Duplicate Contacts Issue

Hello Et Al:

Ok, looked at the Forums but cannot decide which is the appropriate place.

My question involves Mac Contacts with 20,296 duplicate entries for one contact. Cannot delete nor merge them and iCloud contains the same information but it also is not being Brooklynguy-friendly. More details when I do post in the proper forum.

Thanks

Kind of depends on what application you are using for all of the "Mac Contacts". Probably best in "Mac OS X Applications & Games".

I will move the thread to "Mac OS X Applications & Games"...and you can provide more details.

- Nick

I am using the native address book (Contacts.app) provided on Mountain Lion. Thank you for the swift reply.

- BG

pigoo3 said:

Kind of depends on what application you are using for all of the "Mac Contacts". Probably best in "Mac OS X Applications & Games".

I will move the thread to "Mac OS X Applications & Games"...and you can provide more details.

- Nick

Click to expand...

Cannot get rid of Duplicate Contacts

First, the hardware and software list:
iMac, 27”, Mid 2011, 2.7GHz Intel Core i5, 4GB 1333MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB,
OS X 10.8.3,
iCloud,
Contacts.app,
Address Book Clearout.app
iPad (3rd generation)
iPhone 4S

For some unknown (to me) reason, this one contact (call it "Pizzeria") has duplicated and now has 20,296 duplicates of the original entry. These are present on my iMac, iCloud account, iPad, and iPhone.

Manually trying to merge or delete these individually from each platform, but could not accomplish anything. Thinking that possibly it had to do with iCloud sending the dupes back down to my devices, I turned off the Wi-fi and unsuccessfully tried again.

I purchased through the App Store (I know, should have tried the free version first, but I thought it maybe wouldn't handle so many dupes.) the Address Book Clearout.app. After running it, this told me that there were no dupes left, but it lied.

Perhaps I need to export all the other contacts and start a fresh empty contact book and then import the entries. But, where does the Contacts.app store the information? How do I initialize a new empty address book? Any Ideas on why this duplication happened in the first place?

Sorry this is so long, but wanted to provide as much information as might be needed.

Let's close this thread and I'll start a new one with a more appropriate Subject line.

Brooklynguy said:

Let's close this thread and I'll start a new one with a more appropriate Subject line.

Click to expand...

No need to close the thread. Thread title has been revised.

HTH,

- Nick

New Thread Subject

Thank you

pigoo3 said:

No need to close the thread. Thread title has been revised.

HTH,

- Nick

Click to expand...

Moderator:

Since I am not getting any suggestions or answers on this I am assuming that all the rhetoric at the beginning of this thread is putting people off(?) Would you remove the extraneous messaging in the beginning or may we close this and restart the thread from scratch?

I don't think that's the problem. My guess is that most members/visitors have never encounter this level of duplication. Generally what you see is all contacts or all members of a group will be duplicated not the same one thousands of times.

The usual causes of duplication involve either:
1. Contacts syncing by two different methods (wire and iCloud for example).
2. Occasional iCloud problems usually from the first time data is pushed to the cloud.