If you’re making the changes on the Mac, you need to clear out the version of Contacts on the iCloud site before reconnecting the Mac to iCloud, otherwise you end up w/a scrambled combination of the Mac version & the iCloud version along w/duplicates & triplicates. (Also temporarily disconnect all other devices w/Contacts from iCloud until Contacts on the Mac & on the iCloud site are perfectly synced.)
Yes, you’re correct. It’s scary to do it but you have to empty iCloud contacts before loading your backup.
- I just did a fresh test vCard export w/the current Contacts data & it does show the Notes info. This leads me to think there was some corruption in my original Contacts file or some other Contacts/iCloud/data problem that has now been “fixed.”
See the post from 23 Paddies Argyles above. I’ll bet that preference wasn’t turned-on in your earlier exports.
- Based on your insights, I tried to export a Contacts Archive file (.abbu). But I don’t see a way to see the data in the file w/o importing it into the Contacts app & I’m not interested in creating further problems so I’m not going to worry about that for now.
You can’t see a way because they don’t want you poking around in there. It’s a wildly complex file format (because it’s duplicating the entire environment) that is intended solely for use with restoring all of the Contacts data from the .abbu archive.
I found that it did import names, addresses, phone #s, & emails into Numbers, but it did not import the Notes field. I even tried adding several additional columns to the spreadsheet to make certain there was room for the Notes, but they did not show up in Numbers.
By gosh, you’re right! That’s an odd omission! It’s probably a bug or it may be a policy choice. Developers who want access to the Contacts DB have to request permission to access it but they also have to request a separate permission for notes.
I will also make a list of all the lists I have in Contacts so that I have a reference in case I ever need to recreate them again. And I’ll go thru each Contact & add in the Note field which list(s) that contact is in.
It’s tedious but adding the list name to the Note field is definitely the way to go. If you restore from your .vcf you can then do a find for the list name and create a list from the selected contacts. Tedious but straight-forward.
I know this seems like a lot of work but once your Contacts file gets corrupted, you worry about it happening again & it’s a lot of work to recreate.
Yes.
Makes me wish for the old days when I just had a small paper address book that I kept at my desk & could slip into my purse when I needed it.
Too true! What I do every year or two is print out the contacts in a small format. Should be good for a hundred years or so. . . .
Dave