I’ve always had issues on my phone and macbook with individual contacts being replicated – I’m talking about the same ‘record’ duplicated rather than just adding Bert twice in a slightly different way.

I had assumed it was something to do with syncing between the phone and computer. However, the new macbook has arrived and I haven’t physically transferred anything – I guess some cloud ‘magic’ has happened and the contacts have arrived in their duplicated form.

How do I solve this? I’m certain its my fault and I just need to change a setting somewhere? Anybody?

However you’ve arrived at the duplicates you’re going to need to sort them out, instructions here

It’s a bit of a pain but I did it once a few years ago and haven’t had a problem with it since.

Sounds like you have some contacts in the cloud and some on your phone. Whats annoying is that you can’t really tell where a contact is being held. It’s Apple and remember they think nothing will ever go wrong!! I ended up deleting all contacts from my phone and then sorting them out on my computer. When they were how I wanted them in iCloud I then switched on iCloud contacts on my phone and let them sync.

thanks for those suggestions – I think my future may be clearer once the tidy up is done – I’m still on an iphone 3S and the new mac tells me that will no longer work with cloud idrive (or some such name). I need them more on the phone tbh.

I have always just used google for my contacts. That way not matter what device I’m on it will sync, android tablet, iPhone or mac.