iCloud contacts with multiple accounts

[Terabyte]

I have 2 Yahoo UK and 1 Gmail account in Contacts which I hoped to sync in iCloud to show on my Mac and iPhones 5S. I have never been in the cloud before and I am new to macs so I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

This is hard to explain, but I will do my best:

- when I open Contacts, all accounts and iCloud have spinning icon but when finished, one Yahoo account has grey triangle with exclamation

- All Contacts = 393
iCloud = 383
1 Yahoo UK = 376
2 Yahoo UK = 342
Gmail = 343

- I added New Contact in each to see where they would go:
iCloud:..............All + iCloud + iPhones
All Contacts:......All + iCloud + iPhones
1 Yahoo UK:......1 Yahoo + All
2 Yahoo UK:......2 Yahoo + All
Gmail:..............Gmail
iPhone:.............iPhone + All + iCloud

I have spent so much time trying to sort this out but again, I am not sure how they should be. I expect them all to have the same number.....what a mess!

 

[chscag]

Your post is a bit confusing but let me add this...

Contacts can be spread between various groups or in some cases it may be the way you have them setup in your contacts app on your Mac. I'm assuming here that you're attempting to sync them the same across all your accounts? I have also run into the same problem as you when I had my contacts listed (contacts.app on my Mac) in two separate groups. Even though they were the same, they did not sync the same. It gave me a headache for some time before I finally figured out that I would just group everyone in the same category and use the note remarks for any differences. Once I had done that, my contacts synced across my two iPhones and iPad the same for both my gmail and iCloud accounts.

I don't know if that will help. If not, maybe you can try to explain further what's going on?

 

[Ember1205]

Personally, I don't waste my time with iCloud Contacts - I do everything in my Gmail contacts, and use the Contacts option of the mail account on my iOS devices to make them available there. Similar on the Mac machines.

SUPPOSEDLY, you can use your Mac to be a sort of "collection point" for the various accounts and it will keep things in sync across your various accounts. I've found this to be very clunky at best as it does not auto-add new contacts to accounts, it will only [sometimes] keep the data ABOUT those contacts in sync if you change it one place.

I would suggest that you pull all of your non-iCloud accounts from the Mac. Ensure that the Contacts app does not show any additional accounts. Add your accounts in one at a time, ensuring that the contact data from each account comes in correctly and there are no issues with accessing the data in the account.

Once all accounts are added, go to the All Contacts section and click or arrow your way down the list, observing on the right side exactly what accounts have that contact's data in them. To add an a contact to an account, simply drag it to that account on the left of the window. After all contacts are in all accounts, they will hopefully stay in sync for you afterward. You will need to perform a similar exercise when you add new contacts, however.

 

[Terabyte]

Thank you for your help which I was going to try out, but fingers crossed, I found another Solution !!!!

I watched a video last night. It was the 3rd time watching it, but now that I have been using my Mac for a few months, it finally sunk in. It is worth watching the whole thing, but if your problem is just Contacts or Calendar, this really worked.

You should start watching this at 21:38 which covers Calendar but that helps Contacts too which follows it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL9YjjYdxJs

I know how you have your devices set up is important too which was not covered here. I really hope I am not giving the wrong advice, but I have my default account on all devices as iCloud. It is my Apple ID but I share it (yes, I know you are not supposed to) with one other person. My Mac and Iphone have iCloud Drive on. The one I share it with is turned off but I am pretty sure that this would have nothing to do with contacts syncing correctly. It might be worth a try if all else fails though.

I tested it by adding a new contact. They all synced....YAY! The person I share with took a little longer, but it got there in about 50 seconds.

The other plus is that my problem of not being able to back up my contacts has also been fixed by doing the above. http://www.mac-forums.com/os-x-operating-system/333767-contacts-backup-complete.html?highlight=

Happy days

 

[chscag]

@Terabyte:

Nothing wrong with sharing your Apple ID, and in fact may be convenient to do so. I share mine with my wife and have done so for several years and have never run into a problem. Granted, I don't particularly like having all her contacts synced to my iPhone and mine to hers, but it all works out well. Besides, we've been married for so doggone long...... ;D

 

[Terabyte]

@Terabyte:

Nothing wrong with sharing your Apple ID, and in fact may be convenient to do so. I share mine with my wife and have done so for several years and have never run into a problem. Granted, I don't particularly like having all her contacts synced to my iPhone and mine to hers, but it all works out well. Besides, we've been married for so doggone long...... ;D

I agree and I hope we will be able to keep using it the way we like. Unfortunately, there are some people who disagree with us: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7053494?start=0&tstart=0

There are some nasty people on that post who really need to get a life....

 

[Terabyte]

Your post is a bit confusing but let me add this...

Contacts can be spread between various groups or in some cases it may be the way you have them setup in your contacts app on your Mac. I'm assuming here that you're attempting to sync them the same across all your accounts? I have also run into the same problem as you when I had my contacts listed (contacts.app on my Mac) in two separate groups. Even though they were the same, they did not sync the same. It gave me a headache for some time before I finally figured out that I would just group everyone in the same category and use the note remarks for any differences. Once I had done that, my contacts synced across my two iPhones and iPad the same for both my gmail and iCloud accounts.

I don't know if that will help. If not, maybe you can try to explain further what's going on?

Your answer is very similar to what I did. Would you know if I start to add groups, will these too be synced? I cannot figure out how to do it.

 

[Ember1205]

@Terabyte:

Nothing wrong with sharing your Apple ID, and in fact may be convenient to do so. I share mine with my wife and have done so for several years and have never run into a problem. Granted, I don't particularly like having all her contacts synced to my iPhone and mine to hers, but it all works out well. Besides, we've been married for so doggone long...... ;D

The people on the Apple forums get really uptight when they find people sharing IDs. Personally, I don't see the issue except for the "bad" things that come with it...

- Reduced storage for backing up devices (because more devices are being backed up)
- Reduced storage for Photo Stream
- Syncing of phone call information among all devices
- Syncing of iMessages and Facetime info among all devices

I don't even like using my iCloud account across all of my OWN devices because I don't want things like my phone call history sync'ed across multiple phones. But, there isn't anything you can do about some of it.

 

[Terabyte]

@Terabyte:

Nothing wrong with sharing your Apple ID, and in fact may be convenient to do so. I share mine with my wife and have done so for several years and have never run into a problem. Granted, I don't particularly like having all her contacts synced to my iPhone and mine to hers, but it all works out well. Besides, we've been married for so doggone long...... ;D

Do you have your own Facetime and iMessages but have Contacts synced between devices? If yes, how did you do that please?

 

[Ember1205]

Do you have your own Facetime and iMessages but have Contacts synced between devices? If yes, how did you do that please?

FT and iMessage is tied to your iCloud account, period.

If you use a DIFFERENT mechanism to sync contacts (Gmail, for example), you can separate the two. Now, you can have ONE account on multiple devices for contact sync and DIFFERENT accounts on the devices for iMessage and FT.

 

[Terabyte]

FT and iMessage is tied to your iCloud account, period.

If you use a DIFFERENT mechanism to sync contacts (Gmail, for example), you can separate the two. Now, you can have ONE account on multiple devices for contact sync and DIFFERENT accounts on the devices for iMessage and FT.

I had a lot of problems with Gmail Contacts. They never synced properly and when I did sync, all of my Group namaes were still there but were empty. Since I did what I wrote above and got Gmail Contacts out of the cloud, I have had absolutely no problems.

As for FT and iMessage being tied to my iCloud account, I thought I would test iMessages again on my husbands mob hoping that some of my changes or updates might have tweaked it into shape. I am afraid to say this in case I put a jinx on it, but even though we use the same ID, now FT and iMessage are working perfectly between us. I have my mine showing on my iPhone and Mac and he has his on his iPhone.

So, all is sorted (for now). I just hope it stays this way. I have spent way too much time trying to sort it out the way I wanted.

 

[Terabyte]

Thanks everyone for all of your help!