iCloud contacts do not sync on macOS Sierra

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.

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.

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

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

Nectarina nailed it.

macOS frequently corrupts the AddressBook system database under Sierra. When this gets corrupted, not only doesn't the syncing work regularly if at all, other system services start to fail like Messages and typing someone's address and having no auto-fill.

Think of all the places where a phone number, email address, or something else is pulled from the system address book into what you are using. When the system address book capability is SNAFU, so is your system.

All of my 5423 contacts had to reload from iCloud but they did after I did step 1-6, rebooted and then relaunched Contacts.

I have had this same problem twice now. I thought it was fixed last week. But it is not loading my new contacts off my phone into the new Sierra on my MacBook Pro. I have an older model. Spend 45 min on the phone with Apple. Then took my Mac to be checked out at Apple Store by a tech. He told me to turn off FileVault as that maybe slowing down my computer in the background. I did that and that seemed to work....for a few days.

At least I have all my existing contacts in there...but no new ones.

@ToddClif,

Thanks for posting that turning FileVault off fixed your problem with contacts (if only temporarily). I don't Have File Vault on, so that's not a factor in my situation.

After spending more hours on the phone with a Senior Advisor (who had no clue how to fix it), my case has been escalating to Apple Engineering. At their request, I collected many megabytes of logs and submitted them to Apple. They appear to have all gone into a black hole somewhere. It's been nearly two weeks, with no response from anyone at Apple.

iCloud has managed to sync a handful of my >700 contacts to my new MacBook Pro. None of my contact groups have appeared. Neither do any new contacts I add to either my iPad or iPhone. Sierra/iCloud/Contacts on this MacBook is a disaster.

I'd like to add that restoring the contacts from iCloud backup did give me back all contacts, but it wouldn't help, since it didn't change the fact that my contacts weren't syncing. What really solved it was the following steps:

1 - I quit both the Contacts and Messages apps on my Mac. (I QUIT them, not closed them)

2 - I deleted (renamed) the ~/Library/Application Support/Adress Book folder as suggested

3 - I checked that both my iPad and iPhone were syncing over wifi on iTunes.

4 - In System Preferences, I signed out of iCloud entirely and deleted all iCloud information on my Mac

5 - Shutdown/Restarted the mac

6 - I logged back into iCloud

7 - I opened Photos and waited till my most recent pictures showed up. (Mainly to make sure the iCloud services were working somewhere other than Contacts)

8 - I opened Contacts

when I finally opened my Contacts, it showed the little wheel that shows it's syncing, but to be honest, the contacts didn't show up immediately. I left it open in the background and THEN everything was back after 2 to 3 minutes. The thing is... after waiting the Messages app, I didn't touch it again until the whole process was done. Maybe something that Messages does (or did) was preventing from syncing properly? Like keeping a file locked somewhere? It's a wild guess, but it worked.

I have no idea how related it is too, but while ****** it wasn't working, after opening the Contacts app and seeing it didn't immediately sync, I fooled around with Siri a little. Talking to Siri may be entirely useless to fix the Contacts syncing problem, but since it's all iCloud based, who the heck knows. I asked her why my Contacts wouldn't sync. Then, they did! So no real idea what voodoo was it. But it's all working again.

Facing the same issue here: iCloud and iPhone Contacts are syncing perfectly, but only part of the contacts is synced to my iMac. Have uncheck and rechecked the iCloud account, signed out of iCloud, even deleted my gmail account...

I have tried the solution proposed by 'nectarina', without expecting it to work, and indeed it didn't.

Now, I have restored the oldest contacts available on iCloud. Contacts are synced perfectly to iPhone, but not so to iMac.

Looks like the oldest available db was already corrupted. This makes me worry. :-(

Exemplarily, I exported one contact from iCloud and deleted the (corrupted) original on my iMac. At least it seems to be possible to repair my address book manually, tough I must say that this is very disappointing.

Is there a way to drop the iCloud contacts database completely? I could then sign in to iCloud on my iPhone and hopefully start working with a fresh db in iCloud....

This worked perfect. I have two iMacs, two MacBook Pros, two iPhones and an iPad all syncing to iCloud. One of the seven devices wasn't syncing contacts (contacts were completely blank). Creating a new AddressBook folder solved the problem immediately.

@rleidl,

Problem still remains. I've updated the MBP to 10.12.4, hoping that it might contain a fix (iCloud bug? Contacts bug??) but no joy.

There has been some small improvement. Another 150 contacts appeared on the MBP, and one (of the dozen) groups. So the MBP is now missing only 500 or so contacts, all of which exist on my iPhone, my iPad, and in iCloud (when viewed through the icloud.com web portal.

I tried another little experiment. I created another user account on the MBP. It's completely new, hence a fresh copy of all files in ~/Library including all of the Contacts and Address Book support folders & files. Then I configured the new account with my iCloud credentials, and enabled Contacts for syncing. Nothing happened - none of my contacts appeared. I gave it lots of time, even rebooted, but for reasons unknown, syncing did not occur from iCloud to the MBP.

Apple has been completely silent. The case was escalated to Engineering back in January. The Senior Advisor who was handling the case has gone off the grid. She has not responded to phone calls or e-mails.

I called AppleCare last week and got escalated to another Senior Advisor, who promised to look into the status and get back to me. There's been no reply from him either.

Rainer,

Per chance do you have an 'old' AppleID, such as .mac or .me??

I have a dot-mac ID from way back when. It appears that's the root cause of my iCloud syncing problem.

I spent 2+ hours with two guys at the local Apple Genius bar this week. They tried all sorts of things, to no avail. they were totally mystified by the broken iCloud syncing. But one of them had a hunch that my ancient grandfathered dot-mac AppleID might have something to do with it. I've spent the last two days migrating to a new Apple ID, and the syncing problems seem to have vanished. So far, I've migrated three devices to the new AppleID: MBP with Sierra, iPhone, and iPad. I have two more to go (an El Capitan machine, and an ATV), but so far so good. And then I have to reconnect a half-dozen friend/family devices all of whom are connected to shared photo albums.

Migration of everything from one AppleID to another is a non-trivial task. I'm still struggling to deal with all the side effects. Post back if you want a rundown of what I've had to do so far.

DRC

@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.