{"id":31416,"date":"2024-07-18T14:02:47","date_gmt":"2024-07-18T21:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=31416"},"modified":"2024-08-04T17:31:09","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T00:31:09","slug":"clean-up-contacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/clean-up-contacts\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning Up Apple Contacts Using Smart Lists"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I was at Macstock Conference and Expo<\/a>, a lovely gentleman named Bob asked the table for advice on how to clean up his Contacts. He explained that he had a few things he wanted to fix. The first was that when he chose the Resolve Duplicates option, it showed that he had over 500 duplicates. He wanted to click the button but it gave him pause.<\/p>\n

The second problem was that he has many contacts from previous employment. He doesn’t want to lose them forever, but he also doesn’t want them cluttering up his personal Contacts file.<\/p>\n

Finally, he has many contacts who have passed away. He definitely doesn’t want to lose that contact information but he also doesn’t want to face them in his Contacts.<\/p>\n

While I’ve been working on instructions to help him clean things up, I happened to hear the folks on the Accidental Tech Podcast talking about how we should have an “archive” option in Contacts, and a “deceased date” field so we wouldn’t be reminded to wish someone a happy birthday when they’re gone. Sounds like a lot of people would like to solve the same problems Bob is experiencing.<\/p>\n

I’ve written up a series of steps that will ensure he preserves the history and give him the easiest way I can think of to clean up his contacts. He’ll still have to do some tedious work, but my solution isn’t technically difficult. I thought I’d share them with the audience.<\/p>\n

Step One \u2013 Back Up Contacts<\/h2>\n

The very first step in this process must be to back up your contacts. In Contacts on the Mac, select File \u2192 Export \u2192 Contacts Archive… This will save a .abbu file backup. Put this file in a safe place and make a backup of it.<\/p>\n

\"File
Export Contacts Archive<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Step 2 \u2013 Verify Only iCloud<\/h2>\n

It’s not uncommon for people to end up with some contacts in iCloud and some that only live on your Mac. Before cleaning things up, I would suggest ensuring everything is only in iCloud. I recently helped someone with a crazy number of duplicates, and it turned out he had the same person multiple times in both iCloud and on his Mac.<\/p>\n

If you don’t use iCloud for your Contacts, you can skip this step.<\/p>\n

Open Contacts on your Mac, and select the On My Mac section. If it’s empty, you’re golden. If there are any contacts in there, drag them to the iCloud section, and then delete them from On My Mac. This might create even more duplicates but we’ll get to that soon. There’s no danger in doing this step because you did<\/em> back up Contacts first, right?<\/p>\n

\"Contacts
Confirm Contacts are in iCloud<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To prevent contacts from getting added locally to On My Mac, in Contacts open Settings \u2192 General \u2192 Default Account and Make sure it’s set to iCloud for the future.<\/p>\n

Step 3 Resolve Duplicates<\/h2>\n

Now we’re ready to attack those duplicates. In Contacts on your Mac, go to the Card menu and choose Look for Duplicates.<\/p>\n

\"Card
Look for Duplicates<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You’ll be told some number of duplicates have been found with an offer to merge them. Select Merge. This is scary, but you did<\/em> back up Contacts first, right?<\/p>\n

\"Merge
Merge Duplicates as Many Times as It Takes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Believe it or not, after it is complete, again choose Card \u2192 Look for Duplicates. In my experience, it’s quite likely that it will tell you there are more duplicates to resolve. I know that makes no sense, but keep repeating this step until Contacts finally tells you there are no more duplicates.<\/p>\n

Step 4 – Create Lists<\/h2>\n

As your next step, I would suggest creating some Lists to categorize your Contacts. Apple used to call these Groups, and in fact, you’ll run across references to Groups throughout the Contacts app that they never bothered to call Lists, but they’re the same thing.<\/p>\n

The List categories that would make sense to create would be:<\/p>\n