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iPhone 4S sync issues with iTunes via USB

Hi,


I am desperately looking for help to get my son's new iPhone 4s (iOS 6.1.3) contacts synchronized with our MacBook Pro 10.6.8 with iTunes 10.7.


I have a similar issue with my wife's iPhone which I was never able to solve - all worked fine until a iTunes upgrade about a year ago.


Changes are not synchronized in either way, it seems the iPhone uses a different local address book. Even after I delete all the contacts on the iPhone by overwriting via iTunes (by accepting to delete all replicated contacts on iPhone), the old iPhone contacts re-appear. I already tried reset Sync history and also the extended approach given by Apple Support (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2481?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US).

I want to avoid upgrade to iTunes 11 due to comments made in relevant communities and I cannot use iCloud as still on 10.6.


Is there any chance to locate this address book file the iPhone seems to replicate with? It drives me crazy...


Any help is highly appreciated.


Best regards,

Markus

iPhone 4S, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5, 4 GB RAM

Posted on Jun 24, 2013 4:51 PM

Reply
4 replies

Jun 24, 2013 5:06 PM in response to Markus H

The address book it is syncing with is shown in the Info tab in iTunes when the phone is connected. He may have set it to sync with iCloud; in that case the contacts are in his iCloud account.


This issue is complicated by the fact that you are using an unsupported configuration; unsupported OS X and unsupported iTunes version.


I have no idea what comments you have seen re iTunes 11, but it has performed flawlessly for me since it came out.

Jun 24, 2013 5:09 PM in response to Markus H

When the phone is connected to iTunes and you select it in the Device pane and look at the Info tab, what is the selected program for Contacts? This is the location of the contacts the iPhone should be syncing with. It is possible you have it set to sync to something like Google or Yahoo?


I'm not going to judge your other comments, however if you end up having to restore the device, it will have to update to the latest version of iOS, and for the iPhone 4S, that is 6.1.3, and you will need the latest version of iTunes as well. Not sure what problems you are expecting in iTunes, but I have not experienced anything, and I use it on Windows, which many determine to be the worse version of iTunes.


Message was edited by: ChrisJ4203

Jun 24, 2013 10:46 PM in response to Markus H

Hi,


thanks for first advices, contact is set to sync with address book. I do not think it is a version issue overall, as I have three user accounts at my MacBook whith each having its own iPhone connected.

The one where before other phones were synced via iSync (Nokia, etc) and where we switched to iPhone, have the same problem. The third account of my daughter, where her first mobile phone was an iPhone, syncs withouth any problems.

I therefore think that iTunes/iSync still use the old Nokia file - although I deleted address book, caches, preferences, etc there is still a wrong link.


Any thoughts?


Markus

Jun 25, 2013 6:19 AM in response to Markus H

Hi,


just found out how the get rid of the old contacts that iPhone was attached to😀. I share it here in case anybody else should have the same problem.

  1. In the finder select "go to folder" and enter /var/db/lockdown. Delete all the files included there (but leave the empty folder intact).
  2. Go to use/library/Application Support/SyncServices and delete the file named "local".
  3. Restart the computer and also the iPhone.
  4. Connect iPhone and replicate as usual.


Cheers,

Markus

iPhone 4S sync issues with iTunes via USB

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