Contacts will not sync properly between Mac and iPhone

DO NOT sign out of iCloud. Huge mistake if you have iCloud Photo Library turned on. You will hate yourself for the amount of work it takes to get back to where you were, and it probably won't solve the problem. It didn't for me, but it did cause me about 12 hours of work and misery. Don't follow that advice if given by anyone.

I have had syncing issues between my Mac, iCloud, and my iOS devices since upgrading to High Sierra. I spoke with second level support back in December and they suggested deleting my AddressBook folder in my user/library/application support folder. That solved the problem. This week I had sync issues again. Once again I deleted that folder, restarted, and syncing works fine again.

For syncing contacts , the two devices must be connected to network usb cable must be connected with two devices , in Mac system preferences - iCloud - the box for safari must be checked , high network speed is essential .

See these articles Sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iTunes on your computer using USB - Apple Support

Keep your contacts up to date on all of your devices with iCloud - Apple Support

You have to wait until all contacts sync .

A query what other apps / softwares do you use in Mac or iOS apart from original apple inbuilt applications , in case if they are installed remove each of them .

See some articles Connect to Wi-Fi on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Use captive Wi-Fi networks on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Hello RRHale

See this article:

Re: On Sierra, Contacts no longer sync properly with iCloud

They have an AppleID of the form xxx@mac.com. Do you?

I do. I've used Apple for decades, so I have an old AppleID from mac.com days.

According to this article, user D.R.C solved the problem only by migrating all his syncronising services over to a new AppleID.

In fact Macs and iOS are not sometimes compatible with third party apps , so take help of https://etrecheck.com/

This is a very good tool to find out what is running in the system and it is developed by the member of the forum , no personal information is leaked , and even the serial number of Mac , hardware address or mail address is not shown .

First you read about this app , if you are confident and trust it you can post the results .

it will help the members as they can read the post , and will find out best solutions .

I have seen something similar to this before.

The only way that I've been able to fix sync issues is to completely sign out of iCloud on the affected devices and sign back in ticking the relevant items you would like to sync. However, back up information first and / or make a note of affected contacts as once you sign out you could lose them.

I have the same problem. The thing is, everything did sync, all the apps I chose, synced fine, they still do, except Contacts! Everything is set up fine, this is not my first MacBook nor iPhone. Everything works fine. Since the update to High Sierra, its been not working. I want Apple to admit that there is a problem and start working on it. The purpose of investing in Apple products is for the ease of use! When will this be addressed? When will this be fixed? This is so frustrating! Come on Apple!!

Nope. After that "delete the Addressbook file" procedure it synched once. And then no more.

I now have a number of contacts on my Mac which are not on my phone.

This is not good enough.

I have submitted a bug report to Apple.

Thank you, Alizarine!

I posted the comment below just now at the MacBook Pro Retina link. (We'll see what happens.)

"

I have found that my vCard file information in Address Book (previously) and Contacts (recently) occasionally becomes changed, highjack-threatened, or corrupted. This of course causes trouble in syncing between my Macs and my iOS devices, and iCloud.

The data content changes, such as pictures, names, and dates, may be caused by social media or Google (I use gmail and LinkedIn, but NEVER Facebook). I scrupulously avoid non-Apple apps or software and have used Macs since 1984.

Recommendation for Apple: Add two explicit vCard fields for date and time stamps to specify "Date Created" and "Date Updated" for the vCard file. Thanks. Best, Bob."

I have contacts synchronising properly between my iOS devices but between iOS and macOS only deletions are synchronising.

I now do not know what I have added to my iOS devices or my macOS devices that are not on each other.

I have seen loads of delete and start agains type solutions but they seem to involve quite a but on manual reconcialtion and do not seem to be permanent.

Is there fix for this issue?

Thank you for your help.

I've been having this problem since earlier this year and all attempts to fix it have resulted in multiple entries for each address in both my Mac and my iPhone 7. I agree with others that this is not one for customers to be wasting time trying to figure out how to 'make it work' - this is one for apple to acknowledge, address and offer both a fix and apology to time wasted on all sides! I'm going to bug report too and encourage others to do the same.

I have just some "deep" Googling and found this cached article:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GrZPwtGXw8sJ:https://macri ot.com/mcrt/%3Fp%3D2888+&cd=13&hl=en&ct=…

POSTED BY: MACK 24 APRIL, 2018

After weeks of collaboration with AppleCare Support, we finally received a call from AppleCare today confirming our suspicions – since macOS 10.13 High Sierra, something has fundamentally broken in the way iTunes performs USB syncing of Contact records.

In a nutshell, the bad news is, yes.

Its completely broken.

For those of us who rely on USB syncing as the last bastion of privacy and some form of control over our personal data, please take note of this article. This is for you.

You are strongly recommended to do a physical comparison between the Contacts records and their details within your iOS devices against your macOS device that you USB sync with.

Ever since macOS 10.13 High Sierra all the way till its current iteration at press time, macOS 10.13.4 USB sync has been broken.

“Broken” means that no error is displayed during or after the USB syncing indicating anything is wrong. For all intents and purposes the USB sync appears to have completed ‘successfully’.

A quick comparison between the iOS and macOS Contacts app records, will reveal that no update had been performed in either direction, i.e. no new changes made on iOS Contacts are updated to the macOS Contacts app and vice-versa.