Address Book - Managing duplicate entries

I recently got Lion and iCloud on my G4 iMac and iPhone.
I started to delet duplicate contacts and most of my entries disappeared completely.
I restored it through Time Machine and now I have 4 of each contact!
Each time I try to delete the duplicates it erases most of the address book and I have to start over!
Anyone have a solution?

Are you using iCloud or Mobile Me?

I'm using iCloud

Go into iTunes.

Connect an iOS device.

In the iTunes preferences for that device, go to Info (at the top), then UNCHECK the things that say Sync in front of them.(Contacts, Calendars, Mail accounts). This will allow iCloud syncing ONLY instead of trying to sync both locally AND over the air, which is generally the cause of the problem. You can also use iTunes to force a re-sync FROM your Mac TO an iOS device if you need to do that.

Open your System Preferences on your Mac, go to the iCloud panel, check what you want to have synced.

On your iOS device, go to the iCloud setting and turn on what you want to have synced.

Back to your Mac now.

Open your Address Book. Go to preferences. Under general, point your default account to "iCloud."

Open iCal. Under accounts make sure you have only iCloud. Then in the Main iCal window, click on Calendars and uncheck everything but your iCloud calendars. All your "On My Mac" if any should be UNCHECKED.

Open Mail. Make sure your iCloud account is there too. That's all you need to do there.

That should take care of it. Every device -- your Mac and any iOS devices (repeat the iOS part for each device of course) -- should now be drawing its information from iCloud so that if you make a change on one device it will show up momentarily on the other.

If you've gotten your iCloud stuff particularly fouled up, you MAY need to turn off iCloud on some devices and turn it back on (forcing a re-sync), but you should shortly be without duplicates.

Thank you so much - all is in order now !!

Yay! Glad to hear it!

My Address Book on iCloud looks totally different than my Mac. I stopped syncing my iPhone a month ago, because after the upgrade to Lion, I had to restore from Time Machine, lost pictures and Groups, again. Now the Groups have reappeared (yay) but some of the newer entries are not on my Mac, but they ARE in iCloud, which now has no Groups. I considered exporting from iCloud, but don't want to lose the Groups again. Not using iTunes to synchronize anything since upgrading. I'm confused.

The only way your'e going to get your contacts synced to an iOS device is through iTunes, so not using it isn't really an option.

Follow the directions I mentioned above (but FIRST, make BACKUPS) and see if that helps.