iCloud question

dpriest · 12-16-2012, 08:37 PM

I posted a question 6 months ago about itunes backup vs. icloud and have been reading some threads about sync issues with icloud etc. Back then, I had ios 5 on my iphone 4. Within the past couple months I recently upgraded from snow leopard to Mountain Lion on my MBP. I also upgraded to ios6 and have up to this point, been only syncing via iTunes. The biggest problem a lot of people seem to be experiencing with syncing is duplicate contacts. This is very frustrating, as I am one of those with this frustrating problem. I am going to upgrade to the iphone 5 in the next few days and want to be able to grasp once and for all the best way to sync between my MBP and iPhone. First, I have to go through and delete all the duplicate contacts. What is the general consensus? iTunes or iCloud? And if a combo between the 2 is advised, how should the settings be with iCloud, iTunes, iPhone etc?

agentx · 12-17-2012, 08:01 AM

If you use iCloud you should not be syncing Contacts/Calendars/Bookmarks etc with iTunes.
They should be turned off! The iCloud parts will sync over the Air rather than through WIFI/USB sync with iTunes.

dpriest · 12-17-2012, 10:43 AM

Yes, I understand. Is there a better or preferred method between the 2?

agentx · 12-17-2012, 03:51 PM

I would just use iCloud if all your devices are compatible with it.

dpriest · 12-17-2012, 08:17 PM

OK, now I am very upset and frustrated! Just backed up my iphone 4 to iTunes and did a restore to my iphone 5. Many of the pictures in my camera roll are gone!!!!!! These are pictures I took from my iphone and backed up to iTunes. I can't even see them on my iphone 4 anymore. The strange thing is that certain friends in my contacts have the photo next to their number, but the photo is not in the camera roll. What the #@$&%^$ is going on????!!!! Please help!

agentx · 12-18-2012, 04:43 AM

You should be importing photos from iPhone into iPhoto or using image capture to a folder or Dropbox camera import etc. regularly. Just like a digital camera.

Contact pictures are stored in address book card.

Did you do a backup or sync ? They are different.
Sync will not copy photos from device to computer but backup should store the photos in a backup file.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4859

Unfortunately there can be user error moments during all this process. I have to support 100s of iOS devices so have seen them all ! But also the are confusing elements to it all as well.

At the end of the day I say iCloud to keep your data in sync and use iTunes for encryted backups wifi/USB . Then either use photo stream with iphoto photo stream import on or make sure you import your photos manually.

My advice is. Get you contacts/calendars in order on computer (backup adrees book etc first) turn on iCloud on computer then sync your data up. Then start fresh on your devices and let contacts sync down from iCloud to your devices.

If you are unsure turn on iCloud on all your devices and merge the data sets then sort it out on computer. This should bring everything into sync....hopefully.

Any photos that you transferred to your device through iTunes should be in iPhoto.

dpriest · 12-18-2012, 07:20 AM

I did a backup from my iphone to my MBP, then restored from a backup. I realize that I am not understanding more of this than I thought, so forgive me for a few basic questions. You mentioned the contact photos are stored in the address book card. Where is the address book card located? Also, when would someone want to sync instead of backup, and what is the difference between the two? I did notice something that involves gmail. My first smartphone was a Droid. I setup a gmail account just for that device to do backups. When I bought my iphone4, I setup gmail on it to restore everything from my Droid and kept it on in settings. All of this was done at the advice of the Verizon people. I have had problems with gmail frequently on the iphone, asking me for my password periodically even though I entered it, so I deleted my gmail account on the iPhone. As soon as I did that, many names and pictures associated with contact phone numbers disappeared along with other contacts. As soon as I reinstated my gmail account on the iPhone, voila, everything was back. Accept I do not want to rely on gmail now that I am sticking with the iPhone, but can't seem to make the break from it without all hell breaking loose. Technology can be so frustrating at times.

agentx · 12-18-2012, 08:49 AM

Ok, the picture is slowly being painted.....and you are not alone. I probably spent 300 hours this year sorting out people iOS/OS X SYNC mess ;-) Very much due to the confusion between Local and Cloud sync and people using both.....

Each contact has the ability to have a picture within the Contacts database itself. The images are not stored in your photos as such, unless you had a photo on your device that you added to a contact.

You more than likely had a Gmail account that was syncing your contacts with google servers. When you turn this off the contacts are removed from the phone but stay on google servers. And of course when you turn this on they all come back down to phone.

It can be quite confusing.....as if you use a mixture of iTunes USB sync/Google etc you can end up with more than 1 database of contacts hence dupes etc. In fact you can have several separate contacts database if you data is spread about across different services ( Gmail, Exchange server etc)

If you use iTunes USB sync for contacts it will transfer contacts to and from the IPHONE address book and the computer's LOCAL (On my Mac) address book it will not touch gmail/exch contacts etc as they are synced over the Air with other servers. So if you have gmail contact sync setup that is another database of contacts that is separate from the iPhone/Computer ones that you are syncing with iTunes.

So now to put all this right. I would advise getting ALL your contacts onto your computer LOCAL address book from Gmail as well. You may need to export from gmail and import etc. or you can try and setup contacts sync to OS X and COPY the gmail contacts to the Local address book in Contacts.app.

Tidy everything up....i know a PITA but unavoidable in these situations.
Once you are happy with your dataset (backup address book locally) and turn on iCloud on computer using either your Primary AppleID(the one you use to buy apps etc) or setup a new one just to be used for syncing.

This will then push up the contacts database to iCloud and convert Local contacts to iCloud contacts. Login on iCloud.com and check everything has synced. The next thing to do is to plug in your devices to iTunes and turn off the contact sync for all your devices. You may get an prompt/option to delete contacts off your devices. Do it you want a clean sheet or as it is a new device it should not have anything on it yet. So now hopefully you have NO contacts on your mobile devices and a near perfect database of contacts in iCloud. Now just turn on iCloud on your devices and boom it will sync down the contacts and you can now have everything perfectly in sync between all your devices.

Hope this clarifies and helps.

CARDDAV SYNC FOR GMAIL
"Google announced support for CardDAV contacts syncing. The blogpost describes how to enable it on iOS, but it is also possible to enable this new way of Syncing on OSX Mountain Lion. Setting this up though, goes like this"

Go to Preferences > “Mail, Contacts & Calendars”
Click on the + to add a new account
Choose “Add another account”
Choose for “Add a CardDAV account”
Enter your Gmail credentials and google.com as a domain

PS i have not got this working so milage may vary.

dpriest · 12-18-2012, 12:39 PM

Thank you!!! What you have explained is VERY helpful. I think what I am going to do is not even mess with gmail. My iPhone 4 has all the proper contacts with their pictures, names, etc. I am using iExplorer to export certain contacts from my iphone4 to my contacts (address book) on my Macbook Pro. Then exporting the vcards on the MBP and emailing them to myself and adding them to my iPhone5 that way. One clarification please: Once I get the contact piece right on the iPhone5 and on my MBP, and put everything from my MBP on the cloud, should I still connect my iphone to iTunes, and turn off the contact sync thus deleting all my contacts on my iphone and them syncing them from the cloud? On my iPhone, how do I manually fetch or sync contacts from the cloud to the iPhone in that moment?

agentx · 12-18-2012, 03:01 PM

I understand the Goggle stuff that is one less thing to worry about.

You just need to do is get one dataset good on 1 device.
Then sync to iCloud and MERGE if need be to make sure you pick up spares.
Then setup iCloud on each device and everything will come into sync.

Overall do the Contacts on your Mac match that on Phone ?

Once iCloud is active turn off iTunes Contact Sync the next time you connect on all devices.
Are you using Calendars as well ?

dpriest · 12-18-2012, 03:15 PM

Overall, the contacts on the iphone do match my MBP. The contact thing is tricky, because I have multiple entries for one person. For example, I will have a nickname for one of my buddies and have his phone numbers entered and put him in favorites on the iPhone. Then I will have a separate entry with his full name that has email addresses. I am consolidating into one which is time consuming. I haven't used calendar or reminders yet. I am still old school on that one, using my daytimer where I write everything down. How do I manually sync to icloud on the iPhone instantly?

agentx · 12-18-2012, 03:31 PM

Ok just turn on iCloud on computer.
Let it sync, login to iCloud and do a quick check.
Then turn on iCloud on phone and it should sync as I said it might say merge it may be worth doing that.
Once you have done that any changes you make should sync perfectly regardless which device to make a change on.

However I would advise doing it on computer as easier to manage the merging of information. It is no fun but nice done I assure you that sync nirvana is a delight which I have had for many years.

I have many devices :-) all in sync calendars, contacts, reminders, note etc.
I also take local backups of this data too just in case .

12-16-2012, 08:37 PM	#1
dpriest Triple-A Player Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 87	iCloud question I posted a question 6 months ago about itunes backup vs. icloud and have been reading some threads about sync issues with icloud etc. Back then, I had ios 5 on my iphone 4. Within the past couple months I recently upgraded from snow leopard to Mountain Lion on my MBP. I also upgraded to ios6 and have up to this point, been only syncing via iTunes. The biggest problem a lot of people seem to be experiencing with syncing is duplicate contacts. This is very frustrating, as I am one of those with this frustrating problem. I am going to upgrade to the iphone 5 in the next few days and want to be able to grasp once and for all the best way to sync between my MBP and iPhone. First, I have to go through and delete all the duplicate contacts. What is the general consensus? iTunes or iCloud? And if a combo between the 2 is advised, how should the settings be with iCloud, iTunes, iPhone etc?

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12-17-2012, 08:01 AM	#2
agentx Hall of Famer Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Brighton, UK Posts: 3,832	If you use iCloud you should not be syncing Contacts/Calendars/Bookmarks etc with iTunes. They should be turned off! The iCloud parts will sync over the Air rather than through WIFI/USB sync with iTunes.

12-17-2012, 10:43 AM	#3
dpriest Triple-A Player Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 87	Yes, I understand. Is there a better or preferred method between the 2?

12-17-2012, 03:51 PM	#4
agentx Hall of Famer Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Brighton, UK Posts: 3,832	I would just use iCloud if all your devices are compatible with it.

12-17-2012, 08:17 PM	#5
dpriest Triple-A Player Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 87	OK, now I am very upset and frustrated! Just backed up my iphone 4 to iTunes and did a restore to my iphone 5. Many of the pictures in my camera roll are gone!!!!!! These are pictures I took from my iphone and backed up to iTunes. I can't even see them on my iphone 4 anymore. The strange thing is that certain friends in my contacts have the photo next to their number, but the photo is not in the camera roll. What the #@$&%^$ is going on????!!!! Please help!

12-18-2012, 04:43 AM	#6
agentx Hall of Famer Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Brighton, UK Posts: 3,832	You should be importing photos from iPhone into iPhoto or using image capture to a folder or Dropbox camera import etc. regularly. Just like a digital camera. Contact pictures are stored in address book card. Did you do a backup or sync ? They are different. Sync will not copy photos from device to computer but backup should store the photos in a backup file. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4859 Unfortunately there can be user error moments during all this process. I have to support 100s of iOS devices so have seen them all ! But also the are confusing elements to it all as well. At the end of the day I say iCloud to keep your data in sync and use iTunes for encryted backups wifi/USB . Then either use photo stream with iphoto photo stream import on or make sure you import your photos manually. My advice is. Get you contacts/calendars in order on computer (backup adrees book etc first) turn on iCloud on computer then sync your data up. Then start fresh on your devices and let contacts sync down from iCloud to your devices. If you are unsure turn on iCloud on all your devices and merge the data sets then sort it out on computer. This should bring everything into sync....hopefully. Any photos that you transferred to your device through iTunes should be in iPhoto.

12-18-2012, 07:20 AM	#7
dpriest Triple-A Player Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 87	I did a backup from my iphone to my MBP, then restored from a backup. I realize that I am not understanding more of this than I thought, so forgive me for a few basic questions. You mentioned the contact photos are stored in the address book card. Where is the address book card located? Also, when would someone want to sync instead of backup, and what is the difference between the two? I did notice something that involves gmail. My first smartphone was a Droid. I setup a gmail account just for that device to do backups. When I bought my iphone4, I setup gmail on it to restore everything from my Droid and kept it on in settings. All of this was done at the advice of the Verizon people. I have had problems with gmail frequently on the iphone, asking me for my password periodically even though I entered it, so I deleted my gmail account on the iPhone. As soon as I did that, many names and pictures associated with contact phone numbers disappeared along with other contacts. As soon as I reinstated my gmail account on the iPhone, voila, everything was back. Accept I do not want to rely on gmail now that I am sticking with the iPhone, but can't seem to make the break from it without all hell breaking loose. Technology can be so frustrating at times.

12-18-2012, 08:49 AM	#8
agentx Hall of Famer Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Brighton, UK Posts: 3,832	Ok, the picture is slowly being painted.....and you are not alone. I probably spent 300 hours this year sorting out people iOS/OS X SYNC mess ;-) Very much due to the confusion between Local and Cloud sync and people using both..... Each contact has the ability to have a picture within the Contacts database itself. The images are not stored in your photos as such, unless you had a photo on your device that you added to a contact. You more than likely had a Gmail account that was syncing your contacts with google servers. When you turn this off the contacts are removed from the phone but stay on google servers. And of course when you turn this on they all come back down to phone. It can be quite confusing.....as if you use a mixture of iTunes USB sync/Google etc you can end up with more than 1 database of contacts hence dupes etc. In fact you can have several separate contacts database if you data is spread about across different services ( Gmail, Exchange server etc) If you use iTunes USB sync for contacts it will transfer contacts to and from the IPHONE address book and the computer's LOCAL (On my Mac) address book it will not touch gmail/exch contacts etc as they are synced over the Air with other servers. So if you have gmail contact sync setup that is another database of contacts that is separate from the iPhone/Computer ones that you are syncing with iTunes. So now to put all this right. I would advise getting ALL your contacts onto your computer LOCAL address book from Gmail as well. You may need to export from gmail and import etc. or you can try and setup contacts sync to OS X and COPY the gmail contacts to the Local address book in Contacts.app. Tidy everything up....i know a PITA but unavoidable in these situations. Once you are happy with your dataset (backup address book locally) and turn on iCloud on computer using either your Primary AppleID(the one you use to buy apps etc) or setup a new one just to be used for syncing. This will then push up the contacts database to iCloud and convert Local contacts to iCloud contacts. Login on iCloud.com and check everything has synced. The next thing to do is to plug in your devices to iTunes and turn off the contact sync for all your devices. You may get an prompt/option to delete contacts off your devices. Do it you want a clean sheet or as it is a new device it should not have anything on it yet. So now hopefully you have NO contacts on your mobile devices and a near perfect database of contacts in iCloud. Now just turn on iCloud on your devices and boom it will sync down the contacts and you can now have everything perfectly in sync between all your devices. Hope this clarifies and helps. CARDDAV SYNC FOR GMAIL "Google announced support for CardDAV contacts syncing. The blogpost describes how to enable it on iOS, but it is also possible to enable this new way of Syncing on OSX Mountain Lion. Setting this up though, goes like this" Go to Preferences > “Mail, Contacts & Calendars” Click on the + to add a new account Choose “Add another account” Choose for “Add a CardDAV account” Enter your Gmail credentials and google.com as a domain PS i have not got this working so milage may vary.

12-18-2012, 12:39 PM	#9
dpriest Triple-A Player Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 87	Thank you!!! What you have explained is VERY helpful. I think what I am going to do is not even mess with gmail. My iPhone 4 has all the proper contacts with their pictures, names, etc. I am using iExplorer to export certain contacts from my iphone4 to my contacts (address book) on my Macbook Pro. Then exporting the vcards on the MBP and emailing them to myself and adding them to my iPhone5 that way. One clarification please: Once I get the contact piece right on the iPhone5 and on my MBP, and put everything from my MBP on the cloud, should I still connect my iphone to iTunes, and turn off the contact sync thus deleting all my contacts on my iphone and them syncing them from the cloud? On my iPhone, how do I manually fetch or sync contacts from the cloud to the iPhone in that moment?

12-18-2012, 03:01 PM	#10
agentx Hall of Famer Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Brighton, UK Posts: 3,832	I understand the Goggle stuff that is one less thing to worry about. You just need to do is get one dataset good on 1 device. Then sync to iCloud and MERGE if need be to make sure you pick up spares. Then setup iCloud on each device and everything will come into sync. Overall do the Contacts on your Mac match that on Phone ? Once iCloud is active turn off iTunes Contact Sync the next time you connect on all devices. Are you using Calendars as well ?

12-18-2012, 03:15 PM	#11
dpriest Triple-A Player Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 87	Overall, the contacts on the iphone do match my MBP. The contact thing is tricky, because I have multiple entries for one person. For example, I will have a nickname for one of my buddies and have his phone numbers entered and put him in favorites on the iPhone. Then I will have a separate entry with his full name that has email addresses. I am consolidating into one which is time consuming. I haven't used calendar or reminders yet. I am still old school on that one, using my daytimer where I write everything down. How do I manually sync to icloud on the iPhone instantly?

12-18-2012, 03:31 PM	#12
agentx Hall of Famer Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Brighton, UK Posts: 3,832	Ok just turn on iCloud on computer. Let it sync, login to iCloud and do a quick check. Then turn on iCloud on phone and it should sync as I said it might say merge it may be worth doing that. Once you have done that any changes you make should sync perfectly regardless which device to make a change on. However I would advise doing it on computer as easier to manage the merging of information. It is no fun but nice done I assure you that sync nirvana is a delight which I have had for many years. I have many devices :-) all in sync calendars, contacts, reminders, note etc. I also take local backups of this data too just in case .