iPhone: Duplicate Contact (Address) Book Entries

No idea how this happened, but some how all the contact details in my iPhone address (book were duplicated. When this happened I don’t know.

At first I thought it was a conflict between the syncing contacts via MobileMe and during syncs to the Mac (I had sync with Mac and sync via MobileMe turned on), however, turning off the Mac Sync, and rerunning a sync did not fix the problem.

Next I tried to use the Advanced settings in iTunes: Sync Contacts with Mac: ON; Advanced, Replace contact information on iPhone, checked (this is all in Info section of iTunes) and the clicking Apply. Still no joy. Still have duplicate contacts, even after click Apply.

Re-ran sync again….

Still no solution.

What appears to be happening is the iPhone holds two address book. One from the Mac and one from MobileMe. IF you sync your Mac with MobileMe then the iPhone imports that address book, AND the address book from computer, so ‘Show all contacts’ will show duplicate material as it is showing the computer address book, and the MobileMe address book.

I find this behaviour odd. Why had a contacts ‘On my iphone’ and a ‘Contacts on MobileMe’ on the phone. Duplicate data? How will it remain synced?

Now, if the iPhone is in ‘Airplane Mode’ (i.e. no internet connection), you can still see all the MobileMe entries, so why the iPhone version?

It appears that if you sync your iPhone with a computer with the settings for the address book to be synced then the addresses are copied over. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a way to remove them, even once the sync is turned off and only MobileMe is used.

So, I guess, the only thing to do is turn off MobileMe and just sync with the computer….

If any one has a solution, please post below….