Address Book - duplication of surnames

Occasionally I see this occur - I have approx 1400 contacts in my Address Book. Let's say one of them is John Smith. The first name and surname are properly placed in the First and Last fields. Some time later I discover that John Smith still exists but that there is also a John Smith Smith. On checking I find that the new entry has both the first name and the surname in the First field. Deleting these mysterious contacts works for a while, and then they come back. Not always the same people and seemingly at random times. With 1300 contacts, who has time to check that all of them are still 'good'?

I would be interested in seeing a "before and after"
set of details, if we could catch one. Maybe you
would try this: select the All group, then
File/Export to save a copy of all your contacts as a
vCard. Then the next time one of these duplicates
occurs, select that contact in AB and use File/Export
to make a vCard of that person (or just drag the card
icon from AB to the desktop). Now open your full
vCard with TextEdit, locate the entry for the
newly-bad contact, and copy everything between the
BEGIN:VCARD and the END:VCARD and paste it here,
along with the recent single vCard, first editing out
any sensitive details (in particular, email
addresses). (Alternatively, email them to me to keep
them off the forum).
AK
Alrighty, I'll watch for the next occurence and try to remember to send along the info. Meanwhile, I'll have to check and be sure there are no 'corrupted contacts' at present. If not, I'll send you along the 'pure' Vcard.

Similar Messages

ICloud Address Book Duplication and Calendar Not Syncing

Hi guys,
I recently upgraded to iCloud despite the number of issues I read about on these forums. My initial reaction was a positive one but now I have two things I am struggling to work out:
My Address Book's search function completely froze up, meaning I couldn't type in the name of the person and they came up. I solved this by deleting an Address Book file in the Library as per a post on these forums. However now when I turned iCloud back on I have ALL of my contacts TWICE. The worst part is that merging them does not work as the system says they are coming for two different sources. Any suggestions? They only list ONCE on the iPhone.
My Calendar is not syncing from iCloud onto my iPhone. I update the Calendar on my laptop but my iPhone calendar does not get any changes to it unless I sync from iTunes. I have iCloud Calendar sync turned on on the laptop and the iPhone. Can you help?
Thanks a lot in advance for anyone able to assist me with these issues. Really appreciate it.
Best regards,
Juha

Solved it myself. What I did:
1) I have four Lion OS and two iOS devices.
2) I kept one computer with the complete address book I wanted to start with but disconnecting it from iCloud's Contact sync via Apple Menu > System Preferences > iCloud uncheck Contact Sync
3) Logged into iCloud.com and deleted all the contacts and groups manually ( many keyboard shortcuts worked )
4) On the main computer, using textedit, I replaced semicolons I was using to delimit items in the notes field with backslashes.
5) Once I confirmed all the other computers and devices had no entries in Address Book, on the main computer I turned back on iCloud Contact syncing. It worked. Correct count of entries and no more breaking notes at the semicolons!
6) Immediately all the other iCloud computers and devices updated to the correct notes! Finally.

Switching from Entourage to ical, mail, and address book- duplications?

I am tired of the slowness of Entourage and was thinking of switching to all of the native mac programs. Any suggestions or comments on whether this is a good idea or not?
Also, will all of my information be duplicated. I have about 3 gigs of information and I don't want to needlessly store it if I don't need to. Can I get some advice on where to find and extract that information from the entourage program so I am not eating up disc space unnecessarily.
Thank you.

Three weeks ago I switched from Entourage and Palm Desktop to Apple mail, address book and ical. It was a tad painful because I ended up with a lot of duplicates as I had email and some contact info in Entourage and several thousand contacts in Palm Desktop.
However after a couple of solid nights sorting out the duplicates all the contact info for each person is now in one place.
Word of warning though when you are checking address book entries make sure you keep backing up the changes (File - Backup address book) because for some inexplicable reason a couple of times all the entries in address book vanished.
Also the check for duplicates option in address book might be great for some but for me it created contacts that had their addresses and phone numbers duplicated several times.
After initial teething problems (getting used to the different programs) I am now pretty happy with the changeover. I am ecstatic to not be seeing the constant Entourage error message of 'your database is damaged and needs to be rebuilt' which entourage kept throwing at me (even after repeated rebuilds).
I have a Palm Treo and Address Book and iCal sync fine with that as well (after installing the conduit).
You'll also find in mail that you can't do as much snazzy formatting as you could with Entourage (ie numbered lists and bullet points) but hopefully Apple will address that in later updates. In the meantime if I'm desperate for formatting I write the email in rtf and paste it across complete with bluet points.
Sorry to drone on but wanted to give you some moral support.
Oh by the way the entourage data is stored in Home folder - Documents - Microsoft User Data - Office 2004 Identities - main identity - database (almost need a compass and flashlight to find it). To be on the safe side burn it to a dvd just in case and then trash it and all it's little friends (rules, lists, signatures and the other main identity folders.
Good luck

Address book keeps adding surnames to contacts??

Is this some sort of bug or am I doing something wrong?
I sync my address book with my .mac account and my macbook pro. Seems to work ok but here's the problem I'm having scenario...a contact in my address book on my mac has just a First name and an email address. Then somehow either through syncing with .mac or for some other reason it suddenly has a Last name - does this somehow get automatically added becasue of the email address? Also I have another example - a contact has two names written in the First name section and nothing in the Last name (example Katie Jane in the First name) the contacts email address has no mention of the names yet somehow the name Jane gets added to the Last name section - so the contact details read Katie Jane Jane....
this is driving me crazy
can anyone help?

just synched one machine again and its gone up to 1230 contacts including 228 "No name" contacts... what is going on?
Mr_London

Address book duplication

I hope someone can help me. I have updated my imac and my ios devices for the icloud. The calendar is working great. The problem I am having is that my address book had been duplicated. Everyone of my contacts are in twice (only on my imac). All my other devices are singular entries. Any thoughts on this?

Ok, so I thought I had fixed this problem, guess not. I have updated my os to 10.7.2 and installed the ios5 on my ios devices. The ios devises and icloud are working great. My problems is with the address book and it has duplicated all my cards so I have twice as many contacts now. In addition, I have additional blank birthdays on my calendar. I use to have Mobile Me and I turned that off. I did try and turn off icloud and delete everything in my address book and then re-started icould address. It worked to eliminate the duplicated cards for about 5 minutes. Then came the blank birthday events on my calendar. Any ideas?

Changes not being saved in Address Book

Hi,
I've been editing one of the entries in my Address Book (deleting the surname input), but every time I do this and go out of Address Book the surname comes back. Not a massive problem, but it's very annoying especially as it all links in to Mail etc.
If anyone knows why this is and how it can be fixed it would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

I just encountered the same thing while setting up a couple new Macs with 10.6.8, it's very frustrating, but I found the solution, at least in my case. Maybe this is the same problem you are encountering:
I imported a whole bunch of contacts from another Mac to the first one (using a batch vCard). Anyway, I noticed a few of them were out of date so I edited them. Then I saved them (using both the export vCard group and the Address Book archive), then I took that file to the second Mac I was setting up, and imported them. but I noticed that most (but not all) of the changes I'd just made (prior to exporting) were not saved. This was quite a puzzler, and took a little while to figure out why some changes were being saved and not others.
I believe this problem is due to a interface design flaw in Address Book.
You see, when you press the "Edit" button to unlock a contact record, the "edit" button turns blue (signifying that the record is editable). But what's not clear is that none of the changes are actually committed until you press the exact same "Edit" button again to commit all the changes you've made (on that record and any others edited since the "Edit" button was last clicked).
So, really, what's missing here is a warning dialog. When you select an Export option, and the "edit" button is still blue, a dialog should appear saying that "recent changes are unsaved and will be lost" (or something to that effect). In my opinion, the edit button should probably turn into a "Save Changes" button or something like that.
This is especially confusing, because the uncommitted changes are persistently visible in the Address Book even after switching contacts. In most databases, uncomitted changes are lost as soon as you leave a record without saving, but not in Address Book. It looks like all your changes have been made even though they aren't. And I think it's fair to say that the typical user will assume that when you export the address book contacts, the export will appear identical to how it appeared when they saved it, but if the "Edit" button was blue during the save, that will not be the case, and there is no warning to that effect. So it leads to unexpected behavior in that some recent changes are saved but the most recent are not.
Anyway, I'm sure there'll be other opinions as to the interface design, but it's clear to me this is the problem, and the solution is to always make sure the "edit" button is NOT blue before saving or exporting the address book or contacts.
I also wouldn't have noticed it unless I was trying to set up two computers at once (since the changes were so minor, I might have not ever noticed they weren't saved otherwise). So I wouldn't be surprised if this problem has been around for a long time and I never noticed it before.
Hope that helps...

Address Book and contacts.

I'm having a problem with some of my cards in address book. I have saved the name ie jo smith in first name and not used the last name. With some cards address book adds the surname into the last name field so that the contact appears as jo smith smith. I've done an edit and saved several times but somehow it keeps reverting. Weird? Any help?

Grrr, I'm not an addressbook specialist, but since no one answere yet I guess i'll give it a crack.
Can you try to close address book, then drag these files from your ~/library/preferences/ folder and put them on your deskop?
com.apple.AddressBook.abd.plist
com.apple.AddressBook.plist
Re-open Addressbook and see what happens.

How can I get my thunderbird address book to show up in alphabetical order by surname?

When entering my email addresses in the address book they do not show up in alphabetical order by surname. What do I do to get it to do so?

I have this same problem, but my Address Book doesn't stay sorted. I have to sort it on "Email" address first, then sort it on "Email". Then, and only then, can I find an email address. I have to do this EVERY time I send an email. After I return to Thunderbird, the email addresses are jumbled again.

Time Machine Locked after MacBook Air reformatted. My MacBook Air was overfull due to an Address book issue (duplication) so after many attempts to clear space, I ended up wiping out the system and reloading Lion.

Time Machine Locked after MacBook Air reformatted. My MacBook Air was overfull due to an Address book issue (duplication) so after many attempts to clear space, I ended up wiping out the system and reloading Lion. This resulted in the Time Machine thinking that it was now connected to a different computer. Apparently this diables the existing information.
Now I can see that the back-ups exist (back to Sept 2012) but they are greyed out, therefore unavailale to restore. Again, this seems like an issue that shouldn't be happening. The whole point of the Time Machine is to enable reinstatement of data after catastrophic failure. What if my computer actually had to be replaced due to a hardware issue? How would I beableto restore anything?
The path already (unsuccessfully) taken;
Open Library on the computer, Open Time Machine, Select Correct date, drill down to correct data you wish to restore, click "Restore".
This did not work because the correct date was greyed out. Restore key was greyed out.

Time Machine Locked after MacBook Air reformatted. My MacBook Air was overfull due to an Address book issue (duplication) so after many attempts to clear space, I ended up wiping out the system and reloading Lion. This resulted in the Time Machine thinking that it was now connected to a different computer. Apparently this diables the existing information.
Now I can see that the back-ups exist (back to Sept 2012) but they are greyed out, therefore unavailale to restore. Again, this seems like an issue that shouldn't be happening. The whole point of the Time Machine is to enable reinstatement of data after catastrophic failure. What if my computer actually had to be replaced due to a hardware issue? How would I beableto restore anything?
The path already (unsuccessfully) taken;
Open Library on the computer, Open Time Machine, Select Correct date, drill down to correct data you wish to restore, click "Restore".
This did not work because the correct date was greyed out. Restore key was greyed out.

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

Duplication of Address book entries

At the first sync with the Address book - it was excellent transfer to the iphone - with all the 25-30 groups being effortlessly transferred. Then the nightmare of duplicating entries. The entire address book got duplicated in the subsequent sync. Tried to empty the address book and overwrite the iphone. At first instance the sync appeared ok - but then suddenly the address book on iphone has got triplicated. Does the Iphone has internal data storage as the Application support - address book - contains address book data of previous. How should I remove the Triplicate addresses created in the iphone?

You can export your contacts to CSV (comma separated value) format and pull that into Numbers or Excel, then export it back. Use the first part of this program (it's a converter for GMail) to do the CSV step.
Matt

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

How can I stop a shared address book from duplicating groups?

Hi,
in our company we want to have one central address book, because we basically all contact the same people.
What I did was create an account on my Mac Mini Server and added that users address book to everyones addressbook app.
The problem I have now is that regularily all groups we have are duplicated, simply by opening the addressbook on a second machine.
Is there a better way of sharing an address book?
How do I stop the duplication of addresses?
(All machines are Mountain Lion!)
Thank you for any tips!
All the best
Christoph

Look under <del>Tools|Options|Advanced...</del> '''[http://kb.mozillazine.org/Menu_differences_in_Windows,_Linux,_and_Mac" Tools|Options|]Composition|Addressing'''

How to restore Address Book and then add working iCloud Account?

OK i'm going insane trying to resolve this one.... all started with a shed load of Duplicates!
3 devices: MacBook Pro, iMac, iPhone 4S
I finally upgraded the MBP to 10.7.2, the iMac already was and the iPhone was already 5.0.1
I've held off moving to iCloud from Mobile.me because of the 10.6.x MBP
...so now all on the same song sheet, I clicked the upgrade to iCloud from my MBA and all went well!
The MBA pushed 1352 address cards to the iCloud and I only had the iCloud account showing in my Address Book.
My iPhone then happily went iCloud and downloaded ALL the calendars (and I have far too many....I'll clean up soon, promise ;-)
but i hadnt turned on Contact sync for a very good reason.
I DON'T WANT ALL MY CONTACTS ON MY iPHONE!
So having found some advice, it says you have to keep everything you dont want in iCloud, in the On My Mac account
(which I didnt appear to have at that point)
I turned my iMac on and connected to the iCloud, all went well and I again had a single iCloud account in Address Book with 1352 cards
I then went Address Book/Preferences/General/Deafult Account/On My Mac and it generated the empty On My Mac account in the Address Book.
Highlighting ALL my iCloud address cards and dragging them to On My Mac, a successful duplication was made.
Highlighting ALL my iCloud address cards and deleting, all three devices now had NO contacts in the iCloud related accounts (what I wanted)
I then turned on Contact sync on my iPhone and it pushed 186 contacts to the iCloud and in turn to all 3 devices (perfect!)
but then came the fun part....
On my iMac, the On My Mac account had gone from 1352 to over 1900 with loads of duplicates. So I selected ALL deleted and restored from an Address Book backup prior to going iCloud. This began my problem....
if I restore it WIPES the iCloud account from the machine and leaves me with 1352 in On My Mac,
if I try and add an iCloud account it then wants to upload the 1352 into the iCloud which I dont want.
If I delete all, setup iCloud acount first I get the 186 correctly, but the moment I restore from backup it overwrites and I'm again left with On My Mac and no iCloud account
AHHHHHH!
how on earth do I get the working iCloud with 186 (which is perfectly fine on 3 devices) and restore 1352 in ON MY MAC, so my iMac Address Book has two accounts very seperate from each other. I want the 186 on my MacBook Pro and iPhone, but I want an iCloud account with 186 and an On My Mac with 1352 on the iMac
ANY advice welcome
TIA

Thanks havinabubble for your assistance. I'm having all sorts of problems with iCloud because we've got iphone 3g's which means the iCloud is working on our mac and ipads but not on our iphones. I've been trying to solve this problem for days and I lost my "on my mac account" along the way. Once I followed your section where you gave directions how to "generate the empty On My Mac account" I was able to re-establish my contacts list on my mac. Your suggestion was very valuable. Thank you.
havinabubble wrote:
SOLVED!
thanks to a bit of sleep and https://discussions.apple.com/message/17282476#17282476
cheers to Winston Churchill who's post gave me the solution!
with On My Mac selected, highlight and DRAG TO DESKTOP
then highlight ALL and DELETE ALL
add the iCloud account which replaces ALL contacts with the 186 from the iCloud.
select Address Book/Preferences/General/Default Account/On My Mac and it generates the empty On My Mac account in the Address Book.
DRAG the 1352 back into On My Mac account
now have two accounts...
PROBLEM SOLVED, thanks Winston!

How do I delete "prefix" in Address Book on my iPhone?

When I imported Address Book to my iPhone, it also imported my prefix field. When I receive a known phone call or I am searching for a contact, all I can see is "Mr. and Mrs...." in the screen. Certainly I need the prefix for my Macbook when writing letters, address labels, etc., but not in my iPhone. I cannot seem to find a satisfactory way to delete the prefix on my iPhone.
I did think about making a copy of AB and then deleting the prefixes, but even that seems difficult as (so far) the only way I can make that work is my deleting each prefix, individually. I have a thousand contacts and that seems awfully laborious. Finally, I'm not even sure how I could merge that into iPhone without screwing up my original Address Book. I can only imagine the **** I would create if I lost all my prefixes.
Thanks!

Hi Tom
Maybe you have solved this problem by now. I am having an issue importing contacts into the handsfree phonebook on my car. All the entries with a prefix are arranged together by the prefix and not the surname. The only workaround I have come up with is to erase the the information in the prefix field and place the prefix information in the First Name field (copy>paste>delete). Not ideal but at least everything is arranged by surname in my car which is what I need. Very clumsy for voice activated calls but at least I can find entries in my car phone book now and re-creating my address labels was straightforward.

Address Book - duplication of surnames

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