Missing Address Book Information

All of the data in my address book has mysteriously disappeared. It went from around 300 entries to nothing for no apparent reason.
If I try to insert a new address, the application seems to hang up and I have to force quit. I haven't installed anything new on my computer for some time. The address book and mail applications I use are both Apple.
Has anyone ever experienced this? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to recover my lost addresses? Thanks.

Welcome to the discussions.
Look in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.
There should be a file Addressbook.data, and there
may be another one called Addressbook.data.previous.
If the .previous is there, drag the .data out of the
way to the desktop and change the name of the
.previous to Addressbook.data. Restart AddressBook
and see what happens.
It worked! Awesome!!
Thank you! I owe you one.

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