I am using a MacBook Pro, an iPad and an iPhone. I am syncing all my devices through iCloud.
Currently I have 3 groups in the Adress Book:
1- All Contacts
2- All on My Mac
3- All iCloud
The grup “All Contacts” is the addition of the other two groups.
As all my devices are in sync, I have all these groups in all devices, whereas only one group with all the contacts would suffice.
I do prefer to work with only one major group, that is iCloud. When I transfer all contacts in “All on My Mac” account into iCloud, I have duplicate entries in “All Contacts”. If I could delete the group “All on My Mac”, then I would have same contacts on both “All iCloud” and ‘All Contacts” without any duplicates, but it cannot be deleted!
Secondly, If I create a new group under “All iCloud” and copy contacts into it, then again I have duplicate entries in “All Contacts”.
Questions:
1- How can I have just one major group iCloud, that will be in sync with my iPhone and iPad?
2- How can I have smaller groups without creating duplicates in the major group?
I would appreciate your replies.
Thank you in advance.
—–
Aydın Şeren
Your mistake is in treating "All Contacts" like it is a group. It isn't a group, it is just a list of all of the contacts in all of your groups. In fact, you aren't even using groups: these are two separate accounts (iCloud, "on my Mac") not groups.
So "All Contacts" includes the contacts from your two accounts. Makes sense.
When you tried to transfer "All Contacts" to "iCloud" it took everything and copied it into your iCloud account -- including the contacts that were already there. It duplicated those, in other words.
So the correct way to do it would be to just move all of your contacts in "on my Mac" into iCloud. This will copy them there. Then view JUST your iCloud account. Is everything there, the way you want it? OK, then. Just delete all of the "on my Mac" contacts since you have them all in iCloud now. Then you just have iCloud. "All Contacts" is now the same as iCloud since it is your one an only source.
I think that is what you need to do -- it is hard to say for sure without seeing exactly what you are seeing. But basically just get iCloud to have everything you want, and "on my Mac" to have nothing.
Now for your last question: this is when you would be using real groups. Real groups (not accounts) will create lists of contacts without making it seem like you have them there twice. Choose File, New Group. You'll see them appear under iCloud as groups. Then drag and drop to add them there. Try it and you'll see.
Thank you. I appreciate your fast reply. And it did work!