Sync first erased Address Book contacts, then erased my new iPhone contacts

I had to take my Mac Mini into service today ($50) to get my Address Book contacts restored after the first sync with my new iPhone. There was no prompt, no warning, no merge / replace option that the iPhone Help says would happen:
Step 3: Sync iPhone
Click Apply in the lower-right corner of the screen. iPhone and your computer sync according to your settings.
The first time you sync with a service, you are asked if you want to merge data, replace data on the service, or replace the data on your computer.
That expected prompt did not happen ... the sync started on its own as soon as I put the iPhone in the dock.
After I brought the Mac Mini home from service -- after making a backup CD of the contacts now restored in my Address Book -- I redocked the iPhone and stopped the sync with the slider. Then I hunted down the sync options in the Info tab in iTunes. Still no option to merge or replace that I could find. I carefully pressed Apply after I'd selected the sync options I wanted.
I still didn't get the expected prompt mentioned above.
It synched, but now all the few newly typed contact phone #s I'd put in the iPhone are gone! Not merged, not added, gone.
I searched the forums but could not find a topic addressing this.
mac mini Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Not sure why syncing failed but you can do the following: download the free app My Contacts Backup and use it on your phone. It will back up your contacts as an attachment to an email. Send the email to yourself and open it on your mac. Double-click the attachment and your mac should import the contacts into Address Book.

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HT1267 I have been unable to sync my address book on my IPHONE, trying to sync the changes, I erased address book from my phone. I seem unable to re-establish the address book from my Mac on my phone! Please help!! thanks

I have been unable to sync my address book on my IPHONE, trying to sync the changes, I erased address book from my phone. I seem unable to re-establish the address book from my Mac on my phone! Please help!! thanks

Try the .Mac Sync forum - its probably more appropriate to your issue.
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=957

Lion Address Book problem - all of over 2,000 contacts disappeared - one mysteriously reappeared - then they all reappeared during resync with Gmail!

The subject iine pretty much describes what happened.
I am wondering if it is anything to do with what looks like an odd file in the directory ~ Library -> Application Support -> Address Book
As well as the "real" database file there is this zero bytes one:
AddressBook-v22.abcddb.0F392545-78F2-4AE6-8D30-457C138332B2.unknown
From the date, it might be something to do with installing and linking Cobook to Address Book maybe?
These are the files and folders in that directory (sub-directory files not shown):
I have enabled the debug menu in Address Book but have not been able to find any info about how to use it. I lie! I did read that I might possibly have been able to "retrieve" the contacts using the debug menu "Force Refresh" - however that was after I had started to resync with Gmail contacts.
I realised that something odd was going on during resync when I saw that there were over 4,000 contacts being processed rather than the 2,000 or so that I was expecting. Initially, none of the contacts groups from Gmail were showing in Address Book after this partial sync (I stopped it when I saw what was happening). However, after quitting and restarting Address Book, the groups appeared again.
I have not lost my contact data - as well as Gmail contacts I also have an Address Book backup from about two weeks ago and also the backup created by Cobook about two weeks ago. (Installed Cobook as it looked like a very efficient way of getting to view individual contacts quickly - Quicksilver just isn't finding them at all). I used third party app "Contacts Sync for Google Gmail" to link Address Book with Gmail as it gives you options about what to do for each duplicate card that it identifies.
I then spent a lot of time sorting through the contacts on Address Book, finding duplicates, updating data, etc. with the intention of managing contacts in Address Book from then on, rather than in Gmail. Not all of these changes are reflected in the Cobook backup or Gmail.
My worry is, with Lion being such a god-awful Pig's Ear in so many more ways than this, that this Address Book mess might happen again.
I seem to have spent most of my time over the last month wrestling with the numerous problems that keep cropping up with Lion and getting little to show for it.
WARNING! FOOT-STAMPING WHINGE ABOUT LION - LOOK AWAY AND DOWN TO THE HOWLING FACES - IT WON'T BE ANYTHING THAT YOU HAVEN'T HEARD BEFORE:
I gave up on OSX when I tried Panther - that was dreadful - but was lured back by Tiger, have used Leopard very comfortably for about 5 years, had a very happy couple of months with Snow Leopard and now - this mess that is Lion! I have repaired OSX install permissions and "home user" permissions time and again, TinkerTooled it until I am blue in the face and it seems that every few days I manage to fix something and then almost immediately something else screws up. I can't upgrade to Mountain Lion on this machine and am seriously considering installing or running Linux as these problems with Lion are just never-ending - and then there are all the other stupid changes that have subsequently been sensibly reverted, mitigated or worked around in ML).
I have never bothered much with Address Book or Mail in the past as I have found them too limited. I have used either the Gmail web interface or Thunderbird. However, Gmail has started crashing my favourite browsers (Seamonkey and Firefox), Thunderbird has got just a bit too complicated and I cannot get Quicksilver to play ball with Gmail. The Lion version of Address Book is better than Gmail Contacts and Mail Smart Folders can emulate Gmail filters and labels - a huge improvement. So, just when these apps look good enough to be worth bothering with, they come part and parcel with what I have seen mocked, and rightly, as "Apple Vista"!
Sorry for that but I am about at the end of my tether with it all ;-/
I would be very grateful if anyone can offer any advice about:
1) That strange looking zero bytes file in the Address Book folder.
2) Whether the Address Book debug menu options might be of any help in this situation?
There seem to be lots of people having problems with Address Book in both Lion and Mountain Lion, if not exactly this issue, so maybe the answers will help others too.
Fingers crossed!
Ms Mousette
ps. In the product list to tick for this question they are grouped so I cannot specify that this is actually nothing to do with the iPhone. I have got a load of contacts on my iPhone too but I am not going to sync them until I have got this issue sorted out.

Could this font be the cause of the problem?
Possibly, since that font is not the one that Address Book uses and there is no method to specify or change the font used by Address Book. You could have recovered your Address Book contacts without syncing, so that could also be part of the problem. You should always make a keep a backup of your Address Book on your computer and in another safe location whenever you make any change to it.
May I ask why you haven't updated to 10.4.11 yet, as it provides various bug fixes and security enhancements?
Mulder

How to i get my contacts on my phone to sync into my address book on my macbook?

i synced my phone to my macbook and the newer contacts wont show up in the addressbook on the laptop. how do i make them sync to the address book from my phone?

What Operating System is your Macbook running? If it's Lion, then you can go into the iCloud control panel in System Preferences, sign in with your Apple ID, and check "Contacts". Then it should sync with your iPhone contacts.
Oh, and make sure your phone is set up with iCloud as well. Of course, only if your Mac is running Lion.

How do I sync with Yahoo address book into my phones contacts? iphone 4

"Itunes could not sync with Yahoo address book because you are not registered to sync with yahoo. please enter your yahoo ID and password again"
Where do I do this?

When I first pluged in the iphone 4 it transfered the contacts ... I since updated them and now get the message ....
"Itunes could not sync with Yahoo address book because you are not registered to sync with yahoo. please enter your yahoo ID and password again"

Can I sync my iMa address book with contacts on my iPhone?

Can I sync my iMac address book with my iPhone?

absolutely.http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iphone_user_guide.pdf

Entourage Sync with iCal & Address Book - Fixed!

Finally found a solution that really works.
Background
I had the infamous issue of trying to get Entourage Calendar and Contacts to Sync with iCal & Address book for the purpose of syncing with iTunes on my iPhone.
I've had most of the symptoms listed on this site.
It only syncs one way, Entourage Calendar shows up in iCal, but it's blank, Entourage Calendar does not show up at all in iCal, but contacts show up in Address book.
I've read nearly every post about it and tried all the various fixes listed, but none of them worked, or at least not consistently.
My setup:
OS X 10.5.5 MacBook Pro (latest updates)
Entourage 2004 (latest patches)
(If your using Mobile me, log out before you do this)
Here's what you'll need to do:
1. Backup your Main Identity which contains all your entourage info, email, contacts, calendars, etc. (Just in case you goof something up)
It's located in your home user account ~User/youraccount/documents/Microsoft User Data (Backup this whole folder)
If you don't know all your email credentials such as username, password, smtp, pop info, jott it down as it will save you some time later.
2. Launch Entourage and uncheck the Sync Services. Quit Entourage and all Office Apps.
Also you should archive all your entourage data if you want to copy it to the new setup.
Archive the contacts and Calendar Events separately.
3. Launch iCal and manually delete the Entourage Calendar (if present) Quit iCal.
4. Now open your documents folder and locate the folder named Microsoft User Data and rename the folder to Microsoft User Data Original
5. Create a new OS X User from the System Preferences... Accounts
6. Logoff your current user account and login to your new user account.
7. Launch Entourage and enter your email info.
8. Now create a single calendar event.
9. Go to Entourage Preferences, and check the Sync Services. (click OK, etc.)
10. Wait 5 minutes, then launch iCal and you will see the Entourage Calendar with your single event.
You should also see your contact that was created when you setup email in the Address Book.
If this worked you've isolated the syncing problem to a corrupt file in your user account or corrupt data in your entourage account.
You can go back to your original user account and delete all the info from entourage to see if you had corrupt data in entourage, (youd did back it up first, right?) or you can follow the procedures below to move all your stuff over to the new login account.
Now you'll need to migrate your data from your Old login account to your new login account.
(I've tried just moving the new Entourage identity back to the old account, and it didn't always work)
The easiest way to move data between accounts is to login as root.
To enable the root user, Go to Utilities, Directory Utility, and under the edit menu, select enable root user, enter a unique password, later you can disable root login when your all done)
Logout of your new login and login as root with the new password you just created
When it prompts for a username type "root". If you don't have that option click the Other login and then type in root as the username and the new password.
Once your logged in as root, be careful as you can pretty much trash anything without any warnings.
Now Open your original user folder located in ~User/youraccount as well as the new user you just created
(not the root account)
Open the folders side by side and drag the contents from old to new:
Desktop
Documents
iTunes
Movies
Music
plus any other info you need.
Log back into your new user account, and run a repair permissions from disk utility.
Launch Entourage and enter a new event and contact. Then wait a few minutes and verify that it made it over to iCal & Address book.
If it did, and it should have, you can then import your entourage archives, do contacts first, then wait a few minutes and verify it shows up in Address Book, then do your Calendar events and verify.
When everything is syncing between entourage and iCal/Address Book you can connect your iPhone and enable syncing.
A few important notes:
-If you have Years worth of Calendar Items in entourage, you will most likely run into problems, so archive your old Events and only restore that which you need.
-You may also need to retrieve old application preferences.
-Once your sure you've got everything, you can delete the Microsoft User Data Original folder that we renamed and put in your Documents Folder.
Hope this helps somebody out.
LJS

Entourage calendar does not sync as you are expecting, with iCal.
Turn your Entourage sync services on (to sync your calendar) and you will notice in iCal a new calendar on the left, called Entourage. Mind has a purple color to it, for example.
Now, in iCal, create a new appointment and assign it TO the Entourage calendar. Now sync, and hey presto it shows up in Entourage.
This is by design, Entourage does not sync ALL of your iCal calendars, it will only sync the Entourage calendar which is created in iCal.
For example, I have Home, Work, Personal and Entourage calendars in iCal - appointments I make with my Home, Work or Personal calendar will not appear in Entourage, period. Only appointments made in iCal using the Entourage calendar will appear in Entourage (after a sync).
Likewise, appointments made IN Entourage Calendar, are sync'd to iCal and are only visible if you show the Entourage calendar in iCal - (it's switched ON by default, but can be switched off by un-ticking the calendar in the left pane of iCal).
Does this make sense?

Sync with Windows Address Book just hangs

I have iPod Touch 4g, iOS 4.1, iTunes 10.0.1.22, Windows XP (up to date). I sync'd my Windows Address Book to the Touch without issue, I made some updates on the Touch, and now when I try to sync, it just hangs at trying to sync the contacts. No errors, it just indicates that it is syncing. iTunes doesn't actually hang, I can cancel the sync, and I can still sync songs, and it still backs up fine as first sync step.

As far as I am aware, "identities" is an Outlook Express concept that was dropped by Microsoft some time ago in favour of separate User Accounts along with Windows Address Book being replaced by Windows Contacts. I am also not 100% sure that iTunes will sync with Windows Address book. Do you see it on the drop down menu in the Sync Contacts tab?
If you do and if iTunes will sync with Windows Address Book you should only see the contacts associated with the identity you are using and shared contacts. If iTunes then syncs, it should sync with the identity you are using at the time of the sync.

Contacts per iMac address book: 1,301 iCloud: 1,486 iPhone 4s: 1,508 iPhone 4: 1,489 How can I make them all the same?

My address book has been an intense problem for me for a while (i.e. even pre-iPhone 4s/iCloud). Before I upgraded, my iPhone 4 had thousands of duplicate contacts. The address book was up to ~7,500 even though what was then Mobile Me had somewhere in the 1,000 to 1,500 range for contacts. So after I upgraded, I attempted to fix it by doing the following:
I connected my iPhone 4S to the iMac (after I set it up with the latest iPhone 4 backup), went to the iTunes info tab for my device and unchecked syncing for any address book contacts, calendars, email accounts. And then I synced it. This didn't work. I believe my contacts were still at ~7,500.
So next I tried checking just the Sync Address Book Contacts option on the info tab which then allowed me to check contacts under the Advanced/Replace Information on this iPhone section at the bottom of the info tab. This made my iPhone contact list further balloon up to 13,000 + contacts.
So the next thing I did (still in the info tab) was to select Selected Groups under the "Sync Address Book Contacts" section of the info tab. I believe I still had the option to replace the info on my iPhone selected. I then selected one of my contact groups that had no contacts in it. Why would I create a contact group with no contacts in it? I didn't. I created some smart groups and prior to my iPhone 4s upgrade I noticed the smart groups contact lists I spent some time setting up were not populated with anything. Same with some of the non-smart group contact lists I had created.
After telling it to only sync that empty group and to replace the contents on my iPhone I ended up with 1,508 contacts. Why I didn't end up with either zero or the same number as in iCloud is beyond me. This at least seems closer to my true number of contacts but as mentioned in my subject above the number of contacts differ between all three places (iPhone 4s, iCloud and iMac address book). I also noticed that my wife is no longer in my iPhone 4S or in iCloud as a contact but she is listed in the iMac contacts which has fewer contacts than the other two places.
So I believe that in all three locations, there are situations where the address book includes contacts not in the other two locations, and vice versa (excludes contacts that are in the other locations). Can somebody help me understand how I can truly sync my contacts so that they are identical in all locations? This has been a huge problem for me since the Mobile Me roll out and sadly continues to persist now that I've migrated to iCloud.
Blah, I am so fed up with this persistent issue.

I assume you never got a solution. My own painful story is here:
http://tech.kateva.org/2012/06/icloud-transition-went-as-expected.html
I've given up on Lion/iCloud. I'll try Mountain Lion.

Crash in YahooSync when trying syncing with Yahoo Address Book

My iPhone (fw 1.1.1) works fine. I tried to syn with my contacts on the Yahoo address book. When I click on "syn contacts with Yahoo! Address Book" in iTunes (latest vesion 7.4.3.1) it pops up the login dialog.
Then it crashes (login on the website works fine).
iTunes says: "unknown error (6)".
Any idea how to solve this?!

While researching I found the following doc on Apple called
"iPhone: Exception error when syncing with Yahoo! Address Book" at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305851
Currently I just have telephone numbers in my contacts, no e-mail addresses. So that can't be the problem. I also replaced special characters like ö, ä and so on.
When I retried now I got the same error

HT1296 I have the original iPhone and I can't sync the address book from my Mac to the iPhone. What should be the problem and can I sync?

I have the original iPhone and I can't sync the address book from my Mac to the iPhone. What should be the problem and can I sync?

Thanks a lot for the answer. I'm so upset, have no even one contact on my phone. I has to do with the moving to iCloud from MobileMe.
I did exactly what you wrote, and when trying to click the vcf file on the iPhone the screen freezing, and then after few long seconds it goes alon to home.
So I tried less contacts in a Vcard, and i'm dividing my address book, doing little by little and it work.
Thank you so much.
I still dont get why the sync with my computer address book is not working.
And why when I moved to icloud all the photos I had next to the contacts are disappered.
I had my iPad, which it still, I did not move from MobileMe to iCloud and all the photos are there!
Anything I can do to use the iCloud on the iPad as well and update the iCloud with the photos?

Sync cell phone address book to a separate address book

I use 2 cell phones for different purposes. One is just for work.
Is there any way to split up the address book (in my mac) so that when I sync my work cell phone, it saves it to its own separate address book? Instead of merging all my addresses from 2 different phones and the mac

You can easily create two Groups in Address Book - one for each phone - with different Contacts in, and then choose the relevant Group to sync TO the phone in Address Book.
The problem is that iSync still doesn't put new Contacts created on a phone into the designated Group in Address Book when syncing back FROM the phone. All new Contacts created on the phone will go into the All group and you will manually have to organise them into the required Groups in Address Book.
The only other way to do this is have separate user accounts on your Mac, one for Home and one for Work which would have separate Address Book databases, then sync the relevant phone from within the relevant user account.

Sync iCal and Address Book for free (using Google)

This works like a charm. It is really two-way sync, using google as an intermediary.
For Address Book: import your contacts from Address Book to Google Contacts, put them on My contacts list, set sync to Google on Address Book preferences, then set Google as your primary account on your phone's contacts app. Now, any new contacts or changes you make, on the phone or on the computer will sync. You can find more info here.
For iCal: enter your google info under accounts in iCal preferences, set up google as your primary calender on your phone. In iCal you will have to enter events under the google tab for them to be synced to google calendar and then to your phone. And of course, whatever entries or changes done here or there will sync. More info here.
What's nice about this is that you never have to go to google for anything, it's just the middle guy working in the background, invisible.
Could this really be "the missing sync"?

I don't know if you can do this with the Centro. I should have mention that I was talking about webOS (Pre and Pixi). To sync with webOS you need Mac OS 10.5 or later for iCal, and 10.6 for Address Book.

How to sync Notes, iCal & Address Book between iPod & Mac?

Hi, there:
Could someone please be so kind to teach me how to sync Notes, iCal & Address Book between my iPod Touch (with iOS6) & Mac (with OS X10.6.8)?
What file format would it be in when Notes is synced from my iPod Touch into Mac, if possible?
How may I drag photos in my regular photos files (not using iPhoto) from my Mac into iPod Touch?
And........HAPPY NEW YEAR of 2014 to Everyone!!!!!!!!
Message was edited by: applerock9999

Thanks so much for your detailed reply. Much appreciated!
Just to confirm my understanding that 100% clear on the solution, if my wife gets her own iCloud account, on her phone she'll receive her own emails & iMessages (makes sense) but not contacts. Calendars though we could share.
Without two separate iCloud accts though -- iCloud on my phone, and her email through Gmail on her phone -- we could share all the common iCloud data (contacts, calendar, notes, reminders, etc.) by enabling the appropriate settings on her phone.
Am I correct to conclude then that the sole benefit of her adding own iCloud acct is email through iCloud (and I guess the free 5GB)? It would not be possible to simply and easily have one common 'family' address book (i.e. since while Calendars are share-able, contact libraries are not)?

New phone does everything but sync iCal and Address Book

I have Leopard on my MacBook Pro; my new iPhone works fine - except for sync of iCal and Address Book. iTunes behaves as if it is syncing; but then there is nothing on the phone.
I've scanned the other sync-related messages, and nothing suggested there has helped (restarting both devices; clearing the iSync cache; etc.). I called Apple, and a nice young man walked me through many possibilities, ultimately suggesting I archive & reinstall Leopard. (He assured me it was like starting from scratch, and I'd have to reinstall my apps; of course that is not the case.) I did that; it didn't help.
Sync does work with a new user I created; but I can't figure out how to get my iCal and Address Book files over there.
Any suggestions appreciated!

Sorry, missed it in the previous post.
Couple of more items.
Export all contacts from address book. vcards would work.
Delete all contacts from address book.
Quit out of address book.
Open finder and go to your home directory/library/preferences.
Drag the com.apple.AddressBook.plist file to your desktop.
Open isync preferences and reset sync history.
Open address book back up and enter a test contact into address book.
Connect the iphone to the computer and try just syncing contacts replacing contacts on iphone.
If this works, import all your contacts back into address book and sync back to iphone.
Hope this helps.

Maverick won't permit syncing Address Book or Calendar by USB to iPhone or iPad and permits only syncing by iCloud, which I don't want to use. Any ideas on how to sync without using iCloud?

Maverick won't permit syncing Address Book or Calendar by USB cable from my MacBook Air to my iPhone and iPad and permits syncing only by iCloud. Mountain Lion permitted this via the Info tab on iTunes. I don't want to use iCloud. Any ideas with Maverick on how to sync Address Book and Calendar from computer to iPhone and iPad without using iCloud?

ymcneil - thanks for the work around. But isn't it amazing Apple forces us to do this to maintain our privacy.
I live in Australia where there are good privacy laws protecting citizens. I do not want to be forced to use iCloud when the data sits in the USA with weaker privacy laws and also able to be seen by the US Government under the Patriot Act. Further I suspect Apple will interrogate my contacts and calendar for commercial purposes and I do not want that either.
I chose to synch my calendar and contacts with my iphone and ipad. I have relied for years on carrying around my phone with my diary on it. I can no longer do that.
Whoever made this decision at Apple has to be someone who knows little about the world. I can actually see EU regulators getting very annoyed by this.
I too woud like the itunes mac to iphone/ipad local backup given back.
In the meantime - thanks for the work around

Sync first erased Address Book contacts, then erased my new iPhone contacts

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