How do I stop iCloud from overwriting my contacts and merge them together

Question

How do I stop iCloud from overwriting my contacts and merge them together

Hi all,

I have been having a nightmare with iCloud and contact syncing. After an upgrade the iCloud on my PC (WIN 7) I turned on sync Contacts with Outlook. This then proceeded to overwrite every contact I had on my devices (iPhone and iPad) with just the very few contacts I had in outlook. Then to get the contacts back, i had to go back to a previous system backup and get the files from there. I was able to restore my iPad to a prior copy, and my contacts reappear. However, everytime I restore the contacts from backup they are on the device, right up to the point that i turn iCloud back on my device and then they are overwritten again.

How do I get the contacts to merge to iCloud from both the iPad and PC? or How can I get the contacts off the iPad and onto the PC and imported into iCloud so all my devices have them?

J

iTunes-OTHER, Windows 7

Posted on Oct 13, 2014 4:56 PM

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Answer 1

randers4

Level 9

63,567 points

Oct 13, 2014 5:56 PM in response to Perfectinglife

If you are trying to restore your contacts from an iCloud backup, you have to follow the steps in this user tip: Recovering deleted iCloud contacts from an iCloud backup. This involves disabling your internet connection just after your device restarts as it is backing up, then turning off iCloud syncing on your device and keeping a copy of your contacts on it when prompted. Then you can restore the internet connection, allow you device to re-connect to iCloud and finish restoring. Then delete any contacts from iCloud.com*, turning contacts syncing on again in Settings>iCloud and choose Merge at the prompt.

* If the contacts on iCloud.com are not contained in the backup, you can download them as a vCard as explained here before deleting them: iCloud: Export contact information as a vCard. Then you can import this vCard back to your iCloud account as explained here: iCloud: Import a vCard after you're done merging the restored contacts from your phone as discussed above.

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Answer 2

Oct 13, 2014 7:04 PM in response to randers4

Thank you. As it turns out the disappearing contacts was caused buy the settings in Itunes. I discovered the sync contacts settings in iTunes and in the iCloud control panel. Reset them to murge. Then I restored the iPad to a prior backup, disconnected from iCloud, resync'd the iPad with the new settings in iTunes. Once this was done, all the contacts from the iPad were synced within Outlook. Then I turned on iCloud sync contacts in the control panel. All the devices sync'd up. The hardest part was restoring the older iPad backup.

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