Address Book - duplicating a record

One of the most basic functions of any database ever created is "Duplicate Record." The verb duplicate, not the noun. If I want to send USPS mail to ten colleagues at this address:
John Doe
President
Acme, Beta and Crumhorn Widgets
10234 Long Winding Road
San Juan Capistrano, California 9xxxx-xxxx
I would have to type this address ten times. I can't simple duplicate the record and change the name of the person.
Unless I'm missing something.
I find the whole data entry interface klunky. Also, in Touchbase, years ago, I could create a log in "Notes" of every conversation and could enter the time and date of the conversation with one click.
I don't need 85,000 iPhone apps. I need the most basic apps to work as well as they did in 1997.
Any enlightenment would be greatly appreciated.

This copy/paste process does not work as there is no place to paste the file to. I've tried unsuccessfully to do this as I am interested in just an efficient way to use Address Book. I have a contact who is changing jobs - leaving a public sector job for a private sector one - but I want to keep the old information for whoever will fill the public sector post plus modify my contact's information for his new position. Otherwise the process is rather tedious and inefficient, not what I would call hallmarks of Apple products in my 20+ years experience. I've been rather impressed with the way Address Book interfaces with iWork so the idea that this application is not designed for business is ludicrous.

Similar Messages

Address book duplicated

Hi,
Using icloud seems to have duplicated my contacts list - how do i resolve that?

Why don't you try selecting smaller groups of the duplicates and deleting those, rather than trying to select them all at once? Once you've done that, backup your Address Book and keep a copy of the backup in a safe place, not on your Mac. You should have and use a comprehensive backup plan at all times; relying on things to never fail is inviting disaster.
Mulder

Smart Search for 'Ungrouped" Address Book records

Is there a way to create a group in address book of those records that do not belong to a group?

But if you want I have a script to do it. Make a group called Special (or whatever - change the script to suit) and run it. It will display all those it found in Script Editor's result pane.
AK
click here to open this script in your editor<pre style="font-family: 'Monaco', 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; overflow:auto; color: #222; background: #DDD; padding: 0.2em; font-size: 10px; width:400px">(* Group Contacts with no group *)
(* AK Oct 2006 *)
tell application "Address Book"
set Loners to {}
repeat with ThisGuy in people
if (count of groups of ThisGuy) is 0 then
set Loners to Loners & (name of ThisGuy & return)
add ThisGuy to group "Special"
end if
end repeat
Loners
end tell</pre>

How can I delete all my contacts in Address Book?

I had syncing issues between my Entourage 2008 contacts, my Address Book contacts, and the PowerMac for Blackberry application. As a reference, I have around 5,000 contacts. I have solved the issue, but there is some collateral damage: read on.
Address Book duplicated my contacts two or three times, and it also created around 60,000 empty contacts. I have been able to clean the Entourage contacts, which only suffered from duplication but not from new empty entries.
I tried to delete the Address Book duplicate and empty entries. The easy way out, I thought, was to Select All and delete. It does not work. Given I have ended with around 80,000 contacts, after I Select All, and try to delete, the program hangs, and I have to Force Quit the Address Book application.
I tried to locate the Address Book file where contacts are stored, but I have not found an obvious name that would point to it, nor have I read anything about such file in the different discussion forums. So no success on this.
I have even used scripts in the past for deleting duplicates and merging contacts in Entourage, but I have not found one for Address Book that could take care of the massive number of empty entries with "No Name".
So, is there a way to delete all my contacts in Address Book?

There are two possibilities you can try:
1. Delete all your duplicate entries. You can try downloading and running this Applescript Remove Duplicates, which will create a group named Duplicates in Address Book, from which you should be able to delete those entries, by selecting the Group, then in the next column to the Right, select all the entries and choose Delete Cards from the Edit menu.
2. If that doesn't work, you can do this:
1. Quit Address Book if it's running.
2. Go to ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook and delete an of these files/folders you find there:
• ABPerson.skIndex
• ABPerson.skIndexInverted
• Address Book - xxxxx.abbu
• AddressBook.data
• AddressBook.data.beforesave
• AddressBook.data.previous
• Images
• LastImport.plist
3. Restart Address Book and see if the default cards are there (Apple card, and your Me card) and if all seems to be working correctly.
Mulder

Torch update to 6.0.0.448 hangs Win 7 Blackberry Desktop in Address book update

First attempt at using Win 7 Desktop update since updating 9800/Torch to 6.0.0.448 and the desktop hangs "Processing Device Address Book". Shows Record 189 of 189 and never completes.

Reset the Desktop Organizer configuration to ground zero and re-configured. Works now, but did duplicate a lot of my calendar events. Just a bit buggy....

Address Book - Problems after installing Snow Leopard

My Address Book now seems 'buggy'. Despite setting the 'sort by last name' in the preferences, the list will only sort by first names. Companies that were listed under the company name, now are listed as 'no name'.
Anyone with similar problems or recommendations for solution?

Of all the applications that could go buggy, this had to be the one, right. It's the one (mail and address book) that I use the most and depend upon the most. fortunately I had backed up my data before upgrading to Snow Leopard. However, Mail and Address book have been so buggy as to not be usable, almost. The address book icon in Mail does not bring up a mirror image of my real address book. And the bugs mentioned here in this thread are actually minor compared to the fiasco I had when first attempting to fix the problems. I had my complete address book duplicated . . . and when I tried to fix that, it went bonkers . . . ended up reinstalling the whole OS again. I sure hope they get this one fixed quickly. Otherwise, I'll have to resort to some other mail program that actually works. I'm very disappointed in this outcome!!!

Removing duplicates in Address Book...

Hi: In all the years I have used Address Book, the "Find & Combine Duplicate Cards" feature has never functioned, I repeat, has never functioned. It always freezes the program once it has completed the find and begins to combine duplicate cards. "Address Book Not Responding" is the message I always get in the "Force Quit" window -- which I indeed have to do. I always back up before I again try to use the feature hopeing it's been "fixed" via recent automatice updates which I always accept and install.
Please assist if possible. I would love to see that feature functional, especially now that I have an Iphone. I'm a consummate Filemaker user and find I must continue to maintain both Address Book and Filemaker records for my work which is a terrible inconvenience for we power users. One would hope that the Address Book database program soon becomes as sophisticated as our Macs and Iphones as it is the very basis of all our e communications systems. Regards - Scott Foster, Honolulu
OS 10.4.11
Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac7,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.1)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.7 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Bus Speed: 1.35 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.4f1
Serial Number: G8534ALARU4

At this point I think you should get Applejack...
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19596
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15667
After installing, Reboot holding down CMD+s, (+s), then when the DOS like prompt shows, type in...
applejack AUTO
Then let it do all 5 of it's things.
The 5 things it does are...
Correct any Disk problems.
Repair Permissions.
Clear out Cache Files.
Repair/check several plist files.
Dump the VM files for a fresh start.
At least if it doesn't fix it, it'll eliminate a few questions.

Why do I have 2 iclouds in address book?

Recently my Mac's Address Book duplicated my iCloud. Now I have 2 iClouds plus my "On My Mac" contacts. So, if I click on "All Contacts", I will see duplicates. I only want one iCloud and an On My Mac copy. So, how do I delete one of the iCloud addess books? I've tried to turn OFF then ON iCloud for Contacts to no avail. Thanks in advance! The hierachy looks sor of like this:
All Contacts (If I click on this one, I see all the duplicates)
On My Mac
abc
cde
efg
iCloud
fij
klm
nop
iCloud
All iCloud
Smart Groups
Last Import

Funny, but not it seems to be more normal in that there are the expected 548 contacts under either All On my Mac OR iCloud. So, somehow time seems to have fixed it. Huh.
Still nagging me (but not as important) is that I have that second iCloud in the Contacts. (See screen shot). One has sub menus, but the other doesn't. I don't know why it's there.

Address Book unexpected application close

Hi,
Does anyone know of any limitations of Address Book regarding number of contacts in the database? I have about 16,000 contacts, and when I try to have Address Book "Find Duplicate Records", it terminates unexpectedly.
What's the deal?
Ron

After further investigation, I find that Address Book does indeed have a limitation as to the number of contacts supported - which is about 10,000. This is probably more of a memory limitation (table or array size construction within the program). I came to this conclusion by breaking down my contact database into chunks and did a "Find Duplicates" on each chunk to make sure it worked. I then built my new contact database a chunk at a time, performing a "Find Duplicates" at each stage. When I approach 10,000 contacts, Address Book consistently crashed. It will also crash when performing extensive adds/moves/changes when the database approaches this size, and even corrupt the database or completely reinstate a new database if the existing one becomes too corrupted.
Am I even in the right group for this thread (nobody responded to my initial post)?
Any suggestions where I can take this issue for possible resolution?

Deleting Address Book addresses

How does one delete an address from the Address Book?

Let me suggest a couple of approaches, as I am not absolutely sure what you are asking.
If you want to delete an address from your previously sent or received Mail messages but not from the Address Book itself—most often because the address in question is not actually stored in an existing Address Book record—then launch Mail, open a new message window, type enough characters in the To: field so that the address itself of a list of near matches appears (from which you can select the address) then click on the blue bubble, press the white triangle on the right, and from the drop-down menu which appears, select Remove from Previous Recipients List item.
If you want to remove an address from an existing Address Book record but want to leave the remainder of the record intact, launch the Address Book, select your record, press the Edit button at the bottom of the window, then remove each address component by highlighting it, pressing the delete or backspace key, then pressing the Tab key to move to the next field.
If you want to remove an existing Address Book record in its entirety, simply launch the Address Book, highlight the record in the Name column, press the delete or backspace key and confirm the deletion by pressing Delete in the dialog which appears.
If you want to remove a record from an Address Book Group but want to retain the record in your Address Book, select the Group, select the contact record, then press the Delete key. Confirm this deletion by pressing the Remove from Group button in the dialog which appears. When you delete a record from your Address Book, the contact represented by that record is also removed from all Groups it may have been a member of.

Format of email address when pasted from Address Book

I am trying to send bulk emails using my Address Book. The records have been imported by via a text file where the email address appears correct. In Address Book all the email addresses are fiormatted correctly. However, when a group is imported into a 'To' field in Mail, some of the addresses are changed, like this:
John Doe <[email protected]>
instead of simply
[email protected]
Mail rejects all of the addresses which include the name and the characters.
Why are they appearing when they do not appear
a) in my database source
b) in my text file exported from the database
c) in the corresponding record card in Address Book?

Okay, I suspect you are giving the mail program a bunch of email addresses with extra commas.
Do this:
Open Address Book
Open Mail
Select New Message
with your mouse drag an email address from the Address book and drop it in the BCC line
Do that for all the addresses without manually adding commas. (Mail hides the commas when the addresses are in the Address Book. It just shows the first and last name in an oval.)
Or if this is a list you will be using a lot, in Address Book, make a new group and drag the address cards into the group and then in Mail put the group name in the BCC line.
-fred

How to find synchronization schedule of Address Book

I've setup Address Book to synchronize with Google contacts. On the initial setup I can see the synch take place immediately, the Address Book is populated with the correct data. However, when I add a contact locally, within the Apple Address Book, it takes a undertermined amount of time to synchronize with the Google contacts (and vice versa: Google Contacts -> Address Book). The record created within Address Book does eventually arrive but it takes somewhere between 5 minutes and a few hours. Within Address Book there is no force synch, there is no synch schedule to set, nor can I find a log anywhere that tells me how or when this is happening. I've looked elsewhere for something that might do synch or a scheduled task (it's not a cron job).
So my question is then: can anyone tell me what performs and determines the schedule of Address Book synchronization? Ultimately, I'd like to adjust this to a frequency that I set.
-zeek

The source sync file information for AB is kept here:
~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Sources
You also have a preference file for AB syncing:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBookSourceSync.plist
You also have a ByHost preference file for AB syncing:
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.AddressBook.sync******.plist
I'm not sure what you can do with that info. Even though the preference file has a timestamp and the ByHost file has date and time info, i don't see anything such as a time interval that can be changed. That may even be set by a different file. I don't have the technical knowledge to tell you.
For AB to send new info immediately (not knowing the time interval), quit AB and restart it. It should update all info. If not, uncheck the sync option in AB prefs, the recheck and reinput the username and password. That should create an immediate sync.
But I doubt that it will force google to update any changes. Maybe I'm wrong, so try it.
If you could change the time interval, it would probable be done with one of the preference files. The syncing login and setup is intiated in AB preferences to communicate with google. Google may not initiate the sync action, but I'm sure it has a time interval that the server will make changes.
I have used this in the past for Yahoo, and Yahoo's information said that syncing may not occur imediately and could take some time for changes to take effect. It's been a while since I used it, so I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was basically to the tune of "they will do it when they are ready".
So even if you could get AB to send changes every 10 seconds, it does not mean that google's server will update it immediately.
My experience with Yahoo is sometimes it would do the changes within 5 minutes and other times it took many hours for the change to take effect. So, it's not any different than you are experiencing with google.
I eventually quit syncing to Yahoo's site after I started using iCloud. After my email got hijacked through Yahoo, I just decided to removed my contacts completely since they can't keep it secure. Also removed everything from Google site. Tired of my AB being stolen and used for spam. That's the second time this year they got into the website account and stole my information.
I just keep contacts on my computer and iCloud now where I can better protect my information.

Duplication of Records in Address Book on iPad Sync

I have multiple records which have been duplicated in my Address Book on my desktop Mac; I believe it has arisen since I have been synchronizing between desktop and iPad. How can I eliminate these duplicated record entries and stop this duplication?

Here are some past threads on this problem that may help:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11620245&#11620245
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11678878&#11678878

Address Book duplicates, what is duplicated

I have finally cleaned up Address Book after a near disaster with Outlook 2011 for the Mac. I sync with Google Apps and have no duplicates there. I now find after a few days I have 2 duplicates in Address Book but not in Google Contacts. Before I merge these duplicates, is there a way to see what is duplicated and which records have duplicate datad?
PS, Before anyone begins to use Outlook for the Mac, they should backup their Address Book. File>Export>Address Book Achive will do this. Time Machine is another option. I also foud that Outlook makes a mess of notes in a Contact record. I nolonger usse Outlook.

Here is a possibility to consider.
Open Contacts and select the first contact then scroll to the last contact and hold down the shift key and select it. At least for me, the Select All command does not work but the above method should select (highlight) all of your contacts.
Then open Numbers. Do a Command Tab so that the Contacts window is visible above the Numbers window. Click and drag the contacts onto the Numbers window.
Now your contacts are in a spreadsheet and you have a lot of options for formatting.

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

Address Book - duplicating a record

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