IOS – Can you sync only a group of contacts from a Mac to an iPhone

contactsdata synchronizationicloudiosiphone

I'm running iOS 6 on an iPhone 3GS. I see that all my contacts from my computer have appeared in the Contacts app on my phone. Now my contacts database on my computer is, to say the least, messy. It includes just about everyone I exchanged e-mail with over the past twenty years. Most of them are just a name and e-mail address, because I've never used this database for phone calls before.

How can I set up a useful subset of these contacts on my phone? Can iCloud sync just one group of contacts to the phone? I don't particularly want to purge all these people from my contacts database, but I also don't want to scroll through them all when trying to order pizza or do some other routine task on my phone.

I see here that this cannot be done with iCloud. How do I select specific contacts to sync using iOS 6 and iTunes 11.0.2?

Best Answer

This wasn't intended to be a Jeopardy question, but I think I've figured it out.

  1. On the iPhone, go to Settings ยป iCloud and set Contacts to Off.

  2. On the computer, turn off iCloud contact syncing

  3. Connect the iPhone to the computer

  4. Click on the iPhone button that appears top right in iTunes

  5. Go to Info

  6. Check Sync Contacts

  7. Select Selected Groups

  8. Select the group you want synced.