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For some reason - & this has been the case for as long as I remember, years at least - I have two sets of iCloud Contacts in my Contacts address book.

One is called 'iCloud (me.com) the other just 'iCloud'

The content of each is identical, except for one thing, & I'm a bit scared to test this too hard for fear of breaking something...
If I delete a contact group from either list, it deletes it from both after showing the sync 'wheel' for a couple of seconds.

The difference is…
If I do this from 'iCloud' then Cmd ⌘ Z to undo, it restores the group to both lists within seconds.
If I delete from 'iCloud (me.com)' then undo, the group is not restored to the 'iCloud' list

Has anyone any clue as to why this may be & if it is truly safe to delete one list entirely?

Sorry for all the blurriness ;-) The highlighted group is the one I just deleted then undid, which didn't return it to the duplicate group. The actual contacts, btw are still preserved in both lists, even though the group has now gone.

Incidentally - my iPhone shows only one list… & appears to be a mirror of the 'iCloud' list [the bottom one in the picture, with one group now missing]

enter image description here

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  • Do you have two iCloud/Apple accounts configured under System Preferences > Internet Accounts? The only thing I can think of is that you have had two accounts, one which was associated with iCloud when it was called me.com and the other since then. Or, during some upgrade it converted your me.com account into an iCloud account but didn't remove the old contact list.
    – tubedogg
    Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 20:03
  • (I just noticed… the missing group has been repopulated overnight, they both match again now) I do have 2 accounts, one from long before me.com existed, right back from iTunes' launch. It has been slightly problematic over the years, though my old account is used only for iTunes & the new for 'iCloud' stuff. I'm tempted to export as Archive, then see what I can pick out of the database… There are 2 migrations in there from 2012 - I'm betting that was the start of it
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 6:58
  • Contacts Prefs > Accounts shows 2 accounts, both using my me.com address. I can deactivate either one & reduce the list to one entry - but if I try to delete either it points me straight to the same account in system prefs. It definitely thinks both are the same, yet linked as though 2 in contacts
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 10:07

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Found it!

I have no idea how it actually was set up, as I discovered a pref pane through another question on Ask Different which I'd never seen before…

System Prefs > Users & Groups >[unlock] > Right click user name > Advanced Options...

My [email protected] account was listed twice in aliases.

I deleted one - the duplicate iCloud account in Contacts disappeared.
So far I've seen no unwanted side-effects.

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