iCloud contacts do not sync on macOS Sierra

@D.R.C.

Yes - I do have an ancient Apple-ID with @mac.com and a .me dress connected. If this is the last resolve I have to migrate it to another apple-id. I use another ID for the Apple-Store, so I could migrate the data to this ID.

A rundown on how you have done it and you solved the problem would be very helpful. Thanks,

Rainer

Spend hours online looking through forums and finally figured it out.

On my iphone I have an email account for school (in grad school) that I don't have on my mac. Problem was that when I added this account in 2014 it made itself the default account. I changed it for email, but not for contacts. So all of my new contacts since 2014 were saved under that account that I never really used. Added that account on my mac, copied all of the contacts to iCloud, and now everything is there.

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

Any idea?

It is hard to tell which one is not sync'ing with iCloud. Perhaps neither. In that case it gets more interesting fixing this issue... To be on the safe side, first recommend you export the Contacts from both iMac and MacBook Air to the desktop first, using the Contacts app and File -> Export > Contacts Archive...

Best thing to do is to check how many in iCloud. See which machine it matches if iCloud's count matches either of them. This will tell you which one is your "Source", be it iCloud, iMac or MacBook Air.

Do either of the Contacts lists from iMac or MacBook Air match iCloud? (this determines course of action)

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

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.

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.

If you've already toggled Contacts on/off under Settings > iCloud, another option would be to sign out of your iCloud account on the device and sign back in.

Seems like you may have done everything I would've suggest. If you wish, you could consider reaching out to Apple Support for further assistance.

Ouch....3 hours? 😟

At least it's resolved now, thankfully.

If you would post how it was fixed, it might help someone else.

I have had a similar issue and this is how I solved it:

I logged in to iCloud.com, and under Settings > Advanced chose "Restore Contacts", and then restored the contacts from a backup that iCloud.com had automatically performed yesterday. Then, all my contacts appeared on my iMac. Do note that all contacts that have been added after the backup will be lost. (But iCloud.com seems to have made a backup of the current state before reverting, so it might be possible to then revert back to this state - but I have not tried it, since I had not done any important updates.

I do not know if you dare try, and if it will work for you, so perform the move on your own risk. But it worked for me, so I am happy!

(Btw, Advanced Settings are found on the bottom of the screen.)

Restoring contacts from iCloud worked for me. The process do a backup of existing contacts before restore, so you can go back.