Managing Contacts on iMac and iCloud -- several issues

It seems that whenever a card is in more than one Group, it will appear multiple times (equal to the number of Groups the card is in) in the entire Contacts displayed on the secondary device (eg. iPad) which receives the Contacts from iCloud. So, if a card is in two Groups in Contacts, it will appear twice (together) in the secondary device when displaying all the contacts. If I just display one of those Groups on the secondary device, the card will appear once.

Would merging duplicates eliminate this problem without losing the association of a card with multiple Groups? (ie. would it show just once in the entire Contacts display and still show once in each Group it was originally added to?)_______

I expected that Contacts would work something like iTunes or Photos, where the items are all in a common pool or library, but can be linked to one or more Albums or Groups. Each item only occurs (exists) once, in the main pool, and the Albums or Groups are simply "links" or references to the pertinent item(s).

In iTunes or Photos, when you look at the contents of the entire library, you only see each item once, even when that item is associated with multiple albums or folders or playlists. Contacts should work the same way! Contacts makes it look like the card actually exists multiple times. Makes for a messy (lengthy) display on a portable device (iPad).

Thank you for your support. I've learned much about Contact management. Took lots of time but now I know how it works. I can live with it (with its imperfections and all!).

Frank

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Furthermore, when looking at Contacts, on my iMac (where I created the originals), the compete lists of "All on My Mac" as well as "All iCloud" are perfectly fine. In both cases, each card only appears once (even though the total count differs). It's only on the secondary device (iPad) where some cards appear multiple times under "All iCloud". Strange behaviour!

I seem to have only one instance of iCloud on my devices (including iPad). The Contact cards that appear multiple times on the iPad are those that belong to multiple Groups in iCloud. Still, this shouldn't happen.

I populated iCloud, using my iMac, by dragging each Group, one at a time, from "On my Mac" into "All iCloud". It seems that if I had dragged the generic group "All on my Mac" to iCloud, I might have copied all the cards but none of the Groups and I would have had to re-create each Group within iCloud. I don't know if this would have avoided the problem of cards appearing multiple times on the secondary device.

I've now discovered that if I create a new contact card in "On My Mac" and add it to two or more groups, then copy those groups to "All iCloud", the card name will appear two or more times in iCloud (but only on a secondary device like iPad, not on the Mac!).

However, if I create a new contact card in 'iCloud' section of Contacts (using my Mac), and copy that card into two or more groups within the iCloud section, the card does NOT appear multiple times on the secondary device (iPad), which is the way it should be! Therefore, it seems the best way to manage contacts is to do it entirely in iCloud and not 'On my Mac'.

'On My Mac' contacts could be used for those that will be used ONLY on the Mac and not intended for use on any shared (secondary) devices. This means maintaining two lists (one "shareable", one not) which may be ok for some folks.

Using the Mac to maintain contacts makes it easy to copy (drag) a card into one or more Groups. Can't seem to do that on the iPad (can create a new contact card in a group, but if I want it also in another group, then I'd have to create a new card in the second group and re-enter the data -- can't drag or copy the original card from the first group).

It would also be nice to see a cross-reference for each card, listing what Groups that card has been added to.

In answer to your question, yes, manually deleting one instance of a duplicated card deleted all instances. I have several cards that belong to more than one group and the problem of multiple appearances in the full listing only exists on the secondary device (iPad) -- on the Mac, all is OK. I presume the same problem would happen with an iPhone (which I don't have).

Anyway, I think I'll have to change my contact management strategy and just use iCloud category, which raises a new question: if all my contacts are in iCloud, and I'm using my iPad outside of a WiFi zone, will I still be able to see my contacts?_______ (do I always need to have internet connection to see the iCloud contacts, or are they "downloaded" into the iPad and refreshed only when there is internet connection?______)