Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications Contacts, does Mac Merge to the detriment?

I'm moving over to Contacts from Outlook Mac 2011.

Someone told me that Mac, or cloud often merges contacts? If I make a new contact with Joe, it might merge that into another Joe? Anyway to prevent that? Thanks

I have never encountered Contact data being merged between iCloud, OS X, and iOS. In essence what you put on your Mac, on your iPhone, or your iPad is immediately synched with iCloud and all of your other devices so all your devices will have the same data.

If you do not want iCloud sharing it can be disabled for any given app in System Preferences on OS X or Settings on iOS devices.

Joe, I imported 582 contacts to the desktop and kept the laptop empty. I enabled sharing, which of course I want, that's the whole reason I'm finally bailing on Outlook 2011. But the laptop only synched to 444 contacts.

I posted the issue elsewhere and was told that Apple's sync program tends to merge people with similar names together.

Anyway, what I did then was cleared the laptop again, and then instead of waiting for a sync, just manually forced the 582 onto each system, laptop and desktop. It's been a couple of hours and so far they are matched still at 582. Ok so far.

The idea that Contacts will merge contacts I find very scary, so I'm relieved to hear you have never encountered that.

If you attempt to import a contact via drag and drop (vCard) that duplicates the name of a contact that is already in the contact list you will be prompted to Review the duplicate with options to keep the old, keep the new, keep both, or update.

However, when going through iCloud and the contacts are [b]identical[/b] they are recognized as the same contact and no change is made. However if there is a slight variation in spelling or address or some other element a new contact will be added. The variation prevents the two entries from being duplicates. In your case, you forced all to be identical therefore no entries were (I started to say duplicated) but perhaps more accurately it would be repeated or doubly entered?

I understood some of that Joe! Anyway, lets hope things stay easy with contacts...