Removing duplicate Contacts on iCloud?

[Travisimo]

Okay, I have iOS 5 running on my iPad 2 and iPhone 4. I logged into iCloud with my iTunes Apple ID. I also have a MobileMe account which had all of my Contacts. After restoring from a backup, my Contacts were just fine. In settings, they were synced using MobileMe and turned off in iCloud.

I followed the directions in the leaked PDF explaining how to copy your MobileMe data to iCloud, and it seemed to work just fine. However, somehow, I now have duplicates of ALL of my contacts on iCloud. They are still fine if I just sync them with MobileMe and turn iCloud off. But if I turn MobileMe off and iCloud on, then I get duplicates.

How the heck do you remove the Contact data from iCloud? I just want to start over and remove all of the contacts from iCloud. The only way I see to remove Contacts from iCloud is to leave it synced and manually delete individual contacts. There is no group delete or entire delete from what I can see. Having over 100 contacts, it's just not plausible to delete the individual duplicates, so now I appear to be stuck.

So now I have to turn iCloud Contacts off and MobileMe contacts back on so that I don't have duplicates. At least until I find a way to remove data from iCloud???

EDIT: This could be a big problem, because with iCloud, how do you specify a "master" data source if something gets corrupted? For example, with MobileMe contact syncing, I could force my Mac's Address Book to overwrite the MobileMe data. But with iCloud, there doesn't appear to be a way to force a source of data, so if something gets corrupted (or duplicated in my case), how do you fix it? There isn't a web interface, so that's out.

 

[Travisimo]

Well I fixed the problem by purchasing an app from the App Store that allowed me to delete a large group of contacts at once. This was much quicker than having to manually delete them one by one! Then I was able to sync them from MobileMe back to icloud again and have no duplicates now. However, I think I'm going to turn off Cobtacts and Calendar on iCloud until Lion comes out. Then I think it will be more straightforward because I Should be able to use Address Book and iCal to make changes to iCloud, right?

 

[chadderbox]

Yes, however you should still be able to do that now. I'm just not sure how reliable it is right now. I've had some goofy things happen with mine already where I have all contacts disappear and then reappear 20 minutes later.

Just chalking it up to them working out the kinks right now and hope it gets better upon official release.

 

[Travisimo]

How can I do it now in Snow Leopard? There's no icloud and both iCal and address can sync to MobileMe but not icloud, I believe.

 

[DannyMichel]

How can I do it now in Snow Leopard? There's no icloud and both iCal and address can sync to MobileMe but not icloud, I believe.

same question

 

[tgibson]

I had the same problem. Had a senior tech support help me through for an hour and half. In the end I had to manually delete the duplicate?s which updated the cloud. I shut my mac down went from the office to home. Restarted and they were all back!

 

[StevenJ_AK]

Had the same problem, before we had a family mobile me, switched it over to iCloud and ended up with my wires 200 contacts as well as my 70 on three iPhones. Really pissed me off, so what i did was restore all the phones back to yesterday (since they backed up from when we updated them) and then create two more iCloud accounts with the other me.com ones we had. used the main account (mine) on all three phones but turned off everything but the calendar because thats the only thing we care to really share amongst the family. I swear my wife is OCD, we live by the calendar on our MacBooks and iPhones! Anyways, then used the other addresses to set-up iMessage so we quit sending ourselves messages and couldn't tell what was for who. Anyways thats really crappy and its wasting Apples storage space in my opinion. Why have three iClouds when we could have one family one? I don't get it, i think its a major flaw, besides that I would love if i could choose to NOT have photos pushed to all my devices. Its stupid. Put them in the cloud, great idea, put them everywhere, stupid. Same as the whole contact problems i am having also.

 

[Tech4Humans]

Prevention is better than cure...

If you have done your reseach on MobileMe's transition to iCloud you can skip the"overview section" and go to the "preventing dupplicates" section.

Overview:
Apple is discontinuing its MobileMe service offering. The service end date is set for June 30, 2012. Most of the functionality provided by MobileMe will be made available in Apple's new content management platform, iCloud. iCloud provides the services required to keep the content on all your computing devices (laptop, iPod, iPhone, etc.) in sync.
Only devices using iOS 5.0 / iTunes 10.5 or later can be connected to iCloud.

Try this site for more information on iCloud: Apple - iCloud - Your content. On all your devices.

Preventing Dupplicates:
Ok lets level set to ensure that everyone understands the issue.

As part of the release of iCloud Apple is transitioning MobileMe accounts and data to the iCloud platform.
During the upgrade process you be asked for an Apple Id to use with iCloud. If you provide your MobileMe account, your account will be imediately transitioned to iCloud and your device set up to sync with iCloud.

So now you'll have data on MobileMe and data in iCloud. The confusinon is that both will use the same email and passwword giving you the impression that you have on set of data when in fact you have two distinct sets of data.

If you have your MobileMe account set up on your device along with an iCloud account you'll have two copies of the information you previously had on MobileMe. If you remove your MobileMe account and choose to keep your contacts, events, etc. on your device, that information will now be synced to iCloud thus producing duplicates on iCloud.

You prevent this by (a) removing the MobileMe account you setup via the "mail, contacts, calendars" tab in settings. Be sure to remove the associated data from your phone. (b) configure iCloud in setting to use your MobileMe account. Your contact, mail, events, etc. should all show up on your device as it was before, but now connected to iCloud.

A bit long.... but i hope it helps.

 

[leon-geyer]

For people without MobileMe

Duplicate Contacts in address book with iCloud - MacRumors Forums
Go to System Pref on your Mac
Click iCloud
Untick Address Book, selected Delete from Mac
Then tick Address Book again, then select Merge
Duplicates will be removed and if you are using Birthdays in your Calendar, you'll notice that the Birthday events are back to single entries as well.

I before had this solution:
go in Addressbook to Edit: Distribution List, and unchecked iCloud.
also unchecking in preferences of address and iCal the account. but will it actualize stil??

 

[acliff]

Is the App PhoneBook CleanMaster?

Well I fixed the problem by purchasing an app from the App Store that allowed me to delete a large group of contacts at once. This was much quicker than having to manually delete them one by one! Then I was able to sync them from MobileMe back to icloud again and have no duplicates now. However, I think I'm going to turn off Cobtacts and Calendar on iCloud until Lion comes out. Then I think it will be more straightforward because I Should be able to use Address Book and iCal to make changes to iCloud, right?

I looked for the App you mentioned, found that PhoneBook CleanMaster works the best, it gives you the option for reviewing the detailed information before deleting or merging. Other App all seems to work but a little clumsy. But no free app, all cost money. Have you found anything free which does the job?

 

[acliff]

Try PhoneBook CleanMaster

I looked for some Apps which helps with cleaning up the duplication problem, found that PhoneBook CleanMaster works the best, it gives you the option for reviewing the detailed information before deleting or merging. Other App all seems to work but a little clumsy. But no free app, all cost money. Does anyone find anything free which does the job?

 

[Laelipoo]

Address book has a view duplicates feature, as far as I can remember. That would work.


Beamed from a galaxy far, far away using Tapatalk!

 

[bonesb]

I looked for the App you mentioned, found that PhoneBook CleanMaster works the best, it gives you the option for reviewing the detailed information before deleting or merging. Other App all seems to work but a little clumsy. But no free app, all cost money. Have you found anything free which does the job?

You're new here, I am too. The OP was posted this past summer, months before iCloud was public and tools were available for duplication errors with contacts and calendars. The OP's question then is moot now, and should have been asked in the Apple Developer Forums then. Nice that you care, but this is old news.

 

[hos]

For removing duplicate contacts you can also try Scrubly (scrubly.com). They have a free option to remove duplicates

 

[bonesb]

For removing duplicate contacts you can also try Scrubly (scrubly.com). They have a free option to remove duplicates

So does soocial - I like soocial better only because they have a MOFO plan...

 

[jalba3]

If you have a file (csv) backup of your contacts that you have previousy exported, In iCloud.com go to your adress book. Click on one and press command+a or control+a. This should select all, and hit delete (on Mac it would only delete if I pressed command+delete). Then I added it and it began to sync properly through iCloud.