This started me looking into my Contacts file and I found a total mess, including an accumulation of contacts that I accumulated from Eudora. You don’t realize how much of a mess you can accumulate by adding things to Contacts until you try to call from an iPhone using Contacts.
That’s exactly how I realized I had a problem w/Contacts. I was making a call on my iPhone, went to look for a # in Contacts, & noticed a discrepancy between Contacts on my iPhone & on my MacBook. Further examination showed that iCloud wasn’t correctly syncing Contacts between my MacBook & my devices; there were glitches appearing here & there. Don’t know when the problem started, but glad I caught it.
On another note, related to your comment about Contacts & Eudora (I also used Eudora many years ago): Occasionally when I start to create an email or a Message by typing in the name of someone who should be in Contacts, suggested names appear (as they should), but often they are names of people I deleted from Contacts years & years ago; sometimes they’re names I no longer recognize (I realize that’s a memory issue, not a Contacts issue. 
) Don’t know how/why that happens but I try to be extra careful to make sure I choose the correct person.
Apple Mail also retains your previous recipients. You can access that list and remove items via Mail>Windows>Previous Recipients.
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UGH. Contacts and iCloud. I have 3 iPhones, 3 laptops, and a desktop. The Macs have multiple user accounts to keep work separate from personal.
When I add a new contact, I have to export the vcard to iCloud then import it on more than one of the other devices / accounts. I found that one of the work accounts across all of my machines was missing about half of my contacts.
I had to do the whole turn off iCloud sync, export vCards, wipe iCloud, etc. on all of my machines / accounts to get things in sync. Apple really needs to have a “force push” and “force pull” for contacts.
I know about Mail & Previous Recipients; I regularly clear out unneeded entries. That’s why I’m surprised when old & deleted Contacts show up when addressing an email or a Message. These are contacts that are no longer in Mail’s Previous Recipients.
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For Sequoia:
Have you gone to “Contacts>Accounts
Then Click on your iCloud Account, then on "See All”
Move the “contacts” to on
Do the equivalent of that to all your devices.
That should automatically upload changes you make to contacts into iCloud and then to all your devices.
w/r,
David
I didn’t know about Mail and Previous Recipients, but when I looked at it the oldest recipient dates from May 27, 2024. I would understand if it went back to the start of 2024 because have moved older mail to folders in OnMyMac, but if that was the case it would go back to Jan 1, 2024. I tried entering an email address for a former colleague I had not written in years, and his name popped up. This gets weirder and weirder.
By the way, almost none of my email goes through my iCloud account, if that matters at all.
Thank you for your suggestion. iCloud has always been turned on for contacts. This issue has been dogging me for many years.
I have just been through this and even though the conversation has been going on for three full weeks will chime in with a different approach.
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there are two key apps in the Mac App store
– Exporter for Contacts 2.app
– Importer for Contacts.app
each is $12 – not subscription -
Exporter will export each of your contact sets (iCloud or “on My mac”, including if you have two iCloud accounts or multiple devices) separately and directly to an Excel file.
Since the files all have the same set of headers you can move contacts among the files to get those you want into a single set.
That file is editable (carefully) – allowing you to bring order back to duplicate entries and typos, etc
– it includes ALL notes – no question
– it includes “Group” column (== List name) – so you can move folks around, make new groups, etc.
Once you have the cleaned up Contacts database
then you can split the file into different Excel files
– in my case there were some contacts that are no longer relevant but I wanted to archive
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Once you have the new Contacts list you want to be “live”, you need to cross the Rubicon.
You need to delete EVERYTHING
– go to iCloud and delete all contacts
– that removes them from Mac and from iPhones from iPad
– then go to each device and delete all the “On my [device]” contacts
– so now every device has NO contacts. -
Using Importer for Contacts, it takes literally seconds to put 1000 contacts into iCloud and about a minute for them to propagate to every device.
My plan – Just apply Exporter once [an interval] and live happily ever after. You can set the interval based on how frequently you add contacts, how much (or little) source documentation you have, how critical each one is. The point is that you have an complete, independent, editable backup at all times. And can restore from that selectively or completely.
Hope some of this is helpful.
Tangents:
- I use and love BusyCal – but it is subscription (not advertised that way – but then you get notices after 18 months that you need a license “upgrade” to get an app “upgrades” – whether a new “version” or just a decimal change.
- I was not impressed with BusyContacts. And glad to avoid another subscription.
- I did use CCC and Time Machine concurrently. But with CCC v7, Mike Bombich has added full documentation of how CCC is more flexible and absolutely as complete. And in my opinion easier to work with – the graphic metaphor in Time Machine has not aged well in my opinion. I now use only CCC for my local backups and a different service for my cloud backups.
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Thanks for pointing out Stefan Keller’s Exporter/Importer apps. There are some thoughtful features, like normalizing phone number formats.
It wasn’t obvious to me if it also handles exporting/importing contact photos, but I notice he has another tool, Backup Contact Pictures, that may be worth investigating.
PS. Speaking of phone number normalization, I am reminded of Brian Toth’s PostCheck, a much-missed utility that ceased functioning when Apple stopped supporting Address Book plugins. I loved having the ability to verify and normalize US addresses direct within the Address Book app. I haven’t found a consumer-level tool to accomplish that since then. There are cloud-based mailing list management tools that work well for US and international addresses, but they require uploading data to the cloud and can be too pricey for personal use. FWIW, I volunteer for a non-profit organization that uses smarty.com for this purpose. Very functional, but again, a bit pricey for personal use.
I continue to use PostCheck.app through Sequoia. There apparently have been some changes in macOS/Mail that affect proper initialization in PostCheck. I use a dedicated Contact List for connection to PostCheck. After the initial failure to update entries, switching to another list and back jogs something and PostCheck will usually update a Contacts card. Multiple address in one card may fail to update completely. When I earlier corresponded with Brian, he had simply abandoned Postcheck.
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Thanks for the reminder about the app version PostCheck (as opposed to the plugin version). I had downloaded the app version when it first came out, but I guess I let Brian’s warnings about unsupported alpha status scare me away and subsequently forgot about it. Thanks for reporting on your experience.