The Setup
Apple iPhone syncing contacts with Microsoft Exchange server
The Issue
New contacts default to the “On my iPhone” contact group, which aren’t synced with the Exchange account. This could cause contact loss when upgrading or switching iPhones, or will cause missing contacts on multiple devices e.g. iPads. I came across this earlier when someone mentioned their upgrade had missing contacts (turned out to be over 40). iOS version 5 seems to set Exchange as the default contact group, I believe this effects iOS 4 and below. You can change it in this location:
Settings -> Mail, Contacts and Calendars -> Contacts – Default Account
The Solution
There are a few paid apps that can move contacts across the groups, or another popular solution is to “share” the iPhone contact and email it to yourself, from there you can save it as a contact in the right group. After a bit more digging I stumbled across Orbicontact which was free is only £0.69/$0.99 and has the functionality needed.
The contacts should now appear in Outlook and/or the new iPhone.
August 8, 2012 at 5:32 pm
Great post !!! 😀 Thanks a lot.
August 17, 2012 at 5:10 am
This worked PERFECT!
August 21, 2012 at 9:44 am
Works Perfectly.. Deserves compliment…!!!
October 10, 2012 at 11:34 pm
This is a brilliant app – just wish it would come up earlier in the search results! Use this for my customers when they have had their phones setup incorrectly in the past and it sorts everything out.
October 22, 2012 at 5:24 pm
Worked like a charm! Thanks a bunch
November 5, 2012 at 12:27 am
thanks this really helped me sorting out the exchange contacts realy cool adressbook tool
November 14, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Perfect, thank you!
November 15, 2012 at 5:49 pm
worked great for me. saved me a lot of time. thank you for posting
November 21, 2012 at 12:48 pm
worked like a charm! iphone not so smart without these apps after all.
January 10, 2013 at 12:15 pm
Really cool! Thank you very much!!! 🙂
January 21, 2013 at 8:05 am
Very good program. It really works and no account needed.
February 17, 2013 at 9:29 am
AFTER DAYS SPENT TO FIND SOME APP THIS IS REEEEEEALLLYYYY GREAT !!!!! FREE AND WORKING 10000000% !!! THANKS !!!!!!
March 2, 2013 at 6:58 pm
Perfect – couldn’t have asked for a better solution. Moved 198 contacts from my iPhone to Exchange Server in just a couple minutes. Didn’t need to sign in or do anything. Awesome…
Thanks for the tip!
April 16, 2013 at 9:37 am
You just saved my life!!! I tried everything else and I’m so happy I found this!! THANKS 🙂
May 30, 2013 at 12:43 am
Ditto – awesome!!
January 22, 2014 at 6:53 pm
Oh. My. Hell. It seriously couldn’t have been easier. And I’ve been dreading the other methods I found online for months. Thank you so much! (Why the hell doesn’t Apple just include this functionality to begin with?)
June 9, 2014 at 4:14 pm
Thanks,
This one was the third one to try and abolutely the best one (and the only one that works)! Thanks for a good hint.
Anssi
July 21, 2014 at 5:44 pm
Looks like it’s no longer free. It’s $0.99 now..
August 22, 2014 at 8:27 pm
Yep, 69p here in the UK now.
I’ve had nearly 30,000 views for this blog post!
February 16, 2015 at 10:13 am
Where can I find OrbiConact? I tried via AppStore, but didn’t find it.
February 16, 2015 at 10:43 am
Found it!! Searched for Orbi-tools and got it!!
May 8, 2015 at 4:46 am
This is not available in the Australian appstore.
May 26, 2015 at 6:36 am
Jason –> Its called Orbi Tools and its $1.29 AUD
April 12, 2016 at 9:24 pm
Hi
I used OrbiTools using “Move” option.
It moved all contact names but not the rest. In the end it erased 1200 contacts and lost all information except for the name.
The iphone did not have a backup so now I just made everything worth.
Would not rate this as a good app
April 18, 2016 at 7:42 am
Crap.
moved the contact but deleted all the numbers from the contacts it moved, totally useless.