Contacts app sorting order

Software
,
1

Does anybody know what is the logic of how the Contacts app sorts contacts?

Some of my contacts include only the first name and some both first name and last name. And here is how they are sorted:

Ilya
Nikita
Timofey
Yaroslav
Dmitriy A...
Aleksandr
Mikhail D...

This order doesn’t make any sense to me.

What I have expected instead is either:

Aleksandr
Ilya
Nikita
Timofey
Yaroslav
Dmitriy A...
Mikhail D...

(fist all the contacts with first name only,
then all the contacts with both first and last names)

or maybe

Aleksandr
Dmitriy A...
Mikhail D...
Ilya
Nikita
Timofey
Yaroslav

(if only the first name is specified, the contact is listed
by the first letter of the first name;
otherwise, the first letter of the last name is used)

I use Contacts on Mac, but I suppose the issue is the same for both Mac and iPhone versions.

2

When you change sort order, does it re-sort the way you want?

You can sort by first then last or last then first.

3

Currently the contacts are sorted by last names.

I know I can change the sorting so that they will be sorted by first names instead, but this is only a partial workaround, neither it explains why the current order is so weird.

4

Welcome.

I suspect your out of order contacts may contain a space or something in one of the fields. I would backup a couple of the “problem” contacts (export as vCard) and create new cards as a test.

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5

But did you try changing the sorting order to see what would happen? That may help you figure out what is going on.

Or changing the sort order, then changing it back, may fix the problem.

As @WayneG said, non-printing characters can cause problems with alphabetization. I’ve helped quite a few clients clean up their contacts, and I have seen some really screwed up contact cards as a result of syncing, migrating, and their associated problems.

1 Like
6

@WayneG Thanks. What is interesting is that I remember for sure that I tried things like removing first name and last name and then typing them again, but this didn’t helped. But today sorting works just fine.

@margaretamartin What exactly you mean by “screwed up” contact cards? Is syncing a common cause of this?

Actually, my experience with Contacts+iCloud was terrible. I have started to create my contact list and after I have added about 10 or maybe 15 contacts I have noticed that some phones and emails from some contacts have been disappeared. Then I added them again and then noticed that now there are some other phones that missing.

And then I saw that a phone that I have added about 4-5 seconds ago just disappeared right on my eyes. What the heck. Then I decided to log out from iCloud on both MacBook and iPad (I don’t have any other Apple devices) and to never try to use it again.

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7

Did you check which fields you had the names in - maybe some of the ‘first names’ are in the ‘last name’ or ‘nickname’ or ‘business’ fields? Maybe that is causing the illogical sorting?

8

No, no. I double checked them. I even tried to delete the cards and to create new ones.

9

By “screwed up” I mean duplications, extra characters added in some fields, contact information split among 2 or more cards, first and last name switched, etc. I cannot say if syncing itself causes the problem or if it’s just caused by syncing different contacts services to the Contacts app.

That said, once I’ve cleaned up the Contacts database, it stays fixed if they just use iCloud. I have never had recurring problems with the single service. I consider it one of the entirely reliable parts of iCloud. (But of course, any synced database can be corrupted. Contacts is one of the easier ones to de-corrupt, I feel, because the data structure is quite simple.)

When I make big changes to a Contacts database, I turn off internet access on that device. That prevents it from trying to sync partial fixes, which I think clears up a lot of the problems. I have had contacts disappear and double on me if I let it sync while I’m making major changes. Usually those are temporary changes, but it can take more than 10 minutes for Contacts to sort itself out, sometimes.

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