2 apple IDs causing Contacts problems

Question

2 apple IDs causing Contacts problems

I have an iPhone, iPad and desktop mac. I use Contacts for a couple of large mailing lists. I want to be able to have my contacts synced across all my devices.

The problem is that I accidentally have 2 different Apple IDs. Apple says tough luck, you can't merge them. So new contacts get put randomly in one or the other, and when I send out a group email, some old addresses get fetched up from who-knows-where and people say, "I unsubscribed a year ago and you're still sending me emails!" Not good for credibility.

I took care of this once, but after installing the last OS update, it's all back again. And it makes Mail and Contacts run r e a l l y s l o w.

How do I get everything synced without causing Contacts to make duplicates?? Here's a screenshot to explain the problem. Some of my contacts have 4-5 duplicates.

Don't tell me to run the duplicates command, that doesn't fix it!!

Posted on Sep 20, 2014 3:45 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Sep 20, 2014 3:54 PM in response to Virginia Bruce

If you see duplicate contacts after setting up iCloud Contacts

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,908 points

Sep 20, 2014 4:45 PM in response to Virginia Bruce

If you don't want to use both AppleID's, don't. Drag the contacts from the one you don't want into the account your do want. Then, delete the unused account.

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Answer 3

Sep 20, 2014 5:34 PM in response to Linc Davis

turns out my contacts ARE duplicated in iCloud, so I'm scheduling a phone call Monday.

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Answer 4

Sep 20, 2014 5:36 PM in response to Barney-15E

it's not that simple. I scheduled a call from Apple on Monday. I'll report back.

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Answer 5

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,908 points

Sep 20, 2014 6:41 PM in response to Virginia Bruce

Seems pretTy simple to me. What's the rest of the story.

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Answer 6

PJL500

Level 1

9 points

Oct 9, 2014 5:39 PM in response to Virginia Bruce

So how did this get resolved? It is a real pain.

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Answer 7

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Oct 10, 2014 3:44 AM in response to PJL500

Why don't you start your own thread, you have supplied no information whatsoever to go on, is this not important enough?

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Answer 8

Oct 10, 2014 12:30 PM in response to PJL500

After speaking to the Apple support rep, the solution is a TON of manual work. He said to choose the account that I use to pay for stuff on Apple, and then copy everything to that one, and stop using the other one. Because I wasn't aware of the situation, some of my contacts are in one iCloud account, and not in the other.

Now, when I get an Unsubscribe request, first I go to the iCloud web page and delete them there, and then I go to my desktop Contacts. But I haven't had the time to go back in and resolve everything, so I still have five or more duplicates on some of the names in my desktop files.

I've had my email address since 1995, and I have over 2600 people on my newsletter distribution list alone, so this is going to be a lot of very boring work for me, and other tasks seem more urgent!

I know, I should probably use a mailing service, but I don't have the money and I've not been impressed by any of the ones I've researched, anyway. I'm actually surprised that Contacts has been able to keep up with my ever-growing list. There was a time, several years ago, when I was told my list was too big but apparently that''s been resolved.

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Answer 9

Oct 10, 2014 12:31 PM in response to Barney-15E

you can't delete an iCloud/Apple account. Don't ask me why, but that's what I'm told.

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Answer 10

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,908 points

Oct 10, 2014 2:01 PM in response to Virginia Bruce

I never suggested you delete the iCloud account. I meant delete the iCloud account from Contacts. By default, the AppleID you used to log into iCloud will be used as the iCloud contacts account. You can add other iCloud accounts to Contacts and Mail, but you don't have to.

Just drag the contacts from the account you don't want to use into the account you want to use.

For the email address, log into iCloud.com with the old account and go to the Mail Preferences. Set the forwarding address to your new email address.

You could also set up a "vacation" rule to reply to messages you get from that account telling the people sending to that one that you have changed your address.

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Answer 11

Oct 11, 2014 2:27 PM in response to Barney-15E

I don't use either of my Apple email accounts for anything, that's not the problem. The main problem is proliferating, old addresses. I guess I'm just grumbling because Apple doesn't offer any simple solution, like merging everything from the non-preferred account automatically instead of requiring me to do all this work by hand. Too much punishment for a simple initial error!!

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