Iphone sync and 300 lost address book contacts

Help. I'm sick about this. Everything has been going fine with my iphone until tonight. After I synced tonight, all 300 of my address book contacts disappeared on my phone AND on my computer. Even my backup hard drive doesn't show any contact information, only an address book icon which has no information when opened. Apple iphone tech support was unable to help me. Please I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight because of this. Can anyone out there help me get my contact information back?
Thank you.
Alden Burlington

Joel,
The Backup application they are referring to is the Backup application that comes with .Mac.
It does incremental backups. It doesn't replace the previous days backup. You can go to your backup location, and choose the day you want to restore from.
There is even a preconfigured plan for personal data and settings daily to iDisk that backs up iCal, Address Book, etc.
I would also recomend going into iSync's preferences and setting it to prompt you if more than 5% of your contacts or data will be changed. This is the default for iSync, but can be changed to not warn, or only warn when 25%, 50%, etc will be changed. If it is on the default you will get a message if information will be lost.
Also in some situations, reseting sync history before another sync, and then syncing again, may bring back some of the contacts.
Hope this helps,
Nathan C.

Similar Messages

Restore lost Address Book contacts

I lost all Address Book Contacts the first time I tried to sync my iPad2 with my iMac. I have recent Time Machine backups, so I restored this file:
username/Library/AddressBook/AddressBook.data
from a backup, making sure that Address Book was not running during the restore. I quit and restarted the iMac, but Address Book still shows 0 cards.
Any ideas on what I did wrong, or what I can do to get my contacts back?

urlgurl wrote:
username/Library/AddressBook/AddressBook.data
Try username/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

Lost address book contacts and restore?

Hi All,
I know it has been discussed a while ago, but I have lost all my contact details by overnight. Luckily I have .mac account (now mobileme) and all the address synched with my previous address book items is there. The question is how I can restore it from mobileme.
Thanks: Szimi

How could I recover address book's contact info
There are two possibilities. If you have a backup of your Address Book (AddressBook.abbu file), you can use the File > Revert to Address Book Backup menu option to restore your contacts. If you don't have a backup, you need to get in the habit of always making a backup when you make any change to your Address Book.
The second possibility is to enable the Debug menu in Address Book using this Terminal command (Address Book must not be running when you do this):
defaults write com.apple.AddressBook ABShowDebugMenu -bool True
then press Enter, then quit Terminal.
Start Address Book, go to the Debug menu and choose "Revert from MetaData" and wait to see what happens. With any luck, your contacts will be restored, after which you should make an immediate backup. If they are not restored, that means all the data was lost and you will need to restore from MobileMe, which is a question for their forums.
Mulder

How to sync a subset of Address Book contacts only

Is anyone able to tell me how to achieve a complete two-way syncing between my phone contacts and a group (subset) of contacts in my Mac's Address Book?!
I have in my computer's address book two sets of contacts:
1) contacts I want to be mirrored in my phone contacts
2) contacts I want to keep in my computer, but NOT in my phone
For this reason, I created a specific group called "mobile" in my Mac's address book. When syncing with my phone using iSync, I would have a full synchronization between this "mobile" group and my phone contacts.
I have carefully selected this specific group (instead of "all contacts") in iSync preferences for syncing my phone, but there is a problem:
when iSync detects new contacts I added in "mobile" group, these contacts are copied into my phone correctly
BUT
new contacts added in the phone are recognized and copied into my Mac's address book WITHOUT being inserted into "mobile" group!!!
This means that every time new contacts are copied from my phone to my computer, I have to move (better saying "mark") these new contacts to the "mobile" group manually, because they are synced but added OUTSIDE the group.
This is really annoying and would make me lose contacts easily from my mobile phone in case of a restore of my phone contacts after resetting or changing the phone (all contacts would be maintained in my computer's generic address book, but not transferred back to my phone).

new contacts added in the phone are recognized and copied into my Mac's address book WITHOUT being inserted into "mobile" group!!!
Although annoying, that is how iSync works, and always has done.
New contacts added on the phone are not put in the selected group for syncing.
In the options for your phone in iSync, you'll notice that whereas there is a "Put events created on phone into: {calendar pop-up}", there is no equivalent "Put contacts created on phone into: {group pop-up}".
This has always been the case, and despite reporting it to Apple many times, it seems to be something they don't want to fix.

How to sync and let the address book data overtake everything on my phone?

Hi everyone!
I have a Sony Ericsson k750i.
I have no problems whatsoever syncing when I first got my phone etc.
In all my address book entries, I have updated all of my numbers to have the international dialling code before each of the numbers. I now want to sync with my phone again to ensure that all the numbers in my phone now have the new numbers that are entered on address book.
How can I use iSync to ensure my phone only takes what is in my address book and my address book basically ignores the data from my phone?
I hope this makes sense!!
Thanks in advance!
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

If you want to overwrite the data representing contacts and calendars on you mobile handset with data from the Address Book and iCal, you should reinitialize the truth database by either…
• removing, then adding back [and reconfiguring] your device, or
• opening the iSync Preferences… dialog, and selecting the Reset Sync History… option.
Neither step will affect your data store, but it will compel the Sync Services framework to behave as if it were a first-time synchronization, and give you the opportunity to Replace or Merge the data with your handset. You should choose Replace.

Phone Sync w/subset of Address Book Contacts?

Hi-
I have roughly 1500 contacts in Address Book. Is there any way to Sync only a subset - ideally a Smart Group? The window in iSync says All Contacts, but is a drop window, indicating other possibilities.
What am I missing?
iMac g4 800 Mac OS X (10.4.4) Moto E815

I have exactly the same need: to sync a small subset of my large address book with my phone. Only manually created Address Book groups appear as syncable groups in iSync - my carefully crafted Smart Groups don't show up, even after restarts, clean Address Book imports, etc.
Is this a bug? A missing feature? Or desired behavior?
(BTW, did you mean "Smart Groups" when you wrote "Smart Folders"?)
15 ALU PB 1.25GHZ FW800 Mac OS X (10.3.8)

Syncing or importing my address book contact from Mac address book to palm

all attempts to move my Mac addresses (in address book) into my TX are met with grayed out application, links etc. Can anyone send me the step to follow? My hotsync works between TX and Palm desktop.
Post relates to: Palm TX

some palm devices are supported directly through isync (check somewhere on the apple website to see if yours is one of them.
And when you say 'greyed out application' do you mean this is when trying to open an exported address book file by doing an open with? If so, to ungrey it, where it says 'recommended applications', change it to 'all applications'
Hope this helps
Post relates to: Palm V

Iphone syncing with Outlook Express Address Book, Outlook is the default!

I used Express years ago and honestly don't know how the code transfered to my new computer (10 months old). Outlook synced contacts fine the first time, but since loading the newest verison of itunes the ihpone won't even give me the option to sync to outlook...express is the only choice in the window! HELP! If I have to go back to an old version of itunes how do I do that?

Hey there,
Maybe this page can help you.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2051?viewlocale=en_US
B-rock

Disappearing Address Book Contacts

This is a duplicate or my response to another similar problem, but I think this problem should have it's own topic.
My Address book contacts have been occasionaly disappearing, I would open Address book and all my contacts would be gone except for the "Apple" and "Me". And I would end up restoring from a backup, which I been doing fequently when this problem first started.
Recently I discovered what the problem is. I have an external drive connected and somehow my Address book contacts have defaulted to being stored on the external drive in a folder I had created for some temporary work some time ago. When I noticed it was still there (some time later) I trashed it.
It took a while for me to make the connection that when I deleted the folder, the address contacts would be gone. Because I wouldn't use my Address Book for days or maybe weeks afterwards
I finally realized that this "temporary" folder kept mysteriously reappearing, so when I checked, it contained the same folder structure as the <user>/library/application support/Address Book/ and sure enough that is where my address book is storing my contacts.
This has me baffled, there are no preference settings to even change the default storage location (or I couldn't find them) Looking at com.apple.addressbook.plist has no storage folder either.
Any ideas on how this can be corrected? Or even how it happened?
Little more information. This is my primary user account which has FileVault turned on and also syncs with dotmac to my MacBook. The sync works fine by the way, but those contacts should be within the secure volume.
My only thought for a fix would be to back up my user folder (data only, no settings). Delete the account. And then recreate the account and restore my data, but I'd rather not do that if I don't have to, I'm hoping for the quick and simple fix.
What do yo think?

Replying to my own post.
I think I've fixed my problem by simply disconnecting the external drive. With the drive disconnected, Address Book came up empty again. So I restored from my backup and checked that the files updated in the correct (home) folder.
<user>/Library/Application Support/Address Book/
Still haven't any clue as to how my contacts suddenly started saving themselves on my external drive to begin with.

POP3 Mail & Address Book contacts have gone!

I recently did some housekeeping on my Mum's iBook G4 (OSX 10.4.10), part of which was purchasing and installing SpamSieve into Mail. This all went fine. Today she said all the mail in her POP3 inbox had gone, she couldn't send/receive and all her address book contacts had gone (Except hers and Apples).
I've got the iBook now and have noticed that her account type in Mail has somehow changed to a .Mac account (did I somehow do this, or did she???). This is obviously the root of the problem as the
email address now has '@mac.com' appended to the end and the incoming mail server is now 'mail.mac.com' and the outgoing is 'smtp.mac.com:heremailaddress' which is all wrong. I'm unable to change the account type back to POP or the incoming mail server from 'mail.mac.com' (it's greyed out) back to what it was.
I have now created a second account with the correct POP settings and have received in all unread email, but the read email messages have gone. I am unable to send as the new correct pop account is only offered the incorrect outgoing server ('smtp.mac.com:heremailaddress').
Having read several post on this forum, I feel the Mail/Address Book issues are connected and that maybe the application(s) database(s) have been corrupted. I've tried the Address Book remedy at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5248351&#5248351 but this does nothing. The 'user'>Library>Mail folder shows the two accounts as two separate folders. The recently recreated account folder has the new unread messages in the 'INBOX.mbox folder, but the older account folder (which now has 'MAC-' added to the front of its name) only has 'info.plist' in a 'INBOX.imapmbox' folder!
I don't believe any back-ups are available. Can anyone help me restore her old unread mail, and possibly her address book contacts?
I've also just noticed that SpamSieve does not launch as it should when I launch Mail, even though It was purchased and the scripts installed correctly.

Didn’t you make a backup prior to the housekeeping?
I don’t know why would Spotlight find contacts that are gone from Address Book (if that’s what you mean), but as far as Mail goes, under some circumstances (e.g. lack of available disk space, filesystem corruption, repeated crashes), Mail may discard the current ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist preferences file and create a new one. This file is where all the account settings are stored. As a result, all the non-.Mac account settings (but not the messages themselves) are lost. If you had a .Mac account, its settings would appear to have been preserved because Mail would set up that account automatically using the System Preferences > .Mac settings.
What’s the capacity and space available on the startup disk? Take a look at the comments about disk space in the following article, in case they apply to you:
Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space
Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what’s it all about?
After having fixed all the filesystem issues, if any, and ensuring that there’s enough space available on the startup disk (a few GB, plus the space needed to make a backup copy of the Mail folder), quit Mail if it’s running, and make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, e.g. by dragging it to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, just in case something else goes wrong while trying to solve the problem. This is where all your mail is stored.
You have three options now:
(1) Restore ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist from a backup if you have one. Mail shouldn’t be running while you do this.
(2) Set up your mail accounts again (you may want to quit Mail and trash the new com.apple.mail.plist first to start over). If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don’t. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in ~/Library/Mail/ when done. You’ll also have to re-configure most of your settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it’s enabled.
(3) Mail may have renamed the old preferences file to com.apple.mail.plist.saved. If that’s the case, you may try trashing the new com.apple.mail.plist and renaming the old com.apple.mail.plist.saved back to com.apple.mail.plist. Again, be sure Mail isn’t running while doing this. Given the circumstances, there exists the possibility that com.apple.mail.plist.saved became corrupt, but that often is not the case and the settings can usually be restored by just renaming the file back to com.apple.mail.plist.
As a side effect of re-creating com.apple.mail.plist, Mail might rename Outbox (which is where messages waiting to be sent are stored) to Delivered. The name of that mailbox is actually a misnomer, as it would contain messages (if any) that couldn’t be delivered for some reason. You can delete that mailbox if you wish.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.

How do I sync my address book contacts on my iphone and clear all other contacts on my phone (issue with icloud?)

When I purchased my iphone 4S, I had all my old phone's information transfer over to my new phone.
I organized my address book on my mac powerbook and then hoped to sync my computer's address book to my phone - in hopes of erasing all the junky contacts on my iphone and only having the my address book contacts on my phone.
I did all I could trying to make this happen (through iTunes) but it hasn't erased/replaced all of the contacts on my phone - I believe since my phone is synced to icloud. So I'm stuck with a very unorgaized contacts list on my phone...
How can I make it so I only have the contacts from my address book on my phone?
Thanks in advance,
Suzanne

Also, I just noticed that syncing my phone effected my calendar in that all my events now repeat. So instead of having one event schedule on a day, I have two of the same events scheduled for the same time.
It seems as if I can't sync my phone to my computer through iTunes and iCloud.
Help???
Suzanne

I have an iPhone 3g and it won't sync address book contacts.

I have an iPhone 3g and it won't sync address book contacts. My iPad does it via the cloud but now my iPhone won't do it. Please help.

Have you tried a "hard reset"? If so, I would take the phone to an Apple store. If not,
1. Make sure the phone is OFF
2. Hold the HOME button and then press the power button and HOLD IT.
3. Hold both buttons until the phone comes ON, goes OFF and come ON again (about 45 seconds)
4. Re-sync with iTunes.
Hope this helps.

Contact disappeared from iPhone but not deleted from Address Book on sync

FYI, I have an iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2 (the latest), and I have never so much as thought about MobileMe.
Until two days ago, I have had no reason to doubt that my iPhone's Contact list is the same as my MacBook's Address Book list. I now have no confidence that the same info. exists in both: I know for sure that at least one contact long present in both has disappeared from the iPhone, yet syncing all contacts neither returns it to the iPhone nor deletes it from Address Book! I need help troubleshooting this contact as well as verifying that there aren't other similar anomalies corrupting my data, hopefully without manually comparing all 685 entries...
Two days ago, a certain number, let's call it (310) 555-5555, popped up in my recents list as a missed call and in my visual voicemail. When I listened to the voicemail, I discovered that (310) 555-5555 was Jane Smith. I remembered entering Jane Smith several months ago, so I thought hmmm, does she have a second number? I tried to add (310) 555-5555 to an existing entry, only to find my iPhone had no entry for Jane Smith anymore at all! I did not delete her myself, and I'm not aware of any 3rd-party app that ought to have affected the entry. I haven't called Jane Smith or (310) 555-5555 in quite some time, so I have no idea how long the entry may have been missing. I searched the whole phone (left of the first home screen)
At the next opportunity, I looked in Address Book on my laptop, and indeed found the expected entry for Jane Smith, (310) 555-5555. I have no idea how she disappeared from my iPhone -- did I or some third-party program delete her? Or did it happen through some sync issue? -- but I naturally worried that when I next synced, the deletion would sync, too, and I would lose the Address Book entry, leaving me without Jane Smith's number at all.
Such an event would defeat the entire purpose of backing up my phone contacts to my computer; I just moved to iPhone this spring after being a Palm user since 1997, and the idea that iPhone might not be reliably syncing my contacts is frankly terrifying. I checked and saw that my Address Book listed 685 contacts to iPhone Contacts's 684, so I decided to risk a sync in hopes that maybe I had caused a one-off deletion. I wrote down Jane Smith (310) 555-5555 just in case and hit sync.
The results of the sync and my subsequent troubleshooting have seriously undermined my confidence in the fidelity of the sync process. The first time, nothing changed--I still had 684 iPhone, no Jane Smith, and 685 Address Book, including Jane Smith.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Message was edited by: Lindsey Worth

Before conecting your phone, open iTunes on your computer and go to Preferences, on the Devices tab check "Prevent...from syncing automatically". Now connect your phone and when it appears in iTunes on the left sidebar click on its name. Go to the Info tab and confirm than your have checked Sync Contacts with Address Book. Now further down on the Info tab under Advanced>Replace information on this iPhone check Contacts. Click Apply and sync your phone. This will replace the contacts on your phone with the contacts in Address Book. (When complete you can go back to iTunes preferences and uncheck "Prevent..." to re-establish automatic syncing if your prefer this.)

Syncing selectively with entourage, address book and iPhone... geesh

Hi All,
This may all sound funky, but here is where I find myself.
I have thousands of contacts that I send stuff to monthly. I use pages to create the material I send. All of these contacts live in Address Book. They are the only contacts in Address Book - specifically because I can only merge contacts that are in Address Book with Pages (which blows, but is a whole other issue).
I use entourage for all my "real" contacts. Folks I contact every day, associates, family, etc.
Enter, my iPhone. Now I want to sync all my "Real" contacts (from entourage) with my iPhone. I just want my iPhone to sync with entourage, not all those contacts that live in my Address Book. Now I realize I can selectively sync just certain groups in the Address Book with the iphone, however, if I sync entourage and the address book, all those thousands of contacts really slow down entourage and even filtering them out can be a waiting game.
So, in a perfect world, I would be able to sync my iPhone directly with entourage. Or, in a slightly less perfect but still happy world, I would be able to sync entourage with the Address Book, but selectively keep all those thousands of contacts in the address book from syncing with entourage.
Does anyone see a way out of this?
R

I am looking for an answer to a similar question. I use iCal and Address Book for family and personal calendars and contacts; I use Entourage for business calendars and contacts. I was successfully using Entourage 2004 to sync calendar events and contacts between my Mac and my Treo 650. I have now upgraded to Entourage 2008, which abandoned the direct sync conduit to the Treo. I am now forced to sync via iCal and Address Book. Which means that I seem to have a choice between (1) no longer syncing data between my Treo and my Mac or (2) accepting that all my Address Book data will land up in Entourage where I don't want it to be. (I can selectively choose which iCal calendars
Does anybody know of a solution for this? From reading through the forums, it appears that this problem is not specific to the Treo or Palm OS, but affects any type of sync between Entourage and a wireless device.

Sync Subset of Address Book Contacts with iPhone?

Is there a way to limit the contacts in Address Book which are sync'd with the iPhone? My copy of Address Book has many contacts which are from long ago. I like to keep them around for the occasion I need to reach someone. But, I don't need them cluttering up the list of people I need to reach promptly in my iPhone.
Thanks!

The simplest way to do that would be to create a group in Contacts that has just the ones you want and only sync that group to your iPhone.

Iphone sync and 300 lost address book contacts

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for