iCloud Contacts NOT Syncing with MAC - FIX

My advice is to not follow that solution unless you are prepared to rebuild any contact groups that you have. Until Apple comes up with a fix, use the contacts in your iOS devices and in iCloud where everything else seems to be synced properly.

Ed

I believe you that it may be the best solution, but yours is a pretty extreme solution. I don't want to go through all that trouble if the problem will persist. (If I'll continue having new contacts added on my iPhone go to iCloud but not make it to my Mac.) Can anyone report if this solution fixed the problem permanently, or if all it did was successfully sync contacts up to the point the solution was executed?

AFAICT sync works _from_ iCloud _to_ your devices, not the other way around. As long as your contacts are created in your iCloud account you're good. If you have more than one account, you should be presented with an option to select a default account. Setting that to iCloud will cause new contacts to be created in your iCloud account and sync to your devices. :-j

I did this. I thought I had read all the comments and understood that the photos would be missing from my contacts. I did not see (until later) that all groups would be empty. That's a pretty major thing for me. If you can, you should modify the original post to indicate that this is a problem. Had I known, I could at least have printed out lists of contacts within groups. I can't think of any way to restore this.

Just in case this ever happens to you or anyone else ever again, I used the solution posted here and it worked perfectly within seconds:

Re: iCloud contacts do not sync on macOS Sierra

You will lose all your groups and your contact photos.

I found a much simpler fix. Make sure all of your contacts are in iCloud in a browser. That will be the authoritative source. You may have to import some if they are missing.

Go into iCloud Settings in your browser. At the bottom left under Advanced click Restore Contacts.

From the list, select the backup you want to restore. Click Restore on the right and follow any prompts.

This will reset all contacts across all of your devices. You can see in the screen shot above I did so at 6:59pm, at which time it created another archive before continuing (so you can go back if need-be).

This worked for me. My iMac retrieved all missing contacts. I added a new contact on the Mac and it instanlty appeared in my browser.

Also - the contact photos remained intact everywhere!

Hope this helps!

So I ran into this problem yet again after I fixed it, and I may have narrowed down on the cause. This was my experience:

I was adding pictures to each contact on my Mac and everything seemed to be fine. Eventually after 4 or 5 contacts the photos weren't syncing. I went to my iPhone and started adding photos and the sync process was hit or miss. Eventually everything came to a screeching halt.

I only realized the contacts that had photos were corrupted once I deleted all of my contacts from iCloud. As I went through the export-->delete process, I left Contacts on my Mac open and watched as my contacts disappeared. Then suddenly the contacts that had photos added via my Mac suddenly reappeared both in Contacts and in my iCloud.com experience. I deleted the duplicate contacts from iCloud, and they disappeared from Contacts as well.

I reimported my contacts via iCloud again, and now everything seems to be fine, but I haven't been messing around with this too much.

My recommendation until further notice--go without pictures, or only add them via iCloud.com or iPhone.

Yes!! I have the same question. It's very frustrating when I add a contact on my mac and it doesn't appear in my iCloud account, thus not appear on my phone. I missed a meeting today because of this issue. It's not worth doing this entire process every time you add a contact. You'd think Apple would have solved such a basic function, like syncing contacts by now.

BTW - currently running iOS 11.2.6 on the iPhone X / High Sierra 10.13.3 on Macbook Pro.

Your fix worked pretty much to the letter (running 10.13.3 these days).

Thanks a bunch for posting. Two fat thumbs up from here!

Still, it is a pretty ugly fix: Backup, delete, and restore. :-j

I am not fussing at you, just saying that it ought to be below Apple standards not to remedy this...like yesterday. :-\

I agree--this is severe. I've been going without images for my contacts, and I find it pretty annoying. Hopefully Apple is paying attention to this thread, because I'd really like to start using pictures for each contact again.

Like many, I've spent hours on the phone with Senior support, to no avail. I have tried many versions of what all of you have tried, and it still doesn't work. My MB Air works perfectly, syncing with iCloud and the iOS devices, but the iMac is out in the cold, and it doesn't sync with anything. Contacts added on any device other than the iMac are synced, and some have pics.

I still have one senior support that is really trying to find a solution to this; let's hope it happens!

Thank you. This worked.

I didn't read comments before but it is true that all contact photos will be gone.

Also I noticed that in my MacBook contacts the column on the most left hand side that shows smart groups etc, previously I had smart groups, iCloud and another group for local contacts. After doing this local one is not there anymore.

So I think on MacBook I probably had local contacts before I linked my MacBook to iCloud and maybe that messed up the link between the two - but I am just speculating here.

MANY THANKS TO THE ORIGINAL POSTER. YOU ARE A LIFE SAVER!!

Dang i just do not get it, I did the export and followed the instructions above and re-imported to iCloud, up imported fine, and everything updated and shows in my iPhone but now my "All on my Mac" folder is empty". what am I doing wrong? Glad I did the export so I did not lose my data

Hi there,

any news about your issue from the last update?

I'm having same problem, so far spent an hours with Apple Support like you with no success, up to the point of reinstalling macOS which apparently didn't help either.

I didn't sign out / in from my iCloud (basically because it's quite a lot of hassle and breaks up also many other things), also I didn't try to delete any files from my ~/Library folder regarding AddressBook, Preferences, plists, etc. like some guys advice here on Apple Support Communities. I don't wanna make a mess in my system's integrity also I believe if you delete something outside the Contacts app it's database might get corrupted maybe more than it is.

Today I expect phone call from Apple Support, they wanna escalate my problem, and let's see if they can help today. Anyway it's quite odd that I see so many people having this exactly same issue with Contacts on Mac and it still doesn't get proper fix from Apple. For me I have this issue on brand-new MacBook Pro with clean installation of macOS which is of course updated to the latest version. I simply didn't have time to mess something up everything on my system is pretty much on defaults so far.

Your solution seem pretty clean and straightforward, if I'm not successful with Apple Support today, I'll give it a try.