iCloud Contacts failing to sync after High Sierra

For those of you that the solution of deleting items in Containers didn't work, I had an Apple support person have me log out of iCloud on my MacBook Pro, move my Keychains folder to my desktop, and restart which solved my issue. My Keychains folder rebuilt itself and the tech suggested I keep the 'old' folder we removed on my desktop in the event I had to reference any old passwords. So far I haven't had to. I apologize if this isn't too detailed but all this was done over the phone after a period of 30 minutes until a senior software engineer helped out after a lot of troubleshooting. Hope this helps.

Instead of removing Skype, try testing in a new User.

Testing in a new User will quickly tell you if the problem is system wide or if it's your User's folder that contains the problem. The new User is empty of data or cache files.

CREATE A NEW USER

Go to System Preferences --> Create a New User in Users & Groups.

Switch to the New User by logging out/in or use Fast User Switching.

Sign in with your Apple ID. You can check only contacts for this test.

Only default Apple apps will be in the Dock in the new User. Go to Applications to open other apps you might want to test.

Do you still see the issue?

If yes, create another new User but this time setup a new iCloud account so you can test with no data. Once you have the new account, you can go back to your regular User and add the second account in System Preferences > Internet Accounts. It's limited and will only allow you to use Mail, Contacts, Calendars and Reminders.

Now try adding a contact to the new iCloud account. Add to your iOS devices too.

You can try holding down the Option key (this copies - you should see the + ) and drag in some of your contacts for test.

If this works, you'll need to nuke all files in Contacts to reset. Directions later.

Has anyOne tried this?

This is what worked for me about 2 weeks ago. And all is still ok.

1.

quit Contacts

2. open

~/Library/Containers and delete anything with addressbookin its name

3. open

~/Library/Application Support and delete anything with addressbookin its name

4. open

~/Library/Preferences and delete anything with addressbookin its name

5. open

~/Library/Caches and delete anything with addressbook in its name

6.

opened System Preferences : iCloud and uncheckcontacts

7.

Go to ICloud.com and EXPORT your contacts

8. DELETE ALL CONTACTS FROM ICLOUD

9. Restart your Mac

10. Open contacts app

11. Import contacts that you exported from iCloud

12. Open system preferences -> ICloud and check contacts

Let me know if it works.

I had this same issue. I followed all of the work arounds with intermittent success.

One thing I noticed - there was one contact where I was using an image from my Photos library (probably high resolution). When I removed the image and chose a lower res copy, my sync started to work again. Been successfully syncing from Mac OS to iPhone/iCloud for the past few days now.

Jackbox1, Yes, "~" equals the "users" Library -NOT- the HD Library. It may be very true that AddressBook resides in the "containers" -ONLY- folder on a newer system... I think the problem that the OP is having is on a older system that has migrated from previous OS installs BEFORE Apple re-organised (basically) Everything... As you can see (in my screen grab), AddressBook is in the User/Library/Application Support folder on my MBP as well as many other Macs in my home and business... *NOTE - The other mentioned "AddressBook" folders in the containers folder ARE ON MY MAC'S TOO... Again, here-in lies the problem... Apple's migration, over time, has left things behind... IMHO...

Again, Quitting Contacts, Renaming the AddressBook folder (in the Application Support folder) then. Launching Contacts and letting AddressBook re-create itself and sync-up WORKED for me as a permanent fix... If there are issues you still have the "Re-named" folder as a backup... This is the fix until Apple does it right... Macsterguy :-)

Regarding contacts and (iCloud) sync issues this worked for me (and was advised via Apple Support Senior Tech);

Export address book contacts as vCard for back-up (guess you can also just use a backup from iCloud; but just in case).

Delete all contacts (on all devices) in address books and make sure all contacts are deleted on all devices including in iCloud.

Disable contact sync on all devices.

(Eventual reboot all (or affected) systems).

Enable contact sync on all devices.

Import the exported vCard file to address book on the system you exported the file to.

Done.

Expect a little working time.

To me it still works 1-2 weeks and my new MBPro now syncs again along other devices and iCloud.

If this had not worked the senior tech advised that she would push forward to Apple Engineers to check if the issue was deeper related to their server side / my account.

However there was also a Messages (iMessage) issue; on my new MBPro contacts names would show as phonenumbers; not names. The only solution that worked was to manually apply country code to each contacts phone number in contacts. Tech Advisor suggested this is how iMessage recognises correctly.

At least it worked and Messages now shows/recognises contacts names correctly again.

Hi,

I faced the same issue that modified contacts sync perfectly between my iPhone (iOS 11.2.2) and iCloud but not between iCloud and Contacts on my iMac (macOS 10.13.2). Somewhat frustrating when you are outdoors and discover that the modifications you had made on your desktop are not synced to any other device.

So when trying some of the suggested solutions (like removing all those AddressBook related files everywhere) the sync from iCloud to my Mac seemed to work again. But again, after updating some contact records on my iMac those records did not sync to iCloud (and further to my iPhone for that matter).

For some reason this non-syncing issue only seemed to appear when I tried to update a contact on my iMac by adding a picture to the record. Oddly enough from that moment on the sync to iCloud seemed to break. After some digging I found other -earlier- reports of people having this experience.

So when for sake of argument I removed the just added pictures (by selecting the image in Edit mode and hitting the Backspace button on my keyboard), syncing of changes to that record seemed to resume instantly.

Worth mentioning that adding a picture to a contact either via iCloud or via iPhone does sync that image fine between those instances but for some reason it does not sync the image to the record on my iMac. All other modified data is synced just fine.

Simple solution that helped me for now: remove the contact picture(s) on your Mac.

Though I can't say this will work for all the other reported experiences here, I am somewhat convinced that in my case the breaking of the sync between my iMac to iCloud (and onwards to my other iCloud connected devices) is related to adding a picture to a contact record om my iMac.

I hope Apple will come up with a fix for this. Though it's not a disaster that pictures on a record do not sync via a Mac, but it would be nice if this feature works as it did before.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, Reinier

Jan 18, 2018 12:13 PM <https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8086745?answerId=32891096022#32891096022>in <https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8086745>

Spoke with Apple support and seem to have solved problem so far.

1. Go to system preferences

2. go to iCloud and uncheck all boxes

3. sign out of icloud on the left bottom of screen

4. close system preferences

5. now open system preferences click on icloud and sign in.

6. now click on all the boxes of programs in the window on right side

7. open Contacts and now your iCloud contacts should sync.

The support person I spoke with was very helpful, but he nor his supervisor had dealt with this problem. Their quidance and the way they worked through the problem was successful so far. Spent 45 mins on phone trouble shooting with them trying multiple ways to work the problem

Do you have ANY contacts with images assigned to them? If so, try removing the image and see if that allows the sync to continue? Works 100% of the time for me. As soon as I assign a picture to one of my contacts on my Mac, it works once then all syncing fails. If I delete the image, all syncing returns normally.

This is more or less working for me as suggested by others - In my case, iCloud.com and iOS synchronization was perfect, but MacOS High Sierra devices would not synchronize at all. I don't find synchronization to be 100% when I make Contact updates on the Mac, but it is much better:

1. Use a free iOS app like "Recent Numbers" to figure out what contacts you updated with contact photos after upgrading to MacOS High Sierra. (If you have multiple iCloud accounts like I do for contact sharing with a spouse, be sure to check all account contacts.)

2. Remove any contact photo associated with each contact in question via an iOS device.

3. Allow macOS to sync contacts. (You might have to quit, start Contacts again on the Mac).

4. If you want contact photos back, go to iCloud.com and add the photos back into each contact. (To save time, I only bothered doing this step for contacts I frequently text/iMessage with.)

5. MacOS should synchronize Contacts with photos correctly at this point.

Don't bother signing out of iCloud, etc. It didn't work at all. And what a mess that turned out to be when I had to re-create my Photos Library and allow it synchronize 100GB of photos back to my Mac. Not to mention Notes, etc. (I have a 500Meg down, unlimited connection, but I had brief heart palpitations thinking I was going to screw up my iCloud photos.)

I honestly don't think this is connected to social media, simply because I don't participate in it at all and I only had the contacts not syncing problem on day 2 of a brand new mac with High Sierra after I changed the photo it had for my "Company Card." I don't normally pay any attention to images (or put them on contacts), but this was the card for my workplace company and it was showing a personal photo of me (that I didn't put there.) So I took an image of our building and put it as the contact image. Later I noticed that changes I'd made to our bank contact weren't on my phone or home computer that syncs with the company iCloud. They also weren't on my older Mac at work that's sitting right next to the new one.

As soon as I found this discussion where people said it had to do with the image in contacts, I deleted the image I had put and voila! My contacts on my phone, work and home computers all were synced with those on the new HS mac.

I sent Apple a comment to ask them to look but if anyone here monitors and can send a bug report that would be great!

Hey Living,

I feel your pain - 8,000 contacts is a bunch.

BUT, for me, neither the "simple", "medium", nor "extreme" solution (to use your vernacular) was particularly palatable - especially when the "delete pic" seemed option seemed so basic.

Regarding your large # of contacts: again, I agree - that's a bunch. HOWEVER, I have > 4,000. It took me around 1/2 hour to go through them all on my MBP.

Let me reiterate: I worked ONLY on my MBP - not my iPhone or iPad. Once you kinda get a "pattern / rhythm" going, it's pretty easy and fast to delete all pic's.

One suggestion: you should check every contact There were 10's of contacts that had pic's - that I did not put there. And, as I've noted before, I don't do FB (no account) - so, they didn't come over from there. How they got there, I haven't the foggiest.

Regardless, back to the results:

IMMEDIATE FIX.

And, now, I'm going on weeks and weeks of good performance with not one glitch.

In fact, I thought there might be some "residual" images on the iPhone or iPad after my work on the MBP - nothing, nada, zilch. Everything (including the now "pic-free" contacts) immediately sync'ed and still does today. I add new contacts every week. I just added a new contact today on my MBP - with both iPad and iPhone open so I could see the new contact added in real-time. After I hit "Done", it takes about 5 - 10 seconds to show up on the other devices. (We live out in the sticks - slow ISP and slow WiFi.)

I'm a firm believer in the "no-pic's" solution. Give it a whirl - ya got nothin' to lose but an hour or two of yer time!

(BTW, I also agree that Apple should fix this - but, I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that it won't be soon...)

Best of luck,

Matt

AKA, Fish Repellent

Had the same issue, fixed it with the advice of a senior advisor at Apple. Here are the steps:

1. Back up your computer

2. Go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts

3. Select your iCloud account, then click the minus button to remove it

4. When prompted, DO NOT save a local copy of your contacts

5. Restart your computer

6. Go to System Preferences > iCloud

7. Sign back into iCloud

I tried this solution but I couldn't get the contacts folder to appear inside the logs folder, even after running the Log Capture program that tech support gave me.

After chatting more with tech support, I found the solution, so I'm posting it here incase it helps someone else.

My issue had to do with the fact that I had two different "groups" of contacts on my phone. One for iCloud, and one for my gmail account. Each time I used my iPhone to add a new contact, it was adding it to my gmail group, not my iCloud group.

So here's what I did to fix it:

In your iPhone, go to Setting -> Contacts.

Under "Default Account", it was set to my gmail address. Change it to "iCloud"

Now whenever I add a new contact from my phone, it saves it to iCloud, and then instantly syncs with my iMac.

You might have existing contacts that are gmail contacts that you want to merge over to iCloud:

On your computer, go to your Google account, click the Contacts app, or go to https://contacts.google.com/

On the left, click More. then Export. (You can export contacts individually, but this lets you do them all at once)

You'll want to select "vCard (for iOS Contacts)" then save the file to your computer. Open the file on your mac. If it finds duplicates, I just selected "Update" Then all your gmail contacts will now be loaded in iCloud, and any text or iMessages that just showed a phone number should now show their name. I hope this helps!

I had this problem and contacted support. After trying a few typical things like disabling and re-enabling contacts in the iCloud pref pane, and deleting the Containers folders as mentioned in a previous reply, we found this solution to work:

• Log out of iCloud
• Delete all caches from ~/Library/Caches
• Restart
• Log back in to iCloud

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