Address book, desire merge against backup

I recently noticed that one of the contacts in my address book was corrupted., and still later that another appeared to be missing. What would be ideal is if there were some way of displaying the differences between the current address book and my last backup so that I could select what particular contacts I might wish to restore.
Does this capability exist?
--david boldt

Hello Mark, welcome to the discussions. I think the confusion lies with the syncing software rather than AB itself. Try turning of syncing, then delete and restore your AB on the powerbook. Observe it for a couple of days without doing any syncing and I think you will find it is stable.
AK

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"Address book card merge" in Pages '13

Has "address book card merge" been removed from Pages '13 features?

You can use the Contacts just like you could use the Address book for creating envelopes or labels.
Select the contacts you want to send to > Cmd + P for printing > Set which envelope you want to use. Print

CAUTION-MAJOR BUG Address Book's "Merge Selected Cards" DELETES CONTENT!

I have just realized (after losing much data) that when using the Merge Selected Cards function within the Apple Address Book that it will, without notification, delete content! That's right, if the two cards share different data but have the same field labels, Address Book will merge the two and simply keep the content in the 1st record (deleting the content in the 2nd).
For example... Two records (same contact), one record with a home-email and home-number and one with a work-email and work-number. However since both happen to have default field labels of "email" and "number" when you select "Merge..." you don't end up with two emails/numbers in the merged contact you actually only have the content from the 1st record.
Essentially "Merge Selected Records" = "Delete 2nd Record"
This is a major error. The feature should be removed asap until it is corrected!!

This bug still affects the Address Book v5.0.3 which is updated with the Mac OS X 10.6.5 update which has just been released.
Apple have been notified of this bug as far back as November 2009.
There are at least 3 separate RADAR bug reports about this issue.
There have been 3 Mac OS Snow Leopard updates since the bug was reported to them. The bug has not been fixed in any of these updates.
The bug does not affect Address Book v5.0
It does affect Address Book v5.0.1
It does affect Address Book v5.0.2
It does affect Address Book v5.0.3
Apple were notified in November 2009 after Address Book v5.0.1 was released that this problem existed. We also told Apple customer support. We told the Apple Store Regent Street Geniuses. We emailed Apple Developer Bug Reporting and were initial told they were aware of it, then we received no more replies.
The original thread in the forums detailing this issue is now archived even though the bug remains. So we cannot reply and update that thread.
We suggest you try and make as many people at Apple aware of this issue as we think it is very poor that they are aware of a serious data loss bug for 12 months and havent rectified it in many software and Address Book app updates.
Edward
Equinox News Pictures Ltd.
+448700780000

I cannot get my address book to merge with iCloud?

I cannot get my address book to merge with iCloud?

Yes, the settings all appear to be correct on the Info page in Itunes. I have contacts checked to synch, calendars and mail accounts but only the contacts are not moving to the Iphone.

Recover address book from a manual backup

I recently ran a manual backup (copied everything from the user's home folder, and all sub items) for a client before switching machines (and switching from Tiger to Leopard).
I was told he did not use address book, but it turned out that he did.
So how can I go about restoring the address book from the old backup?
Thank you.

I have a similar situation - with my old Powerbook, i would manually copy all the files inside my user folder (Users/<username>) to an external HD by dragging the files in Finder from the Powerbook to the external drive. However, i never did these manual backups while being logged in as a "root user" the way this support doc outlines. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553?viewlocale=en_US
Since then, my Powerbook has totally failed and I need to set up a new Macbook Pro using the copy of the <username> folder on the HD. But I'm not sure if I can just copy the files over using Finder? I was running Leopard on the Powerbook, and the Macbook Pro also uses Leopard.
In restoring your Address Book, did you have to be logged in as a root user when doing both the manual backup and the restore? I'm not sure how being logged in (or not) as a root user could affect the whole manual file copying/backup and restoration process.
Thanks in advance!

Address Book and iCal Server backups

I'm working to implement a company-wide Address Book, iCal, and iChat server via Lion Server where I work, and I've gotten most of the setup figured out (I think), and am approaching the point where I can roll it out to a few users for further testing. However, before I'm allowed to move forward any further w/ it I have to have two means of backing up in place and ready to be rolled out at the same time as the server—so I'm planning on using Time Machine as one so it does the entirety of the server and its data/settings, but they also want me to do one of the Address Book Server and iCal Server databases individually, like back up the folder the data is, so we can, if ever necessary, import the backup databases to another computer, so we at least have the content, if not the full server functionality. And, for obvious reasons, it can't be backed up locally.
So I'm looking for a means of doing this and would love any input anyone has. Ease of use/setup is pretty important as this is my first time setting Server up and I've no programming knowledge. I'm fairly sure I'll be able to find (or write my own, though that's unlikely) or modify and AppleScript that simply copies/duplicates a Finder item, and I know I can have iCal automatically run a script (so I'd just have it run every night at midnight or something), but I have yet to figure out how to get the script to copy the folder to a specified location on a different server (or, for that matter, if it's even possible, though I'm sure it is...right?). But that's not what I'm trying to ask here...though I certainly wouldn't mind if someone had thoughts on it and wanted to share them ! I just really would like to know which folders to back up, since it's not simply making an archive of the local Address Book.app database.
And, since I'm already here writing a post, I'll ask one other question that's been nagging at me: in Server Admin.app, with the server (not the services) selected in the sidebar on the left, the Access pane selected in the primary Server Admin window, and Services selected, and trying to dictate which users/groups can access which services, the user can click the "+" in the lower-left corner of the window where added users would appear, and another window pops up next to the Server Admin window that shows a list of the users (and groups if you click the appropriate button). My question is, why does it show me _krb_anonymous, _krb_changepw, and a total of 81 other items? I understand more or less what they are (in a very general sense), but why are they shown as users? More importantly, do they have to be listed there? Technically I'm probably the only one that's going to be the administrator, and I'll know not to add them or modify them, but I don't want anything related to those items appearing in a directory search in Address Book when I get it set up (as they are showing up now; for instance, one user I created is Sandy, and I have it set to include directory contacts in searches, so on a client machine that is correctly communicating w/ the server (add a user, it appears in a minute on another client machine, and vice versa) if I go to search for that name as soon as I type "s" Sandy, the actual user shows up, but so do five or six other things, all of which are items from the aforementioned list in Server Admin (pretty much anything that has an "s" in it, which of course makes sense)—and that's what I don't want, I don't want the users to search for someone, see something like _krb_anonymous pop up, then think something is screwed up and call me and demand I come fix their computer!).
Any thoughts, suggestions, and such are more than welcome and much appreciated!
Thank you to all...

See the following:
Folders You Can Move to Your new Mac
From the Home folder copy the contents of Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, and Sites.
In your /Home/Library/ folder:
/Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Application Support/iCal (copy the whole folder)
Also in /Home/Library/Application Support (copy whatever else you need including folders for any third-party applications)
/Home/Library/Keychains (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Mail (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Preferences/ (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/iTunes (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Safari (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Calendars (copy the whole folder)
If you want cookies:
/Home/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist
/Home/Library/Application Support/WebFoundation/HTTPCookies.plist
For Entourage users:
Entourage is in /Home/Documents/Microsoft User Data
Also in /Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
For FireFox:
/Home/Library/Applications Support/FireFox
/Home/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist
Credit goes Macjack for this information.

How do I import address book from time machine backup

My address book was populated on an imac running Lion and I used time machine to back up to an external hard drive.
The imac crashed and I've purchased another one running Mavericks.
How do I import the contents of my address book from the backup on the external drive to the address book on the new imac?
Whenever I try to select or open an earlier version of the address book in the backup applications folder on the external drive, I get a message saying that I can't open the file because it is a time machine backup.
There is also a diagonal line going through the address book thumbnail icon and various other applications in the backup applications folder and I get the same error message informing that these apps are time machine backups.
If you have a solution please be as clear and precise as possible with instructions as I am not a computer boffin.

Here's the situation:
I have a G4 with Tiger OS that has 2 years of saved emails and Address Book entries. I just got a G5, installed brand new drives, and did a fresh install of Leopard. I did not use Migration Assistant during the install, because I have no router.
Then I connected the 2 'puters with firewire, and started the G4 in Target Mode, and attempted to Import my old mail and Address Book. I diddled around and was able to import my old mailboxes. I did just realize, though, that only about half the emails were imported; there's a huge gap of nearly a year up until I stopped using the G4.
Also, when I go to the Address Book and try to import my old one, it shows up not as a solid icon that I can select, but a ghostly icon, for lack of a better word, and it will not let me select it.
I really thought this should be easier and less painful. I'm open to suggestions, including whether I should try to use the Leopard install DVD to try the Migration Assistant with a Firewire connection or an ethernet cable.
Thanks.

Address Book Locks up on BACKUP

I posted earlier, and tried a number of remedies, but still have this problem:
When I try to Backup my Address Book (about 900 entries), Address Book locks up (Spinning Beach ball of Death). The SBBoD starts about 10 seconds after I click Save for the BU. So, I do a force quit. Strangely, however, I am still able to save that particular BU. So, it is locking after the BU is saved (this is fortunate, because 2X in last month my Address Book has locked up while using, and I've lost all entries, and end up with a new, fresh, but EMPTY address book).
I Have tried the following:
** Deleted the Address Book preferences from User Library
** Have run , successfully, these 3: Repair Permissions, and Check HD, and Repair disk from the original 10.4 disks. No problems
** Did a complete archive and reinstall 10.4
Also, I created TEST user, and was able to BU that address book. However, it only had 4 entries in it.
Ideas?
JON

I had to do forced powerdown. That tell us anything?
Yes, your Disk is corrupted... the first thing Safe Boot does is try to fix the Disk.
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
Unfortunately, Disk Utility can't fix all that much, and the only other Apple Options are erasing the HD, or installing OSX to a second drive, then using Migration Assistant to move stuff over to the new HD.
You must repair the HD, if Disk Utility or fsck should fail to repair it, your best bet is DiskWarrior from Alsoft, you'll need the CD to boot from if you don't have another boot drive...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

Where is Library/Application Support/Address Book in Time Machine backup ???

I made a fresh install and wanted to copy the file http://www.marco.org/2011/09/10/adding-to-apple-mail-autocomplete to save nuisance with no autocomplete with new mail (as I did last time). But why there is no Address book folder in Library/Application Support as is in the original Library (as I backuped yesterday) ??
Similarly - where is Skype folder (it is in the laptop system/library Application Support but not in the same folder in Time Machine (to copy the chat history).
Where can it be found ? Why Apple makes things so uneasy ?
original Library with the file I need from yesterday backup:
Library from yesterday backup as found on Time Machine:

The ~Library folder effective with Lion 10.7.x
See
http://pondini.org/TM/15A.html
Apple hides the ~/Library folder (meaning the Library folder inside your home folder), from users, apparently to protect us mere mortals from messing with it. That's kind of a problem when we needto.
To see it on a Finder window before entering Time Machine, hold the Alt/Option key while selecting the Go item in the menubar. That will produce a list of common places, including Library (about halfway down). Or, press Shift+Cmd+G and type ~/Library in the prompt. That will show it in the Finder window, and also in the Finder windows once you're in the "Star Wars" display.
If you forget to to do that first, once you're in the "Star Wars" display, press Shift+Cmd+G and type~/Library in the prompt.
(To make it visible permanently, on a "normal" Finder window, drag it into the sidebar.)

Pages and Address Book mail merge - major problem!!!

Hi,
I'm setting up a mail merge in pages '09, with names and addresses coming from Address Book, but Pages will not merge in the addresses! The names are inserted, no problem there... I can't see what I'm doing wrong here, please help!
By the way, the merge fields correspond to the address book fields (e.g. Street is linked with "Target name > Address> Other Street, with the street names and numbers saved under "Other Address" in Address Book).

luminartrix wrote:
unfortunately I can't send this doc to you, this is a letter I am doing for work, including around 129 names and addresses that I can't give out. But thanks for your offer.
You may build a fake document using the same entries.
I would be able to test it on my machine with my own AddressBook.
Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 6 août 2009 10:03:22)

Address Book & Mail Merge

I thought it would be smart to keep my business prospects together with my other contacts in my address book, partly because this syncs nicely with the iPhone. But now I'm about to print some prospecting letters (mail merge) and I see no way to get my data out of Address Book into Word. Am I missing something obvious here? How could this program not have basic functionality to do a mail merge process? I did look at a third party utility, but they only take PayPal, who I refuse to do business with. I really don't want to have to keep prospects in a separate database because if someone calls in I don't have them in my iPhone.

There's a freeware program you can use which will dump your Addressbook to CSV format. You can then import it into Excel and do your mail merge that way. The utility is available at
http://homepage.mac.com/kenferry/Software/docs/AddressBookToCSV.html

How to restore address book from time capsule backup

I have a 500GB TC. I have lost my contacts from Apple Phone Book & IPhone 4 as I didn't select contact folder while syncing/back-up in ITunes. I see that I still have all my contacts in outlook but after spending few hours on intenet, I haven't been able to figure out how to import contacts from outlook or export from outlook to Mac Address Book.
Kindly guide me how can I get back all my contact from Outlook for Mac 2011 to my IPhone & Address Book.
Thanks for your help.

OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system
To follow the instructions, you'll need to start up either from Internet Recovery or from your installation disc, depending on the model.

Restore Address Book from Time machine backups

Hi,
I need to restore my Adress Book contacts from my Time machine external harddrive backup. I found to Library/Application Support/Adress Book thing, but has Library is hidden in my MacBook, it seems to be hidden in my backup harddrive. A simple ''option'' click doesnt seem to work. How can i make it visible on my external harddrive?!
Thanks!
(On that hardrive i went: ''backup folder''/users/''user''/. Then used ''Option'' to make is visible. But still hidden. If i go ''backup folder''/Library/Application Support, the AddressBook folder does not appear.)

Navigate with the Finder into the location where your lost data would be located. Click on the Time Machine icon in the Dock or open the Time Machine application in the Applications folder. Navigate back to just before you deleted your data. You should find the missing data, select it, click on the Restore button.

Synchronizing Address Book against a home server

I have a Bubba Two home server setup with Debian Etch, and a Mac Mini.
I want to synchronize Address Book’s contacts against this home server. What is the protocol or method of doing this? I want to synchronize the Address Book on two Macs through this server (and thus have three copies/backups too).
PS: Don’t mention MobileMe. I know what the service does, but I want to use my own hardware.

I have no idea what a Bubba Two or a Debian Etch are, but I created a unix bash script that uses the rsync -vvSauWEe ssh --delete --progress --stats command, and also made a launchd plist file to control when the script fires (you could use cron to automate the launch time, too -- it's deprecated but it still works).
I am running this across the internet at large to sync Address Book and iCal between distant machines. If you plan to operate similarly, then note the -e ssh switch. You will need to set up ssh on all affected machines to use passwordless public/private key authentication. If you search the Unix forum here using the search term ssh-keygen I suspect you will find plenty of info on how to do that, if you don't know about that already. And, of course, if you are running across the internet at large, don't forget about port forwarding in your router.
man launchd.plist and man rsync are some of the better man pages that I have seen. The rsync man page gives pretty good down-to-earth examples of how to use it, in my opinion.

Duplicates merging and deleting in Address Book

I know Apple Address Book has a "Look for Duplicates" option under the Card menu. I have a lot of contacts I'd like to clean up, and am thinking about using this functionality.
Here's the problem:
Many clean up tools are notoriously unintelligent. There are many contacts in my address book, for example, who have the same name, but different email addresses or phone numbers. For some of them, they are genuinely contacts that need to be merged. For others, they are legitimately different people. Whatever tool I use for cleanups has to allow me the opportunity to review what it thinks should be merged or deleted before it does so.
I went to Card > Look for Duplicates in Address Book, and got a window telling me it found "422 duplicate cards and 409 duplicate entries". I'm worried about pushing the Merge button since I have no idea how Address Book conducts this assessment, and whether or not it will give me an opportunity to review its changes when I push the button. Unfortunately, the help file is not very helpful on this.
Can anyone here offer me some insight into how Address Book identifies duplicate cards and entries, and if there's anyway to review its changes before they're made?
(I know I can create a backup of my Address Book before the processing, and restore afterwards if necessary, but I wouldn't know if I'd need to restore unless I could AT LEAST review a list of all 400ish changes it made.)
Dan

If you have not already tried, I would suggest to not use the address book duplicate merge feature. I just tried it doesn't give you the chance to review anything. All goes automatic and it leaves a complete mess. Merging companies with several people together, merging people with the same last name and phone number together, etc. I restored from a backup copy.

Address book, desire merge against backup

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