iCloud contacts do not sync on macOS Sierra

For anyone else having this issue who has already tried turning everything off and on etc, I found the cause of this for me was actually because the contacts were being saved to the wrong account.

When I added my companies Exchange email account to my iPhone it changed my settings to make that account my default for adding contacts.

This meant every contact I added was being saved to my work email account, and not my iCloud account. Meaning they wouldn't sync across to my other devices.

Just go into settings, contacts, and change the default account back to iCloud (you will need to re-add those contacts to your iCloud account though)

Hope this helps.

Finally solved this issue with my iMac. It was as simple as going to System Preferences, iCould, Sign Out. I then restarted the computer. Then went back in to sign into iCloud. Waited for everything to sync. Went back to Contacts and everything was showing.

This also worked for me. Contacts hung on the restart. But Force Quit and another restart and it seems to all be copacetic.

Should not be another library but things change from OS to OS.

Try log-out and log-in or even reboot. This will restart any address book processes that may be using something other than a pathname.

The original Mac way of managing files did not rely on a fragile pathname and every so often Apple fixes software that uses pathnames which easily break with a file/folder name change. This "fix" relies on the fragile nature of UNIX pathnames and what might be considered an implementation error in address book in using such fragility. By renaming the folder, the fix attempt to create a condition where address book processes cannot find the folder and are relegated to creating a new one. Ideally I did not want to tell anyone to just delete the folder for the chance that they might lose data.

Another *possible* way to "hide" the folder from the address book processes is to archive the folder which creates a zip archive of everything in it. Then you could delete the folder and not risk data loss. The address book processes would have no choice but to create a new folder and then hopefully populate it from your cloud data.

Thank you.

changing the default contact account to the iCloud account and then also taking these steps solved it! I feel much better now 🙂

nectarina wrote:

a quick fix that worked for me:

1. close the contacts app
2. go to ~/Library/Application Support/
3. rename the AddressBook folder to something like AddressBook(old) just to be safe
4. open the contacts app
5. it will create a new AdressBook folder that syncs to icloud properly
6. if it's all dandy delete the renamed AddressBook folder

I tried this. It made things worse. Specifically, it left me with zero contacts. (previously, Contacts displayed about 30 out of 850).

I've also tried disabling Contacts syncing in iCloud. That didn't help.

Also tried logging out of iCloud completely, then logging back in. After doing so, everything else synced from my iCloud account (Photos, Notes, Reminders & Calendars), but not the contacts.

I then called AppleCare, and spent a couple hours with a Senior Advisor. She suggested many of the same things here, and finally recommended that I wipe (erase) the hard drive in my MacBook Pro and re-install everything from scratch, including a new copy of 10.12.2. This on a brand-new MacBook Pro that is less than a month old.

Instead of spending hours doing that, I did a little experiment on a friend's MacBook Pro. It's also brand-new, with 10.12.2. So as not to mess up his account, I created a new user, and linked it to my iCloud account. Within minutes, all my photos, notes, calendar events, and reminders appeared. But not the contacts.

It's clear this is a systemic iCloud/Contact Sierra bug, not a random glitch on my machine. I'm waiting to hear back from the Senior Advisor, at which time I'll ask that she escalate the case to Engineering.

Your procedure did not help me.

I have 279 contacts on MacBook and 107 contacts on iMac after update.

On both of Mac is installed last macOS Sierra. My last opinion is that iMac's from mid 2010 and MacBook Air is Early 2015

Ok I figured it out!!!

My phone had a separate "group" other than my iCloud contacts that it was defaulting to when I entered a new contact into the phone.

I went to Contacts on my phone, tapped "groups" in the left corner and "unchecked" the unneeded group called YLMemorial Contacts (it was an old google account I had used in the past). (See pic below) That way any contacts I enter from now on will default to my iCloud contacts.

I found this out by entering the same info of a contact in my phone directly on my Mac and it then automatically linked the two contact info together.

Rainer,

I wrote up an overview of what I did to migrate from my legacy mac.com AppleID to a more recent one.

It's here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7942708?answerId=31705877022#31705877022

Like you, I've been using a more recent AppleID for all my purchases (iTunes, App Store, etc etc). So I moved all the iCloud syncing functionality from the mac.com to the newer one. That was 2 weeks ago - everything has been working fine since.

Just to update for others. I had the same problem, contacts synced across all my other devices happily, except for one imac. Following these instructions worked perfectly.

If you have issues opening the Library folder look here: OS X El Capitan: Library folder

OK, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you find another procedure that helps you!

Thanks a lot!!! Quick fix, but hard to figure out

I tried this but no new folder was created. Perhaps there's some other library?

The import has never worked for me. My address book has over 5,000 entries and that might be hard on the address book but regardless, even at 2,000 years ago, it never worked. How many do you have?

This is the BEST and SAFEST solution and it worked perfectly!! Thanks greatly!!!!