— UPDATE —
–0– to start off, it is now essential to make sure 2-factor authentication is OFF :
- go to https://appleid.apple.com/account/home
- login with your Apple ID (= iCloud ID)
- then at Security go to Two-factor Authentication and turn it OFF
- and don’t forget to logoff from the AppleID-website
(thanks to Lowell Mills for pointing this out)
— ORIGINAL POST —
thanks to one last hint from ‘Joseph Sturkey’, I can now present you the solution to getting your ‘Snow Leopard’-Mac to work with iCloud :
–1– find your iCloud Server-number and your 9-digit iCloud Account-code :
How to find your iCloud server and 9-digit iCloud user code :
– on your Mac, open Safari and go to http://www.icloud.com
– login using your AppleID e-mail address and AppleID password
– click on Calendar
– the online calendar layout now opens
– now go to Window (in the upper menu bar, next to Safari’s Help-tab) –> Activity
– in Activity window that opens you’ll find the text “iCloud Calendar” in bold letters, just below it, you’ll find 3 lines that look like this :
http://icloud.com
https://p0X-contacts.icloud.com/123456789/wcs/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://p0X-contactws.icloud.com/co/mecard/?dsid=123456789&id=yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
– remember that p0X-prefix and the 123456789-code ! you are going to need those in the following steps !
—- UPDATE —-
recently these lines seem to have changed into something that looks like this :
http://icloud.com
https://p1X-contactws.icloud.com/co/mecard?/clientBuildNumber=xxx….xxid=1234567890&id=yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyom
https://p1X-contactws.icloud.com/co/mecard?/clientBuildNumber=xx….xxxx&id=yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy&method=POST
in that case, remember the p1X-prefix and the 1234567890-code ! those are the ones you will need in the following steps !
—————–
(the p0X-prefix is your iCloud Server-number, and the 123456789-code is your 9-digit iCloud Account-code ; note that in some rare cases it is not a 9-digit code, but a 8-digit or 10-digit one…)
—- UPDATE —-
the iCloud Contacts-syncing trick outlined below will only work if your AppleID’s password contains alphanumeric digits only (so letters and numbers only, nothing else)
if your current AppleID’s password does not, you will need to change it before proceeding. To change your AppleID’s password, go here :
Please note that this will mean you will have to re-type your new password for every use you have for your AppleID… so for eMail, for iTunes, for Home Sharing, etc.
———————
–2– Repair Disk Permissions
– open Programs –> Utilities –> Disk Utility
– select your internal hard drive’s main partition (the one you have MacOSX running on) form the list on the left
– select the ‘First Aid’-tab
– click on “Repair Disk Permissions”
…and wait for it to finish
–3– turn on iCloud Calendar syncing :
– open iCal on your Mac
– go to iCal –> Preferences
– in the window that opens, click on the ‘Accounts’-tab
– click on the ‘+’-button
– in the ‘Add Account’-window that opens, select “Account Type: CalDAV”
– at ‘E-mail address:’ type your AppleID-account’s login eMail address
– at ‘Password:’ type your AppleID password
– at ‘Server address:’ type “p0X-caldav.icloud.com”
(in which the p0X-prefix should correspond with the p0X-prefix you’ve found in step 1)
– then click the ‘Create’-button
– the iCloud CalDAV account you’ve just created will now be listed on the left
– in the ‘Account info’-tab, at ‘Description:’ type “iCloud Calendar sync”
– at ‘Calendar synchronization:’ select “Every minute” (or any other option, but do not select “Push”)
– leave the rest as it is set automatically
– then select the ‘Server settings’-tab, make sure that ‘Use SSL’ is checked
– leave the ‘Port:’ setting empty (it will display “Automatic” in grey) ; if that doesn’t work you might try setting it to “443”
– put a check mark in front of “Use SSL”
– do NOT put a check mark in front of “Use Kerberos”
– note : the 9-digit number from the Server Path is your 9-digit iCloud Account code !
– exit the iCal Preferences by clicking on the little red button in the upper left corner
–4– prepare Address Book and iCloud Contacts for syncing :
– open Address Book on your Mac
– IMPORTANT : now delete any profile pictures from ALL your contacts, as these will create unwanted duplicates when syncing [ that’s right… everything comes with a price… ] and remember to never use new profile pictures until you stop using MacOSX 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’
– now drag the group (from the list on the left) called “All contacts” (might also be called “On My Mac”) to the desktop of your Mac to create a backup called “All contacts.vcf”
– go online to http://www.icloud.com
– login using your AppleID and password
– then select “Contacts”
– then select all contacts by selecting just one and then pressing the [CMD] + [A] keys on your keyboard at the same time
– then click on the ‘gearing wheel’-icon (a.k.a. ‘sprocket’-icon) in the lower left corner and choose “Delete” from the popup list
– in the ‘Are You sure?’-window that opens, click on “Delete”
– now your iCloud contacts list will be completely empty
– click on the ‘gearing wheel’-icon (a.k.a. ‘sprocket’-icon) in the lower left corner and choose “Import vCard…”
– in the pulldown window that opens, go to your Desktop folder to select the “All contacts.vcf” file you have previously created, and click “Select”
– then wait for all contacts to import…
– when all have been imported, select the iCloud button in the upper left corner to return to the main iCloud page and click “Log out” in the upper right corner
– then on your Mac, go to Address Book
– select on of your contacts and then press the [CMD] + [A] keys on your keyboard at the same time to select them all
– then press the ‘backspace’-key (a.k.a. ‘backwards delete’) on your keyboard and click on “Delete” to confirm deletion of all your contact
– now your contacts list will be completely empty
REMEMBER : do not add any profile pictures ever again to any of your contacts !
–5– turn on iCloud Contacts syncing :
– then on your Mac, go to Address Book –> Preferences
– in the window that opens, click on the ‘Accounts’-tab
– click on the ‘+’-button
– in the ‘Add Account’-window that opens, select “Account Type: CardDAV”
– at ‘User Name:’ type your AppleID-account’s login eMail address
– at ‘Password:’ type your AppleID-account’s password
– at ‘Server address:’ type “p0X-contacts.icloud.com” (with p0X according to your previously found iCloud server prefix)
– click “Create”
– despite the warning that the account settings couldn’t be fetched, click on “Create” again
– then quit Address Book immediately, by pressing the small red button in the upper left corner, and clicking on Address Book –> Quit Address Book from the menu bar
[ Note : quitting Address Book is a very important step in the setup process ! ]
– now in the Finder go to Users –> [your user home folder] –> Library –> Application Support –> Address Book –> Sources –> [folder with an enormous alphanumeric name] –> Configuration.plist
– right-click ( a.k.a. [CTRL]+[mouse click] ) on this Configuration.plist file and select “Open using…” –> “Textedit” from the popup list
– then in Textedit, find the following line :
<string>http://:0(null)</string>
– change it to this :
<string>http://p0X-contacts.icloud.com:443/123456789/principal</string>
(with p0X according to your previously found iCloud server prefix, and 123456789 according to your 9-digit number from the iCal-CalDAV Server Path)
– then two lines below you will find the following line :
<string>yourname@me.com</string>
(in which “yourname@me.com” is the eMail address that you use as your AppleID iCloud login)
– change it to this :
<string>yourname%40me.com:password</string>
(with the “@”-sign being replaced by “%40” and “password” being your AppleID iCloud password)
– then select File –> Save and exit Textedit
– now open Configuration.plist again in Textedit to see if the changes were properly saved, and if so, exit Textedit
– then open Address Book and go to Address Book –> Preferences
– select the ‘Accounts’-tab
– select CardDAV from the list on the left
– select the ‘Account info’-tab
– at ‘Description:’ type “iCloud Contacts syncing”
– at ‘User Name:’ type “your name%40me.com:password” (exactly the way you’ve typed it in the Configuration.plist file previously)
– at ‘Password:’ type ” ” (just a single space)
– then select the ‘Server settings’-tab
– at ‘Server address:’ type “p0X-contacts.icloud.com”
(with p0X according to your previously found iCloud server prefix)
– at ‘Server path:’ you won’t be able to change anything, but it should be a “/”, then your 9-digit code, followed by “/principal”
– at ‘Port:’ type “443”
– and add a check mark next to “Use SSL”
– then close the Preferences panel by clicking on the red dot button
–6– do a quick check in Address Book :
– open Address Book, and you’ll see these groups : All Contacts (brown icon), iCloud Contacts syncing (blue icon), On My Mac (brown icon), iCloud Contacts syncing (brown icon) and possibly also Last Import (green icon)
——– UPDATE ——-
if you do not see “iCloud Contacts syncing” listed twice (once with a brown icon and once with a blue icon), your iCloud-sync is not setup properly ; the probable cause is that your AppleID’s password can only contain alphanumerical digits (so letters and numbers only, no question marks, no exclamation marks, no at-signs, no hashtags, no…)
to adjust your AppleID’s password, go here :
—————————-
– if there are any Contacts in the ‘On My Mac’-group, make sure they are in ‘iCloud Contacts syncing’ also, and if not, copy them over
– then delete any Contacts (and sub-groups) from the ‘On My Mac’-group… you will not be using those any longer…
– if updating / syncing with iCloud seems to work slowly, you can double-click on the ‘iCloud Contacts syncing’-groupname (either with the blue or brown icon in front of it) and you will see a spinning wheel for a few seconds to indicate the syncing is being done [ this is the way to manually push the updating process ]
–7– iCloud syncing is now setup, but keep this in mind :
– iCloud syncing with any officially unsupported device (like a Mac running MacOSX ‘Snow Leopard’) is not as instantaneous as you might expect it to be… it may take up to a minute or so to upload/download sync info with iCloud [ so you might want to use a ‘manual push’ to speed up the updating process ]
– AGAIN : using (profile) pictures in your Contacts-database will corrupt syncing to and from your ‘Snow Leopard’-Mac, so again : remember not to use any (profile) pictures for any of your contacts (including yourself and Apple Inc. also…)
for more info, please have a look here also :
https://macmanusnl.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/get-icloud-syncing-on-osx-snow-leopard/
MacManus.nl 
Hi,
I followed your directions for the address book and I’m getting duplicate contacts when I make a new contact both natively on icloud as well as in address book.
Do you have any ideas?
@S F :
the main cause for getting duplicate contacts is that there is still a profile picture (or other ID-image) in these contacts in your Contacts database
…if all of your contacts keep getting duplicated, you might have a second set of contacts displayed, which you should turn off…
have a look here for some additional info :
https://macmanusnl.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/get-icloud-syncing-on-osx-snow-leopard/#comment-432
if all of that still doesn’t give you a solution, it is important for you to get clear first where the duplicates exactly are :
– only on your Mac ?
– only on iCloud (online) ?
– both on your Mac and on iCloud (online) ?
There is NOOOO profile pic on my mac or iCloud. -.-
@S.J.
@S F :
just for my info : are you one and the same person maybe ?
anyway :
I might not have understood your problem the first time …sorry for that…
reading your post again, I understand that you ONLY get duplicates when creating a new contact (either on your Mac or on iCloud.com)
is that correct ?
We are 2 different people, ironically with the same issue. As long as no contacts were created or modified I didn’t have as big an issue, though there was some duplication on the computer side. As soon as I made a contact, both on icloud and/or iphone and/or mac everything duplicated en mass.
No duplicates were found on the idevices and the instructions listed were followed to the letter repeatedly.
@S F :
If the duplicates only appear on your Mac (and you don’t have any profile pictures), and not on your iPhone/iPad, chances are you have duplicates because you have both an “iCloud” and a “On My Mac” set in your Mac’s Address Book
To delete the “On My Mac” set, you should go into your Address Book’s Preferences and delete (or disable) the “On My Mac” account
Hope this fixes your problem
Good luck
😉
There is nothing in the On My Mac folder. Additionally, it cannot be disabled and/or deleted.
The only location of the duplicates is in the icloud folder in address book. It does not overlap into any other folder (of which there are none) and/or onto any other device.
I keep getting duplicates following your instructions to the letter!! I cannot figure this out, advice please?
@S.J. :
just to be completely sure : are all profile pics deleted ?
(FYI : I kept getting one duplicate myself, until i figured out that this was the preinstalled “Apple”-contact, which uses a picture of the Apple-logo as a profile pic ; I had to delete that one as well…)
if so… a little extra info would be helpful :
is everything being duplicated ?
if not and you get a lot of duplicates : is this a special group of contacts ?
if you just get a few duplicates : how many duplicates are you getting ?
is there anything different between / special about the ones that are and the ones that aren’t duplicated ?
…and :
do you get duplicates on your Mac and on iCloud.com (online) ?
if not : are the duplicates only on your Mac ? …or only on iCloud.com (online) ?
else : where do the duplicates appear first ? on your Mac or on iCloud.com (online) ?
If I create an entry on my Mac or my iPod no matter what it gets duplicated on my Mac only and sometimes as many as 10 extra duplicates. There are zero profile pictures.
@Joey :
are your “On My Mac” contacts On or OFF ?
They were off. Just in case where is there to turn the On my Mac contacts off?
@Joey :
to make the ‘On My Mac’ contacts disappear (which is kind of turning them off) :
–6– do a quick check in Address Book :
– open Address Book, and you’ll see these groups : All Contacts (brown icon), iCloud Contacts syncing (blue icon), On My Mac (brown icon), iCloud Contacts syncing (brown icon) and Last Import (green icon)
– if there are any Contacts in the ‘On My Mac’-group, make sure they are in ‘iCloud Contacts syncing’ also, and if not, copy them over
– then delete any Contacts (and sub-groups) from the ‘On My Mac’-group… you will not be using those any longer…
…you will probably have done the above already, but still – it’s worth to ask to make sure…
…and you will probably have eliminated the the other cause of duplicate contacts already also : profile pictures (or company logos and alike) – have you ?
if you have done all of the above, the next question is : are all contacts being duplicated ? or just a few ? and if so : is there anything that you can think off that is different between the one that get duplicated and the ones that don’t ? (e.g. is it just the recently added or edited ones that get duplicated ?)
Thank you for figuring this out guys. I’ve been going crazy trying to get this synced right and this is the only spot in the Whole Friggin’ Internet that has is correct. It’s working perfectly. Even “Groups” in icloud are syncing correctly. CHEERS!!!!!
@Adam :
thank you for the compliment
😉
enjoy & spread the word !
I knew I spoke too soon. Adding a new contact in iCloud creates one new duplicate per minute of that entry in Address Book. ie. after 20 mins. I’ve got 20 copies of that one entry.
I knew I spoke too soon. If I add a new contact in Address Book, it creates many duplicates.
@Adam :
sorry to hear it’s still buggy in your case
duplicates are usually due to the fact that entries have pictures included (for some reasons)
but since you are having duplicates with brand new entries, there might be something else
can you be more specific about what exactly it is you do, and what exactly happens ?
So I setup everything as you described, saved the config.plist file, etc. Imported the files to ICloud and opened up Address Book. Everything was perfectly synced.
Here’s where the problems start. If I add a new contact, and it doesn’t matter where I add it from (Address Book, iCloud or iphone), it systematically starts duplicating that contact in Address Book ONLY. The only way to stop it is to delete that contact, which deletes it from all three. This is also the case if I try to edit one of the original contacts that I imported, and it doesn’t matter from where I do the editing.
None of the contacts have photos. There must be something simple we’re missing. Any thoughts?
Below is my setup:
Snow Leopard 10.6.8
Address Book ACCOUNT SETTINGS:
Username: name%40yahoo.com:password
Password: 1 space
SERVER SETTINGS:
Address: p0X-contacts.icloud.com
Path: /XXXXXXXXX/principal
Port 443 with SSL
Config.plist settings:
https://p0X-contacts.icloud.com:443/XXXXXXXXX/principal
username
name%40yahoo.com:password
@Adam :
Seems like Address Book is duplicating new (iCloud) entries locally also…
I expect you already did the following, but can you please verify you did ?
————————–
–6– do a quick check in Address Book :
– open Address Book, and you’ll see these groups : All Contacts (brown icon), iCloud Contacts syncing (blue icon), On My Mac (brown icon), iCloud Contacts syncing (brown icon) and Last Import (green icon)
– if there are any Contacts in the ‘On My Mac’-group, make sure they are in ‘iCloud Contacts syncing’ also, and if not, copy them over
– then delete any Contacts (and sub-groups) from the ‘On My Mac’-group… you will not be using those any longer…
– if updating / syncing with iCloud seems to work slowly, you can double-click on the ‘iCloud Contacts syncing’-groupname (either with the blue or brown icon in front of it) and you will see a spinning wheel for a few seconds to indicate the syncing is being done [ this is the way to manually push the updating process ]
————————–
If you’ve already done the above, please verify that you also did the following :
In Address Book, go to Preferences, then to
GeneralAccounts, and make sure that the “Default Account” is set to “iCloud” (and not to “On My Mac”)then select “On My Mac” (if you have it) in the “Accounts” list on the left, and make sure that under the “Account Information” neither “sync with MobileMe”, nor “sync with Yahoo!”, nor “sync with Google” has a check mark in front of it
…If you’ve done all that, and you still encounter problems, quit all applications, shut down your Mac (no restart), then start up again after about a minute and check Address Book again
if that doesn’t solve your problem, please report back
please report back
Good Luck !
😉
Note :
at this moment the only other cause I can think of is that it might have something to do with the fact that your settings are directing to a “principal”-folder… there is a slight possibility that that should be something else…
anyway : based on your feedback I might be able to figure out an other cause (and solution)…
THAT DID IT!!! It’s working perfectly. Not sure why, but the Devil must lie in the Details.
I basically started over from scratch. Deleted everything, Shut-down, reboot, ran the disk repair utility (which I didn’t do the first time), and began the setup/importing as instructed. The only thing I did different this time is I made sure that the default account was set to iCloud WHILE setting up the CardDav acct. Can’t believe that makes a difference, but who cares…..it works. You Rock.
@Adam :
Great !
Good to hear it works for you !
And… yes, the devil is in the details…
If you follow the instructions by the letter, it will work… if you skip anything chances on getting yourself in serious trouble are huge…
…it’s like a mine field…
Anyway : Enjoy !
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😉 !! so far seems to be working right. You are definitely showing your level as a mac guru with this. Great info. Thanks for your time working this out and posting it.
@fantasticmachine :
thanks for the compliment !
enjoy !
😉
MacManus, I wonder if the coding has changed since you posted this informative item. I’ve navigated to iCloud Calendar in the Activity window but then I draw a blank in terms of matches. I’ve copied and pasted everything into TextEdit and run a search. I get nothing with https://p0X, http://icloud.com, contacts.icloud.com or contactws.icloud.com
Any ideas would be much appreciated!
I’m on SL 10.6.8.
@duncantho :
sorry to hear it doesn’t work for you (yet)
I’m not completely sure about how to do this in your case, since I do not have a MacOSX 10.6 Snow Leopard Mac at hand at this moment, but I’ve just tested on a G5 running MacOSX 10.4.11 and Safari 4.1.3, so it will probably work for you as well :
– open Safari and go to http://www.icloud.com
– if you get an “Unsupported Browser” error window, click the “Ignore”-button
– then login using your @me.com-eMail address and your password
– now press the ALT+CMD+A keys on your keyboard together at once and the Activity window will open
– in the Activity window you will now see a line that looks like this :
https://p0X-contacts.icloud.com:443/123456789/wcs/yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
– there you have both the “p0X”-server number and your personal 9-digit iCloud account code “123456789”
…does that solve your problem ?
Does the fix require a previous .me account? I never had one. Apple I.D., yes, but not .me. In any event when I go to icloud.com I log in using my Apple I.D., and the resulting Activity window shows no “p0X” reference. It’s just dawned that perhaps X is your substitution for a number.
I do find this line: https://p01-contacts.icloud.com/12345678/wcs/ (eight digits) There’s nothing resembling 443/123456789, where I would take the 443 to be a prefix.
Further down I come to https://p01-contactsws.icloud.com/co/mecard/?clientBuildNumber=xxxx&clientId=….&dsid=12345678&id=… That “dsid” number, which I take to be my iCloud account code, matches the p01 number. Which suggests I lack a p0X prefix.
I thank you for your help but I dare not go further because I’m not sure I have the right numbers.
Regards
@duncantho :
if you find :
https://p01-contacts.icloud.com/12345678/wcs/yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
then, “p01” is your iCloud-server number
and “12345678” is your ‘9-digit’ Apple ID number
have you been having a MobileMe-account for a long time maybe ? (even if it’s not an @me.com-eMail address you have)
what is usually referred to as your ‘9-digit’ Apple ID number can be either an 8- 9- or 10-digit number…
…some people that have had their Apple ID ‘from the early days’ have 8-digit Apple ID numbers, and some that have just recently joined might have 10-digit ones…
(I thought I had mentioned this somewhere, but maybe not in what you’ve read… sorry for the confusion)
Good Luck !
Enjoy !
😉
I once had a .mac account but never a MobileMe. I switched to gmail.
Anyway I think I’ve got it straight now, and thanks very much for your help. I shall configure most carefully over the weekend.
Cheers!
Happy to have helped you
😉
enjoy !
note :
I’m just guessing here, but it could be like this :
Apple ID from .Mac era = 8-digit number
Apple ID from MobileMe era = 9-digit number
Apple ID from iCloud era = 10-digit number
well now that i have everything syncing up (thanks again for the great tip), now the only problem i have is my safari reading lists and bookmarks. I know i can just stop syncing over icloud and sync via itunes to get the info from one computer to my ipad/iphone, but my other computer can’t be synced to this way (only one “home computer” for devices). I was wondering if you knew of any way to get those. I was using pocket reader to sync stuff to read later, but that just adds an extra step to every addition to the list, so now i am using safari reading list. Anyway was just hoping you had a suggestion about how to sync up my safari info, especially the reading list though. Maybe i will have to upgrade to lion, although now that i can sync everything else, it seems stupid to do that just to get my reading lists synced, ha.
@fantastic machine :
Great to hear you’ve managed to get your syncing running !
I must admit I do not have any experience with syncing of Safari bookmarks and reading list to MacOSX 10.6 Snow Leopard.
I found that there’s a free app called Xmarks which should be able to sync Safari bookmarks from one Mac to another, but user reports seem to say it very buggy…
You might want to give it a try :
Else, you might give the “Windows iCloud Control Panel” for Snow Leopard a try, but that’s not finished yet – I’m working on that, but I’m not sure on the outcome…
Using the “Windows iCloud Control Panel” in Snow Leopard is something I’m working on because it seems to be the only way to get iCloud Photo Stream support in Snow Leopard. More info on that can be found here :
Good Luck !
Hey, tried everything above, but contact syncing is not working. No contacts are being displayed. (And there’s only the brown icon, no blue icon.)
@Niels :
thank you for your feedback
sorry to hear it doesn’t work for you yet
I’ve just checked myself, and it seems like that something has (slightly ?) changed in the way the contacts-syncing is setup.
I’m looking into this, and hope to have an updated solution soon.
😉
@Niels :
I think I’ve got the solution for you :
Are you using a password (for your AppleID) that contains other digits than just letters and numbers ? (so called “alphanumeric digits”)
Just like the “@” in the eMail-address you are using in this trick for iCloud Contacts-syncing needs to be substituted by “%40”,
the same goes for your password…
the easiest way to fix that is to change your password into something with letters and numbers only…
to do so, go here :
https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa/wa/directToSignIn?localang=en_US
however… doing so also means you will have to re-type your new password everywhere you’ve used your AppleID…
so for eMail, for iTunes, for Home Sharing, etc…
…I’m sorry
Hope this helps, so you can start enjoying iCloud syncing also !
Good Luck !
Nope, only alphanumeric characters there. However, I do have an non-Apple-eMail-address as Apple-Id. Might this cause the problem?
@Niels :
I’m not sure if the non-Apple-eMail-address could cause this problem, but it’s definitely worth to try with a mac.com, me.com or icloud.com address.
The easiest way to do so is probably to activate the FREE icloud.com-eMail-address that you can get for any AppleID that was started with a non-Apple-eMail-address.
Go here to activate the icloud.com-eMail-address that goes with your existing AppleID :
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2620
I’m curious to know if this works for you.
Please report back on your findings.
Thanks !
Hey,
there’s another thing: is it important that the Description field is exactly “iCloud Contacts syncing”?
It works now. Thanks. The two things I changed where using the icloud-mail as AppleID as well as changing the Description field to match exactly “iCloud Contacts syncing”.
Cheers, Niels
@Niels :
that would be funny :
the “iCloud Contacts syncing” naming was just the most rememberable name that I could think of…
but if that’s the only one that properly works… maybe it was just a good guess…
😉
to me, it seems like the change of AppleID was what really got things running for you…
enjoy !
Any way to retain the Groups I have already set up on my Mac?
@Josh P :
You are referring to the “Address Book’s Contact Groups”, right ?
…I would expect them to sync normally without any additional settings, just as described in the post.
If your Groups do not sync properly, even after the manual sync as described in the post, you could try these ‘general’ solutions :
– do a “Repair Disk Permissions” of your internal HD using OSX’s Disk Utility app
– go online to iCloud.com and see if your Groups are properly synced there ;
— if they are, upgrade our iOS-devices to the latest possible version
— if you already have the latest possible iOS-version on your iOS-devices, do a manual restart (by pressing the actual buttons upper (“sleep”) and front (“menu”) buttons on your iOS-device simultaneously until the Apple-logo appears)
— if your normal Contacts Groups do sync and your Smart Contacts Groups do not, you might be out of luck… this seems to be a bug in some versions of iOS…
Good Luck !
Wow, thanks! All I needed was the first part – creating the vcf copy and importing to icloud! The rest of the syncing was too involved for me. But, the pleasure of opening up and seeing all my contacts now on my iPad is huge. I think, I’ll simply manually add addresses to either when the time comes. Thanks for the step!
Now I have mail working and same info syncing on iCalendar. Yay!
@Ez :
You’re welcome, thanks for the feedback !
I would advise you however to also follow the rest of the instructions and install iCloud to keep your Contacts, Agendas and eMail in-sync on all your Mac (or PC), your iPad and your iPhone ; effortlessly and completely free !
😉
Good Luck !
Enjoy !
😉
I’m upgraded to Mavericks and now the hacked address book cannot be deleted. Does anyone know how to remove the duplicated address book?
@James :
Congratulations on your upgrade to Mavericks !
😉
correct me if I’m wrong, but when I encountered this same thing recently, this is what I did (if I remember correctly) :
– in Maverciks, go to System Preferences, then to Internet Accounts
– there you will see the ‘old’ Contacts/AddressBook-account listed separately, select it, then click the MINUS-button to delete it
– that’s it 😉
Enjoy !
Unfortunately, no. The account is not listed under Internet Accounts.
Mh…
could it be it’s in Contacts ?
Contacts-app –> Preferences (menu) –> Accounts (tab)
if the ‘old’ Contacts/AddressBook-account is listed there, you can either disable or delete it
if not… I’m gonna try to exactly remember what I did…
please let me know if this helps
😉
I cannot do anything directly in Addresses. If I click Accounts while in Contacts, it just takes me to Internet Accounts.
@James :
it’s a little bit tricky, you might even call it ‘extremely confusing’ :
DO NOT go to :
in Contacts app –> “Contacts” (menu bar) –> Accounts (pulldown menu)
instead, go here :
in Contacts app –> “Contacts” (menu bar) –> “Preferences” (pulldown menu) –> new window (specially for Contacts Preferences) –> Accounts (tab = icon in window’s menu bar)
…confusing isn’t it ?
anyway… that’s where you can delete the absolete “Address Book Syncing”-account
Good Luck !
Enjoy !
That worked, sort of. I was able to make the account inactive, which matches the desired effect, but it will not allow me to delete the account.
THANK YOU!!!!!
@JEZZA :
You’re welcome !
Thanks for the feedback 😉
Enjoy !
There isn’t any ACTIVITY setting when you go to the Calendar. You have iCloud Calendar (left corner), user name (top right corner), gear icon (bottom left corner) and that is it.
Please update these directions. These directions are out dated.
@james :
Thanks for the feedback !
You are the first person ever to inform me that the direction “now go to Window (in the upper menu bar) –> Activity” is confusing…
From your info I get the impression that you are searching for a tab or button marked “Activity” inside your browser window, or even on the iCloud.com webpage…
I’m sorry to inform you that you should be looking at the “upper menu bar” of your OSX Desktop when using Safari…
When you are using Safari, the upper menu bar consists of (left to right) :
Apple-icon, Safari, File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Window, Help …then a broad space, followed by a bunch of icons (for things like Time Machine-icon, Bluetooth-icon, AirPort/WiFi-icon), then the Sound-icon, Battery-icon, time, username and (extremely right) the Spotlight-icon
I have therefore updated the original text to : “now go to Window (in the upper menu bar, next to Safari’s Help-tab) –> Activity”
Hope this helps 😉
Enjoy !
So, I had been using this technique successfully for my iCal sync to my MacBook Pro running 10.6.8. When I upgraded my iPhone 5 to iOS 9.3, my syncing stopped. I quickly downgraded back to 9.2.1 but the damage seems to have been done. Many of the notes above seem to apply to the Address Book and Contacts. I’m only interested in syncing my iPhone’s Calendar with my Mac’s iCal 4.0.4.
Any suggestions would be worth some PayPal bucks for me if they work. I changed my iCloud password to just letters and numbers, repaired permissions, and created a CalDAV account using my P18 and account number from the activity window. Interestingly, it’s only 6 digits in length…
@Lowell Mills :
Thanks for the feedback.
Sorry to hear this doesn’t work any longer for you.
The cause why this wouldn’t work any longer isn’t clear.
Since both iCal4.0.4 and iOS9.3 don’t sync directly, but through iCloud, you should logon to iCloud.com and check both :
(1) does iOS9.3 sync correctly to your Calendar on iCloud.com ?
(2) does iCal4.0.4 still sync correctly to Calendar on iCloud.com ?
if (1), then this might be a bug in iOS9.3 and the easiest fix will probably be to inform Apple and hope for a quick update
if (2), then iCloud.com might have had a silent update which shuts out the obsolete iCal-app from syncing… that might thus call for an entirely different way of connecting, and if we’re unlucky… that won’t be possible at all..
I’m interested in hearing your findings.
Helping you might get extremely problematic however, as I no longer have a Mac running MacOSX 10.6 in use…
Good Luck !
Hey Mr. MacManus; thanks for the quick reply. I found the solution independently and it might help others.
The actual upgrade to iOS 9.3 was not the culprit, it was that during the upgrade, I selected to go with the two-factor authentication option. I found another forum mentioning this and, after logging into appleid.apple.com/account/home and turning two-factor authentication off, syncing now works again with the CalDAV info you provided above.
I realize that this is an old forum, and am appreciative that you provide it in case others are in the same predicament. Thanks again!
@Lowell Mills :
Thanks for your feedback !
I’ll add your solution to the original post, so it will help others.
Great job !
enjoy 😉
Mr. MacManus, if you’re still around on this ancient forum, it seems that iCal sync with iCloud calendar just stopped working (16 June 2017). I was checking my settings and found that you can no longer log into iCloud.com from this old version of Safari on 10.6.8. I don’t know of any reason that my iCloud server and 9-digit iCloud user code would have changed and realize that you no longer have a Snow Leopard machine with which to experiment.
Since I’m the last guy who posted here except for yourself, I suspect I’m out of luck this time. At least I can still use iCloud Calendar on Firefox, but it saddens me to no longer be able to just keep iCal open and have it sync with my iPhone 5SE (iOS 10.3.2).
Just checking to see if you have any suggestions. I’m thankful you helped get me this far! Thanks and take care – Lowell