Address book vanished

Question

After years of use, my address book has vanished. At least it seems that way. Mail, Skype, etc still find the required data but the disk image is gone and I cannot access the book to add or edit.
I tried updates and apps from the original OS disk that came with the MacBook. I cannot find anything to help.
Please tell me I do not need to reinstall from the original OS which dates back nearly two years.

Answer 1

I'm not sure what disk image you are talking about. Disk images are ".dmg" files that mount as a virtual drive on your desktop when you double-click on them.
It's not quite clear to me, either, whether you mean that your Address Book data is gone or whether there is no Address Book application in the Applications folder (or anywhere else, as near as you can tell, on your hard drive). If that is indeed what you mean, you will have to go to the original Leopard installer DVD but you don't need to boot up from it. There is a folder called "Optional Installs" on the DVD and in it, an installer named "Optional Installs.mpkg." When you double-click on the package installer, you will get to a point where you see "Custom Install on {Your Computer}". Click on the "▸" to the left of Applications then click on Address Book checkbox then continue. After Address Book has reinstalled, download and reinstall the 10.5.8 combo update which can be obtained from http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacOS_X_10_5_8_ComboUpdate
IF you mean that you can't find your personal Address Book data, all I can say is that data should be located at /Users/{yourShortUserNameHere}/Library/ApplicationSupport/AddressBook. If it's not, see if you can find a file named "AddressBook-v22.abcddb" (I think that is a common filename for a file in everybody's Address Book data) somewhere on your hard drive. Hopefully, you will find all the other accompanying data files and data folders nearby.
Once you recover (or recreate) your address book data, I would urge you to make portable backup suitable for any sort of address book application, Mac or Windows alike, and for any version of OS X and architecture (PPC or Intel). Simply select all address cards from the Address Book application window and drag it to your desktop. It will create a text-based file named something like "Alice Ames and 89 others.vcf." Double-clicking on it will import all those address cards into any address book application of any OS version and any platform that understands VCF format. A handy thing to have lying around in emergencies.