The error and setup

As a new iPhone user, I was pretty excited about the new service Apple launched with the iPhone 3G called Mobile Me. It not only promised a slick, cloud computing solution for mail, calendar, contacts and photos, but also promised all this in a “push environment” that automatically sends updates.  Moreover, it also claimed to provided the ability to keep all these data in synch across multiple Windows or Mac-based machines.

So, I created my free  trial MobileMe account and started with contacts. Since I need to edit and thin my existing contacts list from outlook, I just started from scratch in MobileMe and added contacts. I did try exporting and importing some contacts using the vCard import/export, but had a lot of trouble. I did cut and past some lengthy addresses into fields in MobileMe, but for the most part this was done on the web-based MobileMe site.

I then synched to my iPhone. Worked great, no problems. Changes to either would show up almost instantly on the other device. Next, sync all this up on my Windows XP machine and MS Outlook. I did this through the MobileMe app in Windows Control Panel and selected to “replace all data” on the PC with MobileMe data.  After several minutes, I get the dreaded:

Contacts/Calendars could not be synced due to inconsistent data.  Confirm that your computer’s data is valid, then reset Contacts/Calendars/etc on MobileMe in System Preferences

Since I had deleted all my contacts from Outlook, I could not figure out how this could be inconsistent or invalid. I also tried the same with my brand new Macbook and received the same error. So, I got on the line with Apple support (in chat format) and after several trial and errors we determined that somehow invalid data got into my MobileMe contacts info. Here’s the troubleshooting steps:

1. Export contact from MobileMe as vCard.
2. Import vCard into Address Book on Mac (or you could try it into Outlook on PC)
3. Some contacts imported fine, others did not. Those that did not contained invalid data
4. Some of the invalid data was easy to spot, like extra line returns or unprintable characters. Others DID NOT SHOW ANYTHING. With those, I just deleted any notes or addresses and started over.
5. Worked through all contacts until all could import into contacts cleanly.

To reset and re-synch the data:

1. Got all my contacts imported into Address Book on my Mac and eliminated any duplicates and updated any missing data.
2. Reset sync info in iSync (on PC, you would do this through MobileMe control panel)
3. Synchronized all data on Mac up to MobileMe replacing all MobileMe data.

Note: Unfortunately, in this process I was not able to import my contacts pictures that I had associated on MobileMe. I had to manually add those back on the Mac in contacts since the export/import vCard process did not export the images. I got lucky in that I had created a folder that I used to store my contacts profile images—at least I didn’t have to go back and hunt for those—and it was a fairly quick update to associate the images with the contacts.

After all this, my contacts now sync nicely between my iPhone Contacts, Mac Address Book and Windows Outlook Contacts. It certainly was a frustrating error to track down and not an obvious one.  If you’re having this issue, check your data. It may have invalid data but you may not know it.

I hope this helps!