If you save a contact to Hotmail, why would you expect it to also make it to your iCloud account? They are separate services and the Iphone quite rightly keeps them separate. Also Hotmail doesnt support wireless updating so if you added a contact to your phone it wouldn't be there if you logged into Hotmail on your computer.
You cannot merge your contacts into one but you can decide which list of contacts the Iphone shows you - all of the different contact lists or just one or some of the different contact lists.
If you have iCloud turned on for contacts then all of the contacts on your phone will automatically be synced to your icloud account. This is also true of photos and anything else that you have set to on for icloud. In other words icloud is being used as a backup medium.
You can turn this off by going to settings - icloud and turning contacts off. This will remove those contacts from icloud and also from your iphone.
OK let's take a step back. The iphone will only sync contacts with Imap based email accounts or Exchange. Hotmail is neither of those and thus you wont be able to sync Hotmail contacts with your phone wirelessly.
I have tested icloud on my own phone and I now see I was wrong - sorry about that. I've never used icloud for contacts and made an assumption.
You can use icloud like any address book by creating contacts on the phone and they will appear online as well and vice versa - full wireless syncing. It doesn't sync existing contacts to icloud as I originally thought. If you have a lot of contacts in hotmail you can export them and then import them into icloud and then you are away.
You can also use icloud for emails as well and that should give you wireless updating of emails - and it will give you an @me.com account.
I hope this helps and I haven't confused you too much - and I have learnt something as well.
Re: Duplicate Contacts
Oh dear - two invalid assumptions in two days. I had seen an export facility on Hotmail and and import facility on icloud and had assumed they would be compatible.
They are not!!
I have done some research on this and here is one thread I have found on the Apple support communities
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3515161?start
If you are using a mail client such as Outlook on a computer it might be possible to move from one service to another but it doesnt look as though there is an easy fix.
Sorry - both for having misled you twice and for the fact that you cannot do what you want to do.
jeffkinn wrote:Oh dear - two invalid assumptions in two days. I had seen an export facility on Hotmail and and import facility on icloud and had assumed they would be compatible.
I think that is called being human
If you are using a mail client such as Outlook on a computer it might be possible to move from one service to another but it doesnt look as though there is an easy fix.
As long as either Outlook or Outlook Express is being used it is possible to export them from Hotmail as a csv file and import them to that address book and then export them from there as a vcf file.
A bit long-winded but it seems to be the only way.
