iCloud contacts either deleting contacts randomly or multiplying them

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iCloud contacts either deleting contacts randomly or multiplying them

I have been suffering with my Contacts on my iPhone being deleted and/or multiplying sometimes 5 or 6 times. Howe can I stop this? Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

Posted on Jan 24, 2022 9:24 AM

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Answer 1

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Matthew.S81

Community Specialist

Jan 25, 2022 9:27 AM in response to antony116

Hi antony116,

It seems you're having some trouble with syncing contacts and we can help.

Do you have multiple contacts accounts and other devices that could be syncing your Contacts?

Normally, this sort of behavior can occur because another device is syncing contacts.

Check for other accounts here:

Manage and delete contacts on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Let us know how you have this set up and we can try to help.

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities.

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Answer 2

antony116 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 25, 2022 10:42 AM in response to Matthew.S81

Thank you Matthew

I have 4 groups and they are:

All Gmail

All iCloud

Duplicate contacts (empty)

icloud duplicates (plenty in there)

Up till very recently, my iCloud contacts were syncing with Outlook 365 and I fear that this is where my problem started. I have stopped that but now a lot of my contacts in iCloud have also got 'This contact is read-only. To make changes, tap the link above (e.g. ms-outlook://people/AQMkA.....................) to edit in Outlook.' If I tap the link, it opens up in the iPhone Outlook app.

The Outlook app's default Contacts are the Gmail ones which don't seem to be so infected by Outlook but nevertheless some are. The other main apps which use my contacts are WhatsApp and Signal.

A bit of a mess I am afraid and I think I will have to do some manual sorting. However, I don't want to go through all that yet if I still have the bug which is either duplicating or deleting.

Can you help?

Kind regards

Antony

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iCloud contacts either deleting contacts randomly or multiplying them

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