Hey everyone,
I'm dealing with a bizarre problem for a client that I can't seem to solve. After migrating contacts, Outlook shows around 10,000 contacts, but iCloud is displaying a whopping 25,000! I've noticed that many contact entries are duplicated—some even show up to five times. A common thread among these entries is a link that says **ms-outlook://people/**, along with a message stating: *"This contact is read-only. To make changes, tap the link above to edit in Outlook."* However, clicking the link results in an error, and it won't open in Outlook.
Has anyone else experienced this issue, and found a way to fix it? Thanks a lot!
2 Answers
Just so you know, there is no matching process when you import contacts into iCloud, which means every vCard you import gets treated as a new record. I learned this the hard way when I imported my company’s contacts. I decided to delete all existing iCloud contacts via the web first before importing new ones, mainly because the phone doesn’t use Outlook for caller ID. That way, I could make sure I have accurate caller IDs for incoming calls.
I’ve run into a similar situation before. A workaround I found was to have the clients use the contacts in the Outlook app instead—this allows them to maintain separate contacts from the global list and their personal iCloud list. Just a heads-up, I’d be cautious about merging contacts into personal phones unless they are company devices, just because I haven’t come across a reliable best practice for that. It’s not a complete fix, but this way keeps the contact list more manageable in the Outlook app, even if some users don’t prefer it.
But the main issue is that the person wants a fix for iCloud since there are just tons of duplicates, and they can't seem to delete or fix them.
Yeah, but even if I delete them, they just come back! It's like they're stuck in a loop.