Multiple-line Street address gets re-ordered when syncing between OS X and iOS

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Multiple-line Street address gets re-ordered when syncing between OS X and iOS

This happens when the sync direction is from OS X Contacts -> iOS, but not in the reverse direction. An address with 2 or more lines in the Street field will have the 2nd and subsequent lines placed first, followed by the 1st line. (iOS 6.1.6 and OS X 10.9.5)

I am taking a UK-centric view of postal addresses, where a home address can have up to 3 lines before the 'City' field. These are not always strictly necessary to ensure delivery, but are commonly used. Corporate addresses can have even more.

The cause appears to be that OS X Contacts is using the vCard ADR property differently from the way iOS does it. The ADR property has one field for Street:

iOS puts all the lines into this field in order, separated by \n newline characters.

OS X puts the first line in the Street field, but the subsequent lines into the preceding ADR field which is called the "extended address (e.g., apartment or suite number)" in the RFC (standards document).

The iOS approach appears to be the correct one, and works fine for import into OS X.

Tellingly, RFC6350 (for vCard 4.0) says:

Experience with vCard 3 has shown that the first two components

(post office box and extended address) are plagued with many

interoperability issues. To ensure maximal interoperability,

their values SHOULD be empty.

Anyone else experienced this? Is there something I've missed or is it really a bug?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Jan 30, 2015 1:37 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 10, 2015 9:37 AM in response to ritec

Very late to this one but I've found this post from a Google search after tearing my hair out with some related OmniFocus sync issues.

Yes, it's a bug. Entering addresses in iOS - iPad and iPhone in my case - will automatically create the second (and subsequent) street field(s) automatically, and indeed entering addresses in iCloud via Safari does exactly the same, thus working as one would expect.

The workaround for me to enter the second line street entry in OS X Contacts by using CTRL+ENTER. Contact addresses will then display correctly in iOS devices, but on iCloud in Safari will display as a single line with no spaces between the entries. 😁

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