Unable to Delete "On My Mac" Contacts Account - Mac OSX

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Level 2

178 points

Unable to Delete "On My Mac" Contacts Account - Mac OSX

My friend was complaining to me that there were multiple contacts with the same name on her computer...

I checked it out and noticed that as well as her iCloud account, there was an On My Mac account with some overlapping contacts that were also in iCloud.

So I copied all the contacts from the On My Mac account to the iCloud account (to make sure everything was on iCloud. (Once everything was in the iCloud account I would eliminate the duplicates there.)

I then tried to delete the On My Mac account but I was unable to do so. I even tried to delete individual contacts from within the On My Mac account but was unable to even do that! (Contacts/Edit/Delete Card)

This seems very strange! How can I delete the On My Mac account (or even the individual cards)?

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Air (2020 or later)

Posted on May 30, 2022 10:06 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Peace-Freak Author

Level 2

178 points

May 31, 2022 2:52 AM in response to Peace-Freak

Thank you for your assistance...

Picas and Phillips, I did not see your messages till just now... Your suggestions may have worked but here is how I solved the problem:

Checking through the menus I did find the Reduce Duplicates menu but that didn't work because individual contacts could not be deleted. I guessed that the On My Mac files may have have been locked because of a file ownership problem... (The data on my friends 2020 MacBook Air was copied from an old 2012 MacBook.)

So I searched on the net for the location of where the On My Mac Contact files are stored as I figured it should be possible to manually delete them... For me they were located here: My Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Metadata

Then I quit Contacts, made a backup of Metadata folder and put it on the Desktop.

I then deleted the Metadata folder folder from within the AddressBook folder and emptied the Trash.

I then restarted the computer and reopened Contacts. To my shock it was totally empty, but within a few seconds it started to populate with the contacts from iCloud and I'm happy to say, the On My Mac folder is gone!

I hope this will be helpful to anyone else with the same problem.

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Answer 2

PRP_53

Level 10

90,871 points

May 31, 2022 1:22 AM in response to Peace-Freak

Interesting and just attempted to remove " On My Mac " and could not

Suggestion is to first reduce the duplications by first image below

Now conjecture, the " On My Mac " is required from those who choose not to use iCloud.

In second image - this appears to be plausible based upon " Default Account " option and choose On My Mac or iCloud.

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Answer 3

PRP_53

Level 10

90,871 points

May 31, 2022 4:23 AM in response to Peace-Freak

Unless the Client / Friend has a requirement - would leaving that alone.

Otherwise, reverse the previous procedure and then use the " Merge " which is greyed out in below.

It should be available since duplicates will reappear I both iCloud and On My Mac

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Answer 4

Peace-Freak Author

Level 2

178 points

May 31, 2022 3:42 AM in response to Peace-Freak

Just checked...

In Contacts/Preferences/General, there is no longer an option to choose a Default Account between iCloud and On My Mac. I did some further testing to see if I could get that option back.

First I quit Contacts. Then I turned off Contacts within iCloud and launched Contacts. (All the contacts were gone.) I then checked Contacts/Preferences to see if On My Mac would now be an option, but it was not! Hmmm...

Maybe a restart would have caused it to reappear, but I was working remotely on my friend's computer and my friend was getting a bit irritated with my continued requests...

If you have any other suggestions on how I might get the menu back (not that I actually want it, but someone might!), I'll be happy to try on another day...

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