So, you made the move to iCloud. Welcome! However, you might be noticing some duplicates. Well, don’t fret, because we’ll show you a solution to consolidating it all with a few easy steps. 
To begin, open Address Book and navigate to Card the card menu. Once there, click on the “Look for Duplicates” item.
After clicking Look for Duplicates, Address Book will begin searching through your Contacts list for duplicate entries. A drop-down dialog will appear to let you know if any duplicates were found. If duplicates were found, you can click on the Merge.
The Merge feature only affects cards with the same name, but different information, and will place the different information under the cards that have the same name. So, if you had two entries for “Apple, Inc.” that had two different addresses, it would take the two addresses and place them in a single Address Book card.
After merging, your data will be synced back with iCloud.
Remember that before changing any important information in Address Book, you should always have a recent back up with Time Machine or make one on-the-fly by clicking File > Export > Address Book Archive.
Follow this article’s author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.
acliff
December 19, 2011 at 1:31am
Just thought to share this tip, an iPhone app work much better when cleaning duplicates, it gives you an option to see the details of each contact before you do a batch merge. Just tried it, worked for me neatly. Hope this helps.
brandonwalkermedia
November 01, 2011 at 6:10am
Just a quick question on an unrelated topic. When will the next MacLife issue be on my iPhone's NewsStand?
