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Duplicated contacts on iCloud and iPhone

I have three thousands contacts in the Contacts application on the Mac. There are no duplicates.


These are synced with iCloud.


On the iPhone, I have more than 15,000 contacts, of course with many many duplicates.


If I log-in to iCloud.com I see there are lots of duplicates to.


I would like that the iCloud.com and iPhone contacts apps have the same exactly contact I have on the Mac.


Please help, thank you

iPhone XS, iOS 16

Posted on Feb 17, 2023 11:12 PM

Reply
3 replies

Feb 19, 2023 4:17 PM in response to rgg_rgg

Greetings rgg_rgg,


You can learn how to remove duplicate contacts below:


"Resolve duplicate contacts

If you have more than one contact card with the same first and last name, you can merge the duplicate contacts.

  1. Below My Card, tap Duplicates Found.
  2. Tap individual contacts to review and merge them, or tap Merge All to merge all duplicate contacts." Get rid of duplicate contacts on iPhone


We hope this helps clear up your duplicates!


Best wishes.


Feb 19, 2023 4:34 PM in response to JessS19

The problem was probably due to the fact that I created a new Mac User and I was trying to sync contacts taken from previous user.


I managed to fix everything in this way:


disabled iCloud for contacts, calendars and remainders both on Mac and iPhone


deleted all contacts from iCloud.com (I had to delete a few at a time to be successful)


deleted all contacts from iPhone


deleted all contacts from Mac


with iCloud turned off both on the Mac and the iPhone, I imported all the contacts from an exported .vcf file I created beforehand, into the Contacts app on the Mac


I browsed all 3,000 contacts to check duplicates and invalid names


I then synced manually the contacts on the Mac with the iPhone via usb cable and the finder window


now I could see all the names in the apps like iMessages or WhatsApp


I switched on iCloud on the Mac and copied the contacts into the iCloud group in Contacts, but this I had to do in small batches otherwise it didn't work


wHen finished, I merged the two groups


then I switched on the iCloud contacts on the iPhone and now I have all the contacts synced automatically via the cloud service





Duplicated contacts on iCloud and iPhone

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