Iphone contact help

January 25, 2009 6:51 PM

Any easier way to clean contacts on iphone up than one at a time on the phone: since i imported from my imac, my old phone's card and my outlook pc i have a real mess and cleaning it up without cut and paste is a nightmare...also, can i eliminate tow way sync if i were to clean up contacts folder on my imac and make that my standard and not screw it up again with a sync?
posted by dougiedd to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

If you have synced the iPhone with the iMac and the contacts are now the same on both, you can clean them up on the iMac and, the next time you sync, your changes will also be reflected on the iPhone. Just to be sure, you can also set the sync to overwrite the iPhone with data from the iMac, in the iTunes sync pane. (My phone isn't connected to my Mac right now, or I could give more precise info.)
posted by brianogilvie at 7:34 PM on January 25, 2009

Response by poster: precise would be most welcome as i can t seem to get it to do that (overwrite the data)
any suggestions for free programs to clean up duplicates: i have hundreds of contacts
posted by dougiedd at 10:51 PM on January 25, 2009

You definitely want to do it on the Mac side not the phone side -- not just for copy/paste but also sorting, multiple selection, merge cards, etc.

To disable two-way syncing: It's at the very bottom of the "Info" tab when you have the iPhone plugged in. Under "replace information on this phone", choose Contacts. The small text says "During the next sync only, iTunes will replace the selected information on this iPhone with information from this computer.
posted by olecranon at 7:50 AM on January 26, 2009

Response by poster: strange i tried that and nothing: my iphone contacts were the same old mess
posted by dougiedd at 9:33 AM on January 26, 2009