How do I sync my contacts with my mac address book?

How can my iCloud Address Book syncing issues be resolved?

• I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Lion and at the same time set up iCloud. Lion upgrade went great. After iCloud install I synced with my Address Book and iCal.  Calendar sync went fine, but the Address Book pulled about 25% of my contacts up to iCloud. After which I synced my iPhone and the same contacts that were moved up to iClould were removed from my iPhone 4. What makes this even more interesting is the contacts that were pulled up to iCloud are my most frequently used numbers?   In additon, my Address Book on my Mac still has all the original contacts, but will not let me re-sync with my iPhone. But, on my iPad, all contacts are still there with none removed?   I have looked through a number of forums on Apple Support, but have not found anything like this - yet.   I have turned off iCloud syncing for everything on my Mac off for now, but I would like to get the contacts back on my iPhone. I would rather not do this 'by hand' as there are about 175 very detailed contacts.   Anyone have any ideas?

• Answer:

  Did you already have another sync in place?  The problem with losing contacts or having duplicates with a sync is often because there's a conflict or loop with two different syncing services (iCloud + Google Sync + Soocial + Plaxo etc) or an import/export that goes wrong ie importing tons of duplicates. The hard-earned advice I have is to create one master address book by importing everything there, de-duping it (if on google contacts use the "merge" function, or scrubbly), temporarily deleting the other address books (desktop/mobile) and then using a single sync platform and syncing everywhere.  My personal choice is google sync.  Watch out when you're setting up a new device, especially an iPhone/iPad as they will often ask you if you want to use iCloud and if you click yes, you could be creating another conflict/loop which will bring you back to the same problem. I've expanded on my hard earned-advice here and http://blog.writethat.name/how-to-clean-up-the-contacts-on-your-iphone-address-book/, and I must say it was the best 30 minutes I've ever spent productivity, tech-wise!