Some server contacts could not be copied to this address book.

After searching /var/log/system.log, the only error associated with the Contacts app I can find reads:

DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: Changing the target of a source after it has been activated.

I can't find anything helpful online about what this means, or how to resolve.

In my case also that trick do not helped because the mentioned log file do not have anything that says which contacts are bad.

I solved in another way.

Go to iCloud->Contacts->Select all->Export as vCard.

Do the same in Contacts app in macOS (as a backup). Delete all contacts in group iCloud.

Import iCloud vCard export to Contacts app. Otherwise do not delete and try to merge the import.

If contacts are from gmail do the same.

One year later the app do not have anymore the warning.

Hope it helps!

Wow... what a dog of an issue.

This worked... in a strange way... my MacBook is running OsX Sierra.

When I tried to save the export vCards, the file wouldn't open in iCloud. But, when I just told it to open the cards in Calendar, it did so... and got 484 out of 1611 contacts.

I then enabled iCloud and it imported 1610 of the contacts, but the 484 (now "On My Mac") contacts were duplicated. I had to then delete the On My Mac contacts but the iCloud contacts now seem to be syncing.

Also, reading this thread, the system.log no longer seems to log the vCard errors, so that very smart solution won't work.

Apple, did you say that MacOS and iOS are easy to use?? Not when they break!

Anyway, thanks @karl3s!

I was having this issue with my Google Contacts and it was killing me! In my situation I was able to read the OS X logs to find out that one of my contacts was messed up. I ended up hand-copying the data into a new contact and deleted the original. The sync then worked perfectly!

I don't believe iCloud uses CardDAV so step 5 below will be up to you to figure out, but I'll give my best guess anyway:

To find out which contact is broken, follow these steps:

1) Open Contacts.app

2) Go into Preferences (keyboard shortcut: Cmd + , )

3) Find your iCloud account and uncheck and re-check "Enable this account"

4) Open /var/log/system.log in Vim/Emacs/etc or via Finder

5) Search for "Ignored vCard" or maybe even "ERROR" until you find data about the contact in question that is breaking your sync.

6) Copy the important data for that contact by hand into a new contact.

7) Delete the original, corrupt contact.

8) Close the text editor/log viewer.

9) Uncheck/re-check "Enable this account" in Contacts.app preferences.

10) If sync fails again with the same error, repeat from step 4 until you have no more issues.

I just want to verify that this is THE solution to this issue. One of my contacts twitter profile kept corrupting his contact and I had to just delete the twitter portion to get the sync to work again.

I also found that this worked - searching under "vCard" did the trick using "less /var/log/system.log" per the instructions but using "less" and "/<string>" instead of vim or emacs. One card was corrupt: removing it fixed the problem 🙂,

Thank you!

Thanks so much! This solved my problem i've been having on my mac for the last 2 years!!!!

You sir are a legend... been having this issue on and off for years - SOLVED! ....was a Twitter entry messing with one of my contacts.

THANK YOU!!!!

I'm extremely excited to finally fix this for my Google contacts... Years!

But for the more technically challenged, please detail the set of instructions... I didn't understand what "search under VCard" and where I need to sub the string and dash...

Thank you!

Got it:

Go to '/private/var/log/system.log' and search for 'vcard'. You should find error messages indicating which card has the error.

Go to iCloud or Google contacts and remove the contact.

Close and re-open OSX's Contacts and it should run smoothly now.

Thanks again Alexander Newman!

Awesome post!! I found the vcard error in the log file, but the name is not understandable. Any suggestions on how to figure out which card it is? This is what it says:

/1041541451/carddavhome/card/ODYxZWEwOTYtOGM5NS00MTNhLWFjNTEtODVjY2MwNmQ4ODVl.vc f

For those of us even more technically challenged, could someone explain exactly how you do this step mentioned above:

Go to '/private/var/log/system.log' and search for 'vcard'.

Desperate to go about finding rogue card(s) that must be messing up my contacts, but so far have been unable to take necessary steps.

Thanks in anticipation,

vCard will be listed multiple times. Search instead for all instances of ERROR and try to see which contact is breaking your sync that way.

The log file is just a text file. Open it via terminal using Emacs/Vim/less or with TextEdit or Sublime Text or really any text viewer or editor.