Address Book/Contacts name field problem

Any suggestions on why I can't leave first or last name fields blank for a contact? If I enter a "first name" and leave "last name" blank (or vice versa), why does the system automatically enter the same information in the blank field? Example "First = Jon" and "Last = Blank" (nothing is enter). Soon afterwards the enter becomes "First = Jon" and "Last = Jon". Regardless of the device used, the result is the same. I have been patiently waiting (mid April 2013) for a reply from AppleCare.
Thanks.

I've tried editing both on iCloud & on my unit. I've deleted the contact & waited a while & closed application to be sure it was gone then created a "new" contact in iCloud (via web site) and a different "new" contact on my unit (first on one & last on other). Within a few days it puts the info in the blank field. (I did this with AppleCare on the phone & on my on.)
Oh, should not make a difference but I use Safari and all Apps are up to date.

Similar Messages

I would like to add a new card date field to my address Book Contacts. Is this possible? Thanks, Jeff

Hi,
I would like to add a new card date field to my Address Book Contacts. Is there any way to do this? I have a lot of contacts and it helps me remember who I talked to, if I had a new card date field in my contacts.
Thank you,
Jeff

Hi,
I found the applescript below from Michael Bach that works well.
(* Find recently modified entries in the Address Book
Input: a time interval (backwards from today) in the variable "daysBeforeToday"
Output: a string on the clipboard, format: YYYY-MM-DD (tab) Name (return)
Â©2009, Michael Bach, <www.michaelbach.de> *)
set daysBeforeToday to 7 -- <<< change as desired or read from a dialog
tell application "Address Book"
copy (current date) - daysBeforeToday * 24 * minutes * 60 to referenceDate
copy (every person whose (modification date > referenceDate)) to modifiedPersons
set s to ""
repeat with aPerson in modifiedPersons
    set d to ((modification date) of aPerson) -- now change to international format and forget the hours
    set dateString to (year of d as string) & "-" & (my twoDigits((month of d) as number)) & "-" & (my twoDigits(day of d) as string)
    set s to s & dateString & tab & (name of aPerson) & return
end repeat
set the clipboard to s --for pasting into other applications
s -- to view immediately in the script editor
end tell
on twoDigits(aNumber) -- trivial utility for formatting
if aNumber < 10 then return "0" & (aNumber as string)
return (aNumber as string)
end twoDigits
I changed the modification date to creation date.
Thanks for the replies.

Getting my address book contacts on my iPods- problems!

hello brilliant mac users!
here is my predicament.
i have an eMac running 10.4.3
i have a 60 gig colour iPod {photo}
i have a 4 gig nano
i use Address Book and iCal on my mac - they are my life.
i have 745 cards in my address book- they are in 4 different groups.
up until a few weeks ago i had both my iPods set on the following settings via iTunes:
Contacts:
Synchronize Address Book Contacts {ticked}
Synchronize all contacts {selected}
{same for the iCal}
and everything was hunky dory.
perfect.
but now i am getting only, 20, 40, 5, 70 contact "cards" showing up on my iPods!?
i have changed the settings in iTunes to every combination i can think of.
i have done resets of the ipods
i have done restores via the iPod updater
i have done factory resets
i have wiped the iPods in every way i can think of and updated them with every different way i can think of in iTunes.
i have dragged a back up of my address book into "notes" / "contacts" - nothing.
i am seriously getting annoyed and have no idea what is going on...
as i typed i did an iPod update again
and after updating all my address book contacts,
{as i said on my mac there is i have 745 cards}
i have 19 contacts on my iPod?!?!
and in Calendars- it's all perfect.
please help!

still no solutions?!
could custom fields in the address book be a problem?

Problems with outlook and address book contacts: my outlook contacts had around 3,000 entries. Outlook duplicated by itself and now outlook and address book have each over 340,000. What should I do?

Problems with outlook and address book contacts: my outlook contacts had around 3,000 entries. Outlook duplicated entries and have now 340,000. I reinstalled microsoft office and, thus, outlook, and reinstalled mac OS X system and applications. While I managed to delete outlook contacts so that I can re-sync with my blackberry, the contacts at Mac Address Book were not deleted and still have over 340,000 entries. I do not mind deleting all contacts since I have back up, but I have not been able to delete them. Also, when I go at Address Book and try to delete or merge duplicated entries, the system takes forever and never ends because of such large amount of entries. Worse, when I do so I run out of RAM memory.
My Macbook pro is just 2 months old.
What should I do? Is there a way to delete my Mac Address Book without having the problem above?
Many thanks
Regis

zlatan24 wrote:
For solving out troubles connected with corrupted or lost address book you may use address book recovery. It owns various features such as restoring wab files, it working under any Windows OS. The utility has modern and easy to use interface due to almost every experienced users.
If it is a windows problem it's not going to run on the OP's MacBook Pro

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.

A few IPhoto Faces pictures cannot be used in Address Book contacts

Hi all,
I have read some topics around about similar issue but I was not able to fix the problem by reading at suggestions.
Couple of days ago I have started to populate my address book.
I noticed that I was not able to use Faces from Iphoto to assign a picture to my contacts - the reason was Iphoto and address book probably use the same database and there was no match between a face and a contact. Only solution: retag the faces! I used the following method:
1) choose a photo already tagged
2) tag it again using a contact from the address book
3) merge old tag with new tag
4) rename the Face with a nickname I prefer instead of last name \ first name from address book.
It worked with the exception of 2 faces: every time I do step 4, in the address book I cannot find anymore the pictures.
I tried to delete the contact in the address book, use completely different tags and so on, but no way, it seems like there are some trash data or reference data preventing me from doing that.
I know it is only i face \ contact but would liek to understand why.
Any Genius that can help me?
Cheers

Update:
I think I have found the gap: if the name assigned to the Face has no reference with the address book contact, the issue is experienced.
Try to explain: my contact in AB is Dexter Morgan. In IPhoto I start tagging all the pictures as Dexter Morgan. Then I change the Face tag from Dexter Morgan to: "uncle D". I will not be able to use anymore a picture from the group unlce D to set an image to Dexter Morgan contact in AB.
In the case I would rename the Face tag back to Dexter Morgan o for example uncle Dexter, I will be able to use the images inside the group into the AB.

Cannot Delete Address Book Contacts

I can't seem to delete some address book contacts. When I open the address book all my contacts show. But, there is no "plus" or "minus" sign anywhere in the window so I can't use them to highlight a name and simply hit "minus" to delete a name. When I right click on the name the only options it gives me are "edit card" and "export vcard". Even if I choose "edit", nothing happens. When I hightlight a name and just hit the delete or backspace key, again, nothing happens. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I'm having what seems to be exactly the same problem. The only thing I've discovered, if it will help someone solve this for us, is that the problem only affects one user. I have another administrator user and a guest standard user; both of them can edit, add,etc in their own Address book. I've tried everything I can think of, except for reinstalling the OS.
Thanks.

Syncing Address Book contacts with iPod

I know some people will think this post should be in the iPod forum but I have realised that it is not my iPod beccasue I tried using a different iPod and the same problem happened. Anyway...the problem is that when I choose to sync Address Book contacts with iPod it comes up with this message:
No contacts available
Contact syncinig cannot be enabled because there are no contacts available. Do you want to open Address Book and create contacts now?
And gives me the options: Cancel and Open Address Book
I have tried deleting several different preferences for iTunes, Address Book and iSync (just incase).
I don't know what else to do, I know I can manually add my contacts by exporting them all as a vCard but it would be so much easier if iTunes could do it. Please help if you know anything!
iMac G5 (iSight) Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1.9GHz PowerPC G5, 512MB RAM, 17" Widescreen
iMac G5 (iSight) Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1.9GHz PowerPC G5, 512MB RAM, 17" Widescreen

I've got Calenders syncing again, not sure how I did it. I deleted the one of the folders in /Users/Alex/Library/Application Support/SyncServices/Local/clientdata/
I found that in each folder there is a clientname.txt file with the name of what data is in the folder e.g. iCal, Safari, Keychain, Mail.
I deleted the iCal one and iTunes seems to be syncing it now. So I looked for a folder with Address Book in the clientname.txt file but there wasn't one. I am wondering whether that's the reason!

Printing Address Book Contacts

I’m trying to print the address book contacts by going to print>address book>style: lists, but the results are poor. I could not adjust the margins or width of the column and the labels overlap the content. I would like to print all the information including the notes. I went through troubleshooting of the fields in every card but that didn’t help. I tried Entourage but didn’t like the result. Is there any other third party software or plug-in that can help me with this task? Somebody here suggested to drag the contacts into Numbers and format it in that application but I could not get the note field in. Thank you for any thoughts and suggestions.
easyW

I'm having the same problem. Couldn't find any mention of how to fix this in the manual. Apple is slipping?

Mac OS 10.4 Address Book Contacts

Niether the Palm Data Transfer Agent nor the MissingSync program work under Mac OS 10.4, and I do not want to pay for 10.5 when 10.6 is coming out in September. Here is how I have found to copy all of my Address Book contacts to the Pre. It requires you to have a gmail account.
1) In Address Book, select all the contacts you want to export. You can select multiple contacts by shift-click or command-clicking. For example, to get all of your contacts click on the first one, then scroll to the last one and shift click on it. All of your contacts will be highlighted.
2) From the File menu, choose Export vCard..., enter of filename (or leave it as the devault "vCards"), note the directory where the vcards will be saved, and click the Save button.
3) Go to your gmail account using your favorite browser.
4) Click on the Contacts link (on the left side of the screen).
5) In the upper right hand corner of the contacts box, click on Import.
6) Browse to find the file of vCards you saved, and click on the import button.
At this point all of your contacts will be loaded into gmail. If you have already sync'ed your Pre with gmail, then your contacts should automatically update. Otherwise, follow the instructions for sync'ing with gmail.
While this procedure will copy all of your data over to the phone, it is not a real sync in that if you make changes either on the phone or in Address Book, you will have to manually push the changes over. I'll probably get MissingSync when I upgrade to a more recent version of OS X, but it would be nice if the Pre came with this functionality built-in...
Post relates to: Pre p100eww (Sprint)

Does anyone have a solution for converting Palm Contacts? I'm happy to buy software to make this happen. I have 2500+ contacts and use many of the fields (and would like to keep them). I am on a mac and use a droid phone (Samsung Intercept). Sprint says that they can convert the contacts, but that they will then only be on my phone. I need to be able to update on my computer and have that sync with my phone.
thank you!

Trying to link Address Book Contacts with Outlook 2011 - iSync??

Hi There,
Would be grateful for some assistance.
I've got all my contacts and other things in iCloud - wonderful!
I've managed to get all my contacts from iCloud to show up in Address book.
I want to sync my address book contacts in Outlook 2011 - after three days of trying I'm still stuck.
I've checked the Syncing set up in Outlook, that appears to be correct.
I've checked addressbook, and other than having two folders one entitles iCloud (which has everything I need in it) and one entitled On my Mac, which has a couple of testers in it but nothing else, everything else seems fine.
I've checked that iCloud is synching into the iCloud folder in Address Book by putting some stuff on my iPhone and seeing it got pushed from the iCloud to my MacBook - all working fine there.
I have read lots of forum posts and keep seeing references to iSync, and how its on all Mac's but then I see people saying that its not on with Lion - I'm running Lion, and I can't find iSync...so this would seem to be true.
Can anyone tell me how I might achieve this sync process - I would much rather be using an integrated programme like Outlook...any thoughts

Enthusiast: I just got back from the Apple Store. This is the solution they suggested and seems to work. We got rid of iCloud contacts. We just set up Yahoo account in the "mail, contacts, calendars" of the iPhone. Under the "contacts" section we have the "default Account" set to Yahoo. When any additions/delete/mods happen then it is updated on Yahoo.
On the MacBook we deleted the "on My Computer" and deleted "iCloud" and then added the Yahoo account for synching. This is basically used as a secondary backup for the yahoo contact and used if using the computer. It is not necessary to use the computer for any of this.
I've been having lots of problems with Yahoo contacts. I had previously pulled in facebook contacts. This was NOT a good idea. I cleaned up my contacts, exported them out to CSV. Scrubbed some more. Imported them to a new yahoo account. Then deleted all contacts from my main Yahoo, permanently deleting them. Then imported my contacts. I did lose all my "lists" settings. That was a small price to pay.
Now iPhone, iPad and MacBook address book and Yahoo are all in sync.
I was shown at the store is to refresh the Yahoo webpage (CTRL R) and then refresh the contacts on the iPhone. There is a slight delay in update. iCloud is faster at it. But its best to avoid iCloud if you are using Yahoo contacts. Also avoid Facebook contacts. If you really want to use the Facebook feature, I would do it on a different account and then bring in the contacts that you want through an import.
I was having problems with Yahoo contacts and it might be that it was being flaky or they were experiencing problems ... because all of a sudden it started working again. I've seen similar problems with Yahoo Calendar.

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.

Address Book contacts not showing up in Mail

I'm unable to access my address book contacts from Mail. The wheel on the right side of the recipient box spins but never finds the contact or group I'm searching. Can anyone help?

Please follow these directions to delete the Mail "sandbox" folder.
Back up all data.
Triple-click the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal
from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a folder named "com.apple.mail" selected. If it does, move the selected folder — not just its contents — to the Desktop. Leave the Finder window open for now.
Log out and log back in. Launch Mail and test. If the problem is resolved, you may have to recreate some of your Mail settings. You can then delete the folder you moved and close the Finder window. If you still have the problem, quit Mail again and put the folder back where it was, overwriting the one that may have been created in its place. Post your results.
Caution: If you change any of the contents of the sandbox, but leave the folder itself in place, Mail may crash or not launch at all. Deleting the whole sandbox will cause it to be rebuilt automatically.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C). In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Address Book Contacts are Gone

This is a really odd problem that has been going on for sometime now. It first started when I was running Tiger and the problem continues now even with Leopard. The problem is that periodically without warning, all of the contacts in my address book mysteriously disappear - I mean they are gone - deleted. At first, I thought this was an issue with .Mac syncing as I had it set to sync automatically every hour. I have disabled .Mac sync and now only sync manually so I know that it is not an issue with .Mac sync.
Earlier today I checked on my computer and everything was good, all of the contacts were in place. I put in my iPhone and hit sync and left the room. I know for a fact that my iPhone had all my contacts and I know that Address Book had all my contacts. When I came back to the computer a few hours later, Address Book is completely empty - the iPhone has lost all of it's contacts. I logged into .Mac on the internet and all of my contacts are still there. My last sync to .Mac was last night at 7:30. Back when I had .Mac sync set to automatic syncing, it was not uncommon for me to come in and find that all of my contacts would be gone in Address Book and on .Mac as well. I've tried contacting Apple about it and I never received any kind of a response.
Of course I can easily recover everything with my Time Machine backups, but this is perplexing me greatly. How in the heck can this be happening? Is anyone else experiencing anything like this? This is starting to drive me crazy as I cannot figure out how the Address Book is mysteriously losing contacts unless it is happening during the sync process with the iPhone. I would certainly love to hear any suggestions on how to remedy this issue as this is extremely annoying. Thank you.

OK, now I am worried and ticked off! I still dont have my contacts back in place...after spending now over 3 hours with three different apple experts. Where my address book contacts went to no one knows. No "experts" at Apple Care or at the local retail store "Genius Bar" seem to have any answers that are working! Even my .mac backup is not working when I try to "restore" my data from several backup dates before when my contacts vanished suddenly.
I have written several emails today to the .Mac support (Unfortunately only available via e-mail.... I had an apple care rep tell me that .Mac is not really Apple, but an outside firm that runs .Mac).
Here is my last email to .Mac support that I just sent out:
<<Apple and .Mac engineers out there: PLEASE help us. There is a bad bug going around where our contacts are being vaporized and making many of us go crazy. Help us get out of this twilight zone of losing all our contact data!!!!
Read all about it from many upset users at:
<a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://">http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6939388#69393 88
Then call me at (my phone number) so I can tell you whats going on with my case and HELP me get my info back! I have sent several other emails to you here today.
Thanks!
Marcel Howard D.>>
I hope this gets us all some help from the Apple Engineers and customer service.
1. What are the common details, including any error messages, related to our problems that we are discussing on this thread?

Import address book contact list into ichat

I am going to make a new aim screen name, and i was wondering if i do, will i be able to import my address book contacts back into ichat for the new account?

The AOL Service Assistant works fine for transfering the AOL contacts to the Apple Address Book. However, I was unable to get the AOL favorites to tansfer to Safari. It keeps hanging up with the rotating basketball. Any further suggestions?
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Address Book/Contacts name field problem

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