Address book doesn't sync

For severals days now my address book won't sync to .mac or the iPod. Although my contacts are still there iTunes claims, there are no contacts in the book. It seems, that the sync mechanisms don't recognize the address book. I did a reset to isync as well as to the address book but it had no effect. Is there any setting I could reset to get back to syncing? The calender and bookmark sync just works fine!
PowerBook G4 15" Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Actually, none of the components you mention actually interact in the way you imagine. Rather, they—and all applications, devices and services which are a part of the Sync Services framework—communicate with a component you don't see: the truth database, often referred to simply as the truth.
Here is a link to an Apple Developer Note explaining how this process works:
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/syncservices.html
That document helps explain why the instruction offered to you above to Reset Sync History… is so important. That process reinitializes the truth, and should result in trouble-free synchronizations from that point on. If it does not, that indicates that possibly more serious and more difficult to resolve issues are in play.
A large part of troubleshooting and solving problems involving synchronization under Mac OS X 10.4 and later is the process of isolating the components, simplifying the process until you achieve the result you desire, then reintroducing other components one at a time as you again achieve the results you expect with each additional component.

Similar Messages

Address Book doesn't sync UP to iCloud, but syncs back down..

(Sorry, Winston, and maybe Roger, I must be developing Alzheimer's ..I just cannot understand how this iCloud system works..)
I've searched through hundreds of queries and answers, but cannot find a similar problem ..but maybe I simply haven't looked hard enough.
Question on behalf of my good lady ..and I've been tearing my hair out over this for WEEKS..
She has 3502 contacts in her Address Book on her OS X Lion 10.7.4 MacBook Air. She has two iPhones. They're both running iOS 5.1.1. She has enabled iCloud on ALL these three devices, using her @me.com identity and appropriate password.
She updates Address Book contacts ONLY on her MBA - for sync'ing to her phones - and she does NOT update any Contacts info on her phones in order to have them transferred BACK to her Mac. That's how she prefers to work.
The only way that her Address Book contacts will sync UP to iCloud from the Mac appears to be to select 'All on My Mac' within Address Book, and to Export as vcards to a file on her Mac, and then, in the online iCloud Contacts webpage, to Import that file of vcards. All well and good, but that seems to ignore all her various Groups; everything ends up bundled all into one group. (Perhaps each Group in her Mac's Address Book needs to be separately Exported and then Imported, but surely it shouldn't be as long-winded as that.)
(About 402 of these contacts are not accepted by the online iCloud Contacts, although they seem to fall within the requirements of not being too many, not being too large, etc. But that's a separate problem which I'm still investigating ..maybe the names are formatted incorrectly; I'll keep working on that separately..)
Anyhow: by explicitly Importing all those Address Book contacts into the iCloud Contacts, they then immediately start to get distributed - correctly! - to her iPhones ..but also back into the Address Book on her Mac, thereby DUPLICATING them all in Address Book! (They CAN be seen as SINGLE entries by choosing 'All iCloud'.)
I cannot understand the opaque instructions in all of the iCloud documentation. NONE of the documentation which I've studiously read (online, in System Prefs, in every Help file I can find) seems to indicate a DIRECTION for this iCloud sync'ing.
WHERE - if there is such a place - does one specify that contacts should go only UP FROM the Mac, and not BACK DOWN to the Mac?
There seem to be options only to turn ON sync'ing (or off), but not the DIRECTION of sync'ing, or which device(s) take precedence. (..In iTunes - when sync'ing phones to a Mac with a cable - there's a preference to over-write EITHER the host Mac with data FROM a phone, or to over-write an iPhone's data with data FROM the Mac..)
So I'm asking..
(a) Can one specify a DIRECTION when turning on sync'ing for a device?
(b) With iCloud sync'ing turned ON on a Mac, is there any known reason why Address Book contacts should not send themselves UP to the iCould, instead of having to be manually Imported?
(c) Does one Export Groups individually? ..But what if a name is in more than one Group ..does it get duplicated online in iCloud?
(d) Is there not the intelligence within the iCloud facility for the system to NOT distribute back, or duplicate, contacts to the device which is the SOURCE of those contacts? Should it not do a comparison between iCloud and a device, and then recognise that those contacts already exist on the remote device, and therefore NOT distribute them BACK again to the SOURCE? (..Or am I having too high expectations?..)
Many thanks in anticipation, and I'm so sorry to be such a nuisance if this has already been answered a zillion times before.
(Yes, Winston; she has almost as many iPhones as you have AppleTVs!)
All best wishes,
David.

David, nice to hear from you again, hope you are well.
This user tip might help you understand how accounts work with Address Book.
I believe you have duplicates because you have two sets of contacts. "iCloud" and "On My Mac". Once you have created all your contacts in the iCloud account, you should delete them from On My Mac.
You can move contacts simply by dragging and dropping from one account to the other, you don't need to export them all to the desktop (although doind so will serve as a good back up if all goes wrong). You should note that this copies them though rather than simply move them, so you'll need to delete the old set when you are done.
As for preserving groups from the On My Mac Account, you can't but you can simplify recreating them by copying contacts (drag and drop) from an on my mac group to an empty group in iCloud.
Not sure about the contacts that you are struggling to move.
Many aspects of iCloud are difficult to understand, have a mull through what I've said so far and come back if everything still doesn't fall into place.

.mac address book doesn't sync to mac book address book

just got my macbook and became a .mac member, I set up everything correctly but when I sync from the .mac window in system preferences it doesn't give me the contacts on my address book on the macbook.
For some reason or another it sometimes works comingup with a screen allow or something else but it's not working anymore. Please help I'm getting frustrated because I know it's probably something simple.
thanks in advance.

figured it out myself. All I needed to do was be patient.

Mac Address Book doesn't sync nor accepts manual edits

My Address Book can't be edited on my Mac anymore: no manual edits are saved on any contact. After changing something, and clicking "save", the card automatically returns to its previous state.
In addition, I found I couldn't edit my contacts on iCloud because of "a server error". After a few tries I could edit a contact. But those changes are not reflected on my Mac aftrwards.
R.

Yes, now I have one. It's an iCloud syncing error, and it wipes your edits on your Mac everytime.
This is what I did to fix it.
1. Make a backup of your Address Book, using the vCard option (or both, it doesn’t hurt). Save it for later.
2. In System Preferences -> iCloud, turn Contacts off. I chose “keep on My Mac” those contacts, but nevertheless I got an empty Address Book after a while. And a few minutes later, iCloud contacts were empty and my iPhone also. It is scary at first! Now, before importing that vCard backup…
3. Turn Wi-Fi off. This is important, since your contact-empty iCloud will attempt to wipe your Address Book from your Mac just seconds after importing.
4. Import your vCard backup to Address Book. Just drag it to your blank Address Book window; it asks if you want to import “x” number of cards. Of course, say yes.
5. Turn Wi-Fi on, and then iCloud contacts on again (System Preferences -> iCloud). It will offer to merge your newly populated Address Book with iCloud (which is empty at this point). It should upload every single contact to iCloud, and then to your iDevices. If not, a fifth step would be to import the vCard file to iCloud, but it shouldn’t be necessary.
Hope it helps.

Address book doesn't sync ONE address

I added a new contact and it won't sync to the iPhone. My guess is there are others, but it's not a particular folder. I've copied the name to make a second entry, but it still doesn't show up.

I am having the same issue and I followed your advice and lo and behold, all of my iPhone contacts flowed over into address book in my test account! What didn't happen, however was that my dummy cards I'd set up prior to the sync on the computer didn't flow over to the phone!
Any idea what this might indicate? This is the closest I've gotten to getting address book to work with my iPhone since I've had it. I've been forced to use Yahoo and Gmail address books in it's stead. I've spent over 2 1/2 hours on a Sunday morning phone call with Apple who could not seem to help at all.

Address Book doesn't sync - with nothing!

Hi,
I have a problem with Address Book (4.0.4): It won't sync anymore - with nothing! No iPod (via iTunes), no .Mac, no mobile phone/PDA (via iSync). I can create new contacts or change information in old ones, Address Book will safe them on the computer - but nothing appears on the iPod or .Mac or mobile phone. If I create a new contact on the phone or on the PDA: It won't be added to Address Book on the computer. I tried resetting the .Mac information (via System Preferences-.Mac-Avanced Settings), it pretended to sync, but nothing happened. By the way: iCal syncs perfectly!
Can anybody help? Thanks a lot!
Stefan
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Do you mean the "Synchronize my contacts WITH OTHER COMPUTERS VIA .MAC"? No, because I don't want to sync it with other computers - only with my iPod etc.
Or do you mean the "Synchronize with Exchange Servers"? No, because I don't want to do this either.
Should I select these fields anyhow?
Thank you!

Email syncs, calendar syncs, address book doesn't sync!

I have the BES service installed and it was working fine until a couple of weeks ago.
I don't exactly when, but somehow, now I have the wireless sync "ON", with emails syncing ok, calendar ok, but not the address book... (not even the notes and the tasks, but I don't know if these two were synching from the beginning...)
I DO NOT USE desktop manager since it's not necessary at all when you have wireless sync with your company corp email and services working... ok?
any help will be appreciated
thanks
pete
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Do this for me:
Go to options > advanced options > service books > highlight the desktop SYNC service book > hit your menu key and select delete > once deleted, hit your menu key and select undelete.
Get out of service books and under the advanced options menu select enterprise activation. You may have to wait a few minutes but ultimately your enterprise activation will start over again. You will see it go from 0-100%. Check your address book again after that to see if your contacts came over.
~Tami~
Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.
-- Albert Einstein

Secondary e-mail in address book doesn't sync in mail?

Hey,
If a contact in address book has two e-mail addresses - for example:
[email protected]
[email protected]
only the first one will be linked in Mail to the contacts address book card (i.e. that when I receive an e-mail from [email protected] it will be linked to his address book card, but if he sends me an e-mail from [email protected], it won't show up!). Is this the way it is, and if so is there a way to solve it?
Also - in the "from" column in Mail, it shows the senders prefered name and not the name I have in address book. For example it says "jeff" instead of "Jeff Robinson". When viewing the mail itself though, it says "Jeff Robinson" as sender in the header. Why not sync it like that in both email header AND column viewer of all e-mails??
Thanks for help

I don't really know... iSync on Panther (10.3.9) is really old and it seems much have changed in Tiger... maybe it's a good decision to upgrade

Isync problems with address book~doesn't sync all info from add book.

This is a strange problem but when I sync my Palm E2 using isync the iCal works great but the address book only syncs certain information like the phone numbers and email addresses. It does not sync the regular addresses or AIM screennames/notes or any other information in address book. ONLY phone numbers and email. I've tried starting over and reinstalling the palm 1.2 conduit but nothing has changed. I've also tried exporting vcards straight from address book using bluetooth but the hotsync log states that palm couldn't open the .vcf file. This is a used Palm E2 and it didn't come with the original installation CD so I was thinking that it might be missing some necessary plugins/conduits. I ordered a new install CD from Palm which I haven't received yet but I was wondering if there's anything I could do to fix this problem myself. Any help would be appreciated!
Ahrum

This would have occurred if, after performing the hard reset, you synchronized again. The framework would have interpreted this to mean that you wanted to delete all contact, calendaring and task data.
You may be able to restore the data using several different approaches. If you had already created a backup file for your contacts using the option labeled Back up Address Book… under the File menu in the Address Book, just restore it using the option labeled Revert to Address Book Backup…
You can do the same thing for calendaring and task data using iCal, if you had previously backed up those files using an equivalent option in iCal.
If you had not, for contacts, then you'll need to navigate to this location:
Macintosh HD:Users:<username>:Library:Application Support:AddressBook
Drag the AddressBook.data file to your desktop or to the Trash. Duplicate the AddressBook.data.previous file, rename it AddressBook.data and launch the Address Book. If you're incredibly lucky, you data has been restored.
There is no brain-dead simple way to restore calendaring and task data.
If your not successful with that approach and have reasonably contemporary data in your Palm Desktop file, you can launch that application and export your contacts as a vCard file and your calendars as a vCal file. You cannot export your task or to do data in a format which you can them import into iCal, so you'll lose those records.
To export contacts, select Export… from the File menu, choose a name and location for the exported data file, set Module: to Addresses, Items: to All <xxx> Addresses, and Format: to vCard. Then press the Export button.
To export calendars, select Export… from the File menu, choose a name and location for the exported data file, set Module: to Datebook, Items: to All Datebook Items, and Format: to vCal. Then press the Export button.
Double click on each exported file to import your data into the Address Book and iCal.
Correct of update any information in these records, then back them up as outlined above. Then launch iSync, open the Preferences… dialog, press the Reset Sync History… button, and follow the instructions which appear.
Did I mention backing up your contact, calendaring and task data?

"main" phone in Address Book doesn't sync to iPod

I found that not all phone numbers in Address Book on my iBook were appearing on my iPod contacts after syncing. Apparently, the "main" phone numbers don't sync, while "home" and "work" do...I haven't tried them all. I entered many phone numbers as "main". Do I have to go through all by address cards and change them? Am I missing something?
Thanks.
Monica

I don't really know... iSync on Panther (10.3.9) is really old and it seems much have changed in Tiger... maybe it's a good decision to upgrade

Address Book doesn't sync new entries with iCloud

New entries in the Address Book on my MacBook Pro do not show up on my iPhone and iPad. Changes to existing contacts do! Who understands what's going on and what to do to remedy this?

First check that all your settings are correct, that contact syncing is checked on all devices (system preferences > iCloud on a mac and settings > iCloud on a iPhone, iPad or iPod).
Make sure the contacts you are adding are added to your 'iCloud' group and not an 'On My Mac', 'On My Phone' or other non iCloud group (you can do this by checking in groups), non iCloud contacts will not sync.
If you are sure that everything is set up correctly and your contacts are in the iCloud group, you might try unchecking contact syncing in the iCloud settings, restarting your device and then re-enabling contact syncing.
This user tip might help you understand how accounts work with Address Book.

Mobileme Address Book doesn't sync on iPhone

When I revise Address Book contacts on my desktop, they sync almost immediately to MobileMe, which I can see at my MobileMe account online. None of those revisions, though, show up on my iPhone under MobileMe.
However, if I ADD new contacts on my computer, they will show up both in my MobileMe account and on my iPhone. And, I have no problems at all with iCal.
Any suggestions to correct this? It's been going on since November.
Message was edited by: Michael Stickle

It's very basic and I know it has to be asked, so yes, I've tried all of this.
The only thing I've found that might work is turning the sync off for Contacts on my iPhone in Settings, and then turning it back on. Whether this will fix the revision aspect, I have no idea. But, I'm hoping.
Message was edited by: Michael Stickle

Address book doesn't sync with Outlook 2011 for mac since installing Lion OSX.

Neither automatically nor manually. Can anyone help please?

Have a red here
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3218041?start=0&tstart=0
Or look at the other suggestions on the right hand side of that page
Good Luck

Address Book no longer syncs with google contacts

After my switch to Lion, I'm noticing that my address book no longer syncs with my google contacts??
After I update my contacts in address book, it doesn't show up on google contacts and vice versa.
Is anyone else exprienceing this?

¡¡¡Ok, Something worked for me!!!
I have my address book empty, and then this is what I did:
1- Copy Address book app to downloads (or other folder) just to back it up
2- Install AppCleaner
3- Drag and Drop address book ap into app cleaner, make sure that it references to several files (all .plist files etc.) If there are no external references then try to drag and drop your backup, do it until you see the rest of references (uncheck address book widget)
4- After press clean in AppCleaner, it will delete everything.
5- Put back your address book app backup into your applications folder
6- Open it and if your are lucky you will see all the contacts again, they were like hidden....
Then I deleted all the contacts again and set up google account in preferences again, after that it syncs fine!!!
Good Luck!

Address book doesn't work

I recently discovered that my Address Book doesn't work at all. I upgraded to Lion and everything was working fine. I imported old Vcards. Updated thing s and it was all running smoothly until a couple of weeks ago. No new updates , nothing. It just quit working.
No importing, no contacts, nothing. I have tried deleting the preferences. I have tried reinstalling. I have tried everything and nothing seems to work. I had it synced with Google. I didn't have it synced with Google. I had it synced with icloud. I didn't have it synced with icloud. I have tried every combination I can think of and now I am at the end of my rope.
Is anyone else having this problem? I noticed on the web that a lot of people are having trouble with this, but haven't been able to fix it and Apple has been of no help. Does anyone have any ideas? My default is just to move everything to google and stop using mac products altoghether.
Thanks
Michael

Hey Barney,
What I meant by, "It just quit working", is that after I upgraded to Lion I had to switch from Entourage to Mac mail products, unless i wanted to shell out a few hundred dollars to Microsoft. Since I purchased iWork I was trying to avoid that and starting to use more Apple products.
I transferred all of my contacts into Address book and then exported everything to v-cards as a backup. For weeks everything was fine. I created new contacts. Imported some contacts from another computer. I even transferred some contacts from a Blackberry out to v-cards and imported them. Everything was going along just fine. I could add, edit, see everything.
Then, about a week ago, my wife asked for some info that I know I directly input into her address book (we share a computer, but she is her own user). I went over to her side, opened up her Address book and nothing was there. No contacts. I couldn't import anything. I couldn't add a new contact. Nothing. The program just didn't work. I went to my side to see what was up. Same thing.
I have now spent the last week trying to figure out how to fix it. I first got rid of the preferences (moved them to another folder and restarted the program). Nothing. I deleted the .abcddb file and restarted. Nothing. I even tried to reinstall from my original Leaopard disk, but could not access the Address book from the install disk by itself.
I've searched the internet for answers. Nothing. It's the oddest thing. All of my "contacts" as far as email goes work. I type and they come up, but if I open the Address book all I see are blank pages and the program itself seems to not be able to do anything. Can't import, there's nothing to export, can't add a contact or edit.
Ever since the upgrade to Lion I've had nothing but trouble with my computer at every turn. I probably just should have paid for the upgrades to all my Microsoft products and left the Apple ones alone.
Thanks for listening. if you think of anything or hear of anythong let me know.

Address book doesn't sync

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