A deep dive on Mac Contacts?

TidBITS Talk
30

Maximum size of all calendar and reminder data (including attachments): 1GB*

How do I find the size of my calendar and reminder data?

31

Try going to Settings — General — Storage on your device.

32

Thanks you. Actually, I was asking how to use my Mac to find out, but I’m versatile. As soon as I figured out that Settings > General implied I shouldn’t be using macOS, I woke the iPad. Gee, it’s easy to talk at cross-purposes.

For anyone as challenged as I am, be sure to click the Show All button if the app of interest does not appear in the list.

Calendar, which I use for many things, is apparently using 1.9 MB for Documents & Data. Reminders, which I do not use at all, is using 6.5 MB for Documents & Data. Since the iPad has 128 GB, it’s not a big deal, but why? And is there some way to delete Documents & Data for apps that I don’t use? (News, which I also don’t use, has 22.4 MB devoted to Documents & Data, and Podcasts, which I have never used at all, has 20.8 MB of Documents & Data. I don’t get it.)

Getting further off-topic, is there a simple way I can force Files to bulk download all the documents from iCloud, rather than grabbing them one at a time? I noticed that Files is apparently not taking nearly as much room for Documents & Data as it would if all my documents had been downloaded, and I do not have always on high speed internet. I would rather download everything (about 2 GB) than find the one document I want is unavailable when I need it and I’m off-line. Thanks.

33

Settings — General — Storage works on the Mac too (though Settings is called System Settings).

34

It is possible that I’m blind, but I find nothing related to storage in System Preferences > General, nor any kind of navigation to a deeper set of options. I’m on Big Sur; did Apple revamp the interface that extensively? I did look in System Preferences > Apple ID, but I couldn’t find anything about how much storage any individual app was using.

I’m still hoping someone can tell me how to purge data from an individual app.

35

I use a “family” apple account for shared contacts. I find a couple of things I must keep aware of. One, is that on each individual device (iPhone, Mac, iPad) I have to keep track of which account (family or local apple account or some other apple account) is the “default” account for new entries. I have wanted to update the “family” and end up only updating the “local”. Grrr. I have to be careful to choose the account.
Another thing I have to be aware of is that the “My Card” is very strange. The family account has a My Card and the local has a “My Card”. Sometimes the image associated with the family account on the “My Card” shows up as the image/icon for the local account. I have one computer that is showing almost all of the accounts with their local names but the family My Card image. I have tried to declare each local account’s My Card to be THE card. But, if I am on “All Contacts” view in Contacts and have multiple accounts, it will show multiple My Cards and the family one is on to alphabetically.

36

I have about 2,000 contacts. (Yes, I could prune them, but that takes time!). However, Apple has duplicated nearly every contact into 3 or 4, so I have over 7,000 entries. I have merged these entries, one by one, many times, and each time, Apple just splits them again — sometimes while I am editing them just after having merged them. It is just about the worst app that Apple has created.

37

Many of my contacts are now in triplicate. The other day I happened to be at the end of the list on the laptop, and realized a few of those contacts aren’t needed at all. I’d deleted dupes a few years ago and vaguely remembered having an issue but couldn’t remember what it was. Anyway, I delete the first few and then come to one that I would like to keep. I delete two of the duplicates. Check the phone, and that entire contact is gone. Ok now I remember my old issue, one of the dupes apparently doesn’t show on the phone and how on earth do I know which is which? I made a change to the one on the computer and hope it syncs back at some point.

Diane

38

Diane, select all the duplicate contacts and choose ⇧⌘L (Link cards). In my experience, this only links the cards for a while (minutes or months), but I think that this is what you want.

39

Linking works between cards in different accounts.

Merging combines cards in the same account.

1 Like
40

That says Merge & Link on my laptop (Sierra) and it does merge! I’ll see how long it sticks, I just did the W’s (triple on the laptop and single on the computer)

It’s so much easier managing Contacts on the computer to begin with, best I can see there is no swipe to delete on the phone. I have to hit Edit and then scroll to the bottom to delete.

Thank you!

Diane