High Sierra Contacts Truncation Problem Workaround

I was unable to find an active question regarding the High Sierra contacts truncation problem so started a fresh thread for those who may be searching. The problem, as you know, is that data entered in the 'notes' section may be truncated and hidden from view on the Mac after the first few lines. One commonly mentioned workaround is to enter the notes section and hit a return, or backspace, whereupon the rest of your notes appear.

Another workaround I have not seen elsewhere is to use more carriage returns in your notes! If you use lots of short sentences and lots of carriage returns, then lots of data is visible. If however you keep your notes in a continuous paragraph, then you're lucky to see the first two or three lines. On notes with lots of one-sentence paragraphs, I can view over 30 lines of info without resorting to adding CRs or backspaces to see them.

Hope this helps. And Apple, please, get on the ball and fix this bug. We're now up to 10.13.3 and this is still not fixed.

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23 replies

roadside Author

Level 1

23 points

Feb 1, 2018 5:53 PM in response to kllewyMac

"...I missed some important information I had entered into a contact's notes field."

I feel your pain. Has happened to me many times. And that Notes field was just so darn useful, when it was working.

Thanks for link to video. Noticed the text below the video read: "...first reported in March 2015 but not resolved as of January 2018."

Wow! That's some serious non-response from Apple. Myself, didn't notice the problem until I foolishly upgraded to High Sierra before reading the bug list.

Feb 2, 2018 5:15 AM in response to roadside

I agree it's very handy. To clarify, I wasn't the person who first reported it in 2015 but it was what made me realize that perhaps the problem wasn't properly understood by Apple. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth even more 🙂.

Mar 25, 2018 9:10 PM in response to roadside

Thank you for the helpful workarounds...I really appreciate it. I have the exact problem. This problem has been happening for several years on my MacBook Pro and my iPhone 6. It is very irritating when I cannot read my own notes in Contacts. I had enough so I went searching to see if there is a solution. It would be great if Apple addressed this in an upcoming update.

Roland_H

Level 1

16 points

Apr 4, 2018 8:27 AM in response to Roland_H

Sorry about the duplication, I thought I was replying to a different thread, and I can't see any way of deleting the post!

roadside Author

Level 1

23 points

Apr 22, 2018 9:41 PM in response to roadside

10.13.4, hmm? Hmm. Hmm. Well, I want to upgrade to it...but...hmm.

Apple's magical quality engineering strikes again...;

I see mention of 10.13.15 in this article.

Jan 29, 2018 8:35 PM in response to roadside

My error. You're right, the problem is still there. When I hit Enter in the middle of a line, the whole paragraph is now visible. I suspect it has to do with iCloud - not syncing nicely or something like that.

roadside Author

Level 1

23 points

Jan 30, 2018 7:18 PM in response to estherbeat

"When I hit Enter in the middle of a line, the whole paragraph is now visible."

Yes, that's right, entering a CR or text or even a backspace in the Notes field of Contacts will make your hidden data appear. But who wants to edit, in order to view data. Try turning your paragraph into a line-by-line list, and see if that doesn't allow you to view all the data in the Notes field without monkeying around. Not certain how long each line can be; I tend to go with the width of the window.

I should add "good luck" editing, since the bug also means after you do a couple of edits, your cursor jumps to the bottom of the field and stops working. Press either "edit" or "done" (whichever is visible) and you can do a few more edits. Then you have to toggle "edit" or "done" to get the cursor back. And back and forth you go. Ugh!!

Buggy, buggy, buggy. I've seldom seen Apple programming this buggy. I've reported this to Apple 3 times, but they're not too concerned about my feedback.

roadside Author

Level 1

23 points

Jan 30, 2018 7:19 PM in response to estherbeat

Oh, I should have added: I don't think this truncation bugginess has anything to do with iCloud, since I sync my contacts via iTunes, not iCloud, and I have the same problem.

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High Sierra Contacts Truncation Problem Workaround