Address Book backup restores all but Groups

I have my Address Book organized into a lot of groups. Yesterday, for some reason, the Groups disappeared - it may be related to my experimenting with synching to MobileMe. Fortunately, I had created a backup Address Book archive before I played around with MobileMe synching.
But when I replaced the messed-up Address Book with the archive, none of the Groups were restored. I even went into Time Machine and pulled up an Address Book from the day before - which showed all the groups - but when I restored it, none of the Contacts were assigned to groups.
Am I doing it wrong? Is there any way to restore Address Book from an archive backup or from Time Machine and maintain your Groups structure?

first, there are no promises of anything when mobileme is concerned. That said. Address book is integrated with time machine but I had similar problems as you restoring groups so this may be a bug. the following should work for sure. quit address book, delete the folder homedirectory/library/Application support/address book and then restore it from TM backup. start Address book. your groups should be back.

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