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Jeff asked: “Question about groups of contacts, specifically on my iPhone 6 Plus. I’m changing employers, so I’m deleting my work e-mail account. Unfortunately, when I delete that e-mail, it will delete all the contacts in that group, along with any notes. I was able to move the notes into a new group on the phone. However, my co-workers have lost all their contacts. Is there any way for me to save those contacts before I delete my former employer’s e-mail account from my iPhone?”
Jeff, it’s surprisingly hard to save your Exchange contacts. You can use a 3rd party app like Contacts Mover to copy all your Exchange contacts to iCloud. That would keep them accessible on your phone whether or “not the Exchange account stays.
Contact mover apps tend to have a limit, some charge you from the first contact you move, others charge you if you want to move more than a certain number of them, so there’s a decent chance that moving them all this way will not be free.
The easiest free way is probably to export all Exchange contacts to a .vcf file from a computer
The easiest free way is probably to export all Exchange contacts to a .vcf file from a computer, then go to iCloud.com, log in and you’ll see a gear on the lower right of the Contacts page. Click on that gear will allow you to import a .vcf card.
As long as Contacts are turned on under the iCloud settings on your phone, all of them should be transferred to your phone, and stay there regardless of what you do with your Exchange account.
However, you import your contacts, keep in mind that they will probably show up twice until you delete or turn off the Exchange server syncing.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to ask the phone to just import the data automatically from Exchange, but you should be able to do it quickly and easily, provided that you still have access to your work account.