Contacts will not sync in iTunes - not using iCloud

I have the same problem. I DON'T USE ICLOUD. I sync using iTunes. I have iPhone 6S running iOS 12.1.2 and iMac running High Sierra 10.13.6. Problem started after upgrading to High Sierra. Changes made on iPhone contacts don't show up on iMac and vice versa. Totally unacceptable. Why hasn't apple fixed this problem which has been plaguing the apple community using iCloud as well?

We know how to sync using iTunes. The problem is that contacts are not syncing as they once did until iMac upgraded to High Sierra. Groups deleted on Imac still show up on iPhone and I can't seem to delete a group on my phone. No additions or changes to contacts on phone show up on iMac and vice versa. Running High Sierra 10.13.1 on iMac and using iPhone 6s running 12.1.2. All other syncing works fine. What is going on with the contacts sync! This is untenable.

This exactly thing happened to me too, starting about 3 months ago. I've been on the phone twice with Apple, including a senior tech advisor. No solution.

I personally think that Apple is trying to drive people to use their Cloud, but I'm not about to put sensitive and private information, such as my Contacts, on any cloud. I don't know who can access this data, or if it ever gets hacked.

If Facebook can get hacked multiple times in 2018, and our electrical grids and nuclear power plants can too, as well as Marriott and other corporate information systems, Apple's can too.

I hope Apple did not get rid of the syncing capability on iTunes, particularly on Contacts between the Mac and iPhone.

On the last call with Apple, I had to completely clear out my iPhone and reset it, per the advisor's suggestion. That took a while. The syncing now is only 1-way, where contacts I create in my iPhone now move to my Mac's Contact database, but not the other way around.

Very frustrating, as I use this for business, personal, etc.

This has been driving me CRAZY! Thanks to seeing this thread, I found a workaround today. My iMac is running Mojave and all my iOS devices have the latest updates. Local sync through iTunes was not working as has been described here. Since my desktop file was the most up to date, I exported a Contacts archive and copied to another mac (Mini) running Sierra. I then synched my iPhone through iTunes on the Mini using the "replace" option to overwrite the iPhone. This resulted in a successful sync with the contacts matching on the Mini and the iPhone. When I then did a sync on the iMac running Mojave, I got a message saying the device was synced to another account and did I want to replace or merge the contact information. Here's the weird thing, selecting "merge" resulted on a bunch of conflicts with both new and modified contacts flagged. The data on the iPhone should have been exactly the same as the data from the Contacts app since that's where it was originally exported from, but iTunes didn't see it that way. To me this suggests that under Mojave the Contacts and iTunes apps are reading from and/or writing to different databases. Apple - any insight??? This is basic functionality here!!!

I can absolutely confirm the observation of rldillon!

The application "Contacts" and the application "iTunes" do not seem to use the same database. Whatever you type and edit in the application "Contacts", it won't be regarded by the application "iTunes" while it syncs with the connected device (e.g. an iPhone).

Furthermore, based on my experiments, the database that is used by the application "iTunes" must be pretty old, maybe about 1 year. Maybe this was the time when the faulty update of iTunes arrived.

We’re not saying iTunes has its own contacts database. In order to conduct a local sync between MacOS contacts and iOS contacts, iTunes would have to access the databases for both. This worked up to and including Sierra, but is broken under High Sierra and Mojave.

I have always synced my iPhone 7 with my iMac using a USB cable. I just sync Music and Contacts. (My Calendar uses iCloud.)

But for several months now my Contacts won't sync from iPhone to iMac using USB and iTunes.

I have been updating Contacts on both devices, so I can't just replace the information on the iPhone. I have 1307 contacts on my iMac and 1402 on my iPhone.

I have tried deselecting Music so only Contacts are selected to sync - no luck.

I have disabled "sync over Wi-Fi" as someone else suggested. (No, it doesn't sync over Wi-Fi either it turns out.)

I have restarted the iMac and iPhone, plugged them in and tried syncing - no luck.

I prefer to use USB than iCloud.

macOS 10.13.6

iOS 11.4.1

iTunes 12.8.0

iPhone capacity is 128GB with 6.3Gb free.

I reported this to Apple in August - no response.

Sometimes a sync failure will be caused by a single corrupt record in the contacts database. Finding it can be a problem, however. In my experience it is usually the first record. As it's a Mac you can try syncing using iCloud.

I think the point that is being missed is that i do not want to use the cloud as it creates issues with data and availability, as i have discovered using cloud for calendar. It should work with a USB cable and if it doesn't then the sync should not be deemed as having completed!

thanks for tip though.

Here's my specs: MacBook Air 13 inch Early 2015 running Mojave (10.14.3), iPhone SE running iOS 12 (12.1.4). I've been dealing with this for a while. I talked to a senior advisor back around October 2018, and he was supposed to contact me again, but never did. I began working on it on my own and have reinstalled my MacBook Air's OS a few times trying to fix it. I noticed pretty quickly that iTunes and Contacts were not communicating like they should, but never thought of it being a database that iTunes wasn't prepared to deal with. I just finished manually reinstalling Mojave and did not use any part of my Time Machine backups because I thought some corrupt file was making the problem. I now see that it is not the problem, because I keep having the issue. I uploaded my contacts to iCloud for the process to not have to use any 'corrupt' files, but to no avail. After reading this thread, I'm going to try going through all my contacts and taking out any "Son" or "Daughter" fields changing them to "child" and see if that changes anything. Thanks for the info.

So I went back through and changed all fields "Son" or "Daughter" to "child". I also took out my cousin's maiden name just to be safe and syncing through iTunes suddenly works! I wish I'd known this six months ago, but oh well, I'm happy I know it now. If anyone else has issues, I would recommend seeing if there are any new fields that were filled in in contacts.

I just went through my several hundred contacts on my MacBook Pro looking for any with "son" or "daughter". I found only 2 records and changed "son" or "daughter" to "child". I then synced my iPhone 6 with iTunes and VOILA!! My contacts synced!! Now, if I could only find out what is preventing my PHOTOS from syncing I'd be a happy camper! (I am using MacBook Pro with Mojave with latest updates and iPhone 6 with latest iOS and updates).

It looks like I finally got this working with Mojave. I went through all of my contacts (over 2000...) and made sure there were no fields assigned as "Son" or "Daughter" and that "Child" was selected. After doing this, sync still didn't work. Then I noticed that with some of the "Related Name" fields I had included additional info bedsides a name (like birthday date). This never caused a problem under Sierra, but I'm guessing that with High Sierra and Mojave if there's anything other than text (like numbers or special characters) in a name field it causes a sync error. Once I cleaned up those entries the sync worked again. Hope this helps.

This was a process but I solved my issue for syncing contacts. I went to my phones Settings> click your name at the top where you can see you icoud info, unselect contacts and click "keep on my phone" when prompted. Then I wen to my macbooks settings > icloud, unselected contacts and "delete from this computer" if prompted (I wasn't but others were). Then plug your phone into your laptop via USB, open itunes, click the phone icon and summary, then select backup via icloud then back it up. Then go back to your iphone and reselect contacts for icloud syncing. Go back to itunes and press the sync phone. Then go to your laptop settings and reselect sync contacts. They should now be in your imessage on your computer. What a wild ride.

Hi everybody,

Summary:

after a lot of manual editing, I finally can confirm what some users already wrote, namely that removing the entries "son", "daughter", etc. ... solves the issue. Now my contacts are syncing correctly again between my MacBook and my iPhone.

Explanations:

I removed the entries "son", "daughter", etc. ... on my MacBook. Even after doing that the syncronisation still did not work properly till I realised that (!!!) the entry "mother" was set as a standard field in the template for vCards: "contacts --> settings". Removing that standard field from the template made the syncronisation possible.

Why do I write this in such a detailed way? I want to emphasise that it is not sufficient to remove all entries "son", "daughter", etc. ... from your contacts. Additionally, you need to remove those fields from standard template in the application "contacts", too. As far as I know, you can only edit this template in macOS, but not in iOS - or at least I could not find it on my iPhone ("settings --> contacts"). I do not know whether you can edit the template in iPadOS as I do not have an iPad.

Final thoughts:

Eventually, I would like to ask Apple why they do not remove those entries completely if it is obvious that these entries make the syncronisation fail? So many people here have reported it and this bug should have reached you, Apple.

Good luck to you all with editing your contacts and making the sync work again!