Duplicates.

Thanks. I tried that but lots of duplicates were missed and left over following several attempts to search for duplicates.

It probably only finds exact duplicates.

That's what I thought, also, but I found numerous exact duplicates. Go figure.