Address Book empty iCloud is empty too?

MBP 2.66GHZ i7 OS 10.7.3 I had allot of duplicates and incomplete address cards after moving to iCloud so I decided to start over. On my MBP I did a back up of all contacts then proceeded to clean it up once I was done I did another back up and called it contacts_clean.abbu I selected all my contacts and deleted them in Address Book (AB) went into AB preferences and deleted all other accounts including iCloud account all that was left is "On My Mac" in "General" tab I changed "Default Account" to "On My Mac" Then I went to System Preferences I have both "Mobil Me" and "iCloud" so I read that you have to turn "Mobile Me" off so I signed out of it and went into "iCloud" and checked everything in the window. I logged into iCloud using Safari 5.1.5 clicked AB there selected all the contacts and deleted them. I selected the preference button and clicked on the import vCard option I chose the contacts_clean.abbu to import. It failed with an alert that said the vCard does not meet requirments with an option to find out what those requirments are. Apparently there is a limit to how many cards you can have and file size etc. nothing about contacts_clean.abbu met those requirments except for the fact that it was 2mb over the required limit. So I went back to my MBP and before I created an iCloud account in AB I imported contacts_clean.abbu I got a dialouge saying if I wanted to replace contacts even then there it was completely empty I clicked yes. For a second the contacts show up then they are gone and an iCloud account is created. So this time I figure I'll import but make iCloud my default account again same thing as befor with the exception that the iCloud account was not created. I thought this could be a cache thing so I flushed cache using Cache cleaner and rebooted repeated above this time the contacts where there I thought great I'm good then I noticed that iCloud began syncing it wiped everything out. I figured it's pulling from the iCloud that now has nothing in it and replacing it with nothing on my MBP. I did some research and did above flushed cache rebooted but this time I had no internet connection (Turned off WiFi/Unplugged ethernet) I launch AB on MBP and import contacts_clean.abbu into iCloud account contacts show up great there perfectly not problem. But I know the second I get on the interent and it sync's it will be gone and I will have to flush cash and start all over again. How can I get AB to retain contacts and upload to iCloud after that I want to blaze my iPhone and start from scratch. If I can get a clean version on iCloud I start over again no problem but right now I have a bloated version of contacts on my iPhone a clean version on my MBP and nothing in iCloud can anyone help me please.

Contact with iCloud because we can't recover them

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Address Book and iCloud

I am using OS 10.7.4. How do I get the data from my Address Book into iCloud contacts?

Roger emailed me, but I've only just seen it and note that Roger seems to have answered your question.
One thing I might add is that if you are going to keep your 'On My Mac' group' as a duplicate of your 'iCloud' group to facilitate keeping an identical contact list on your pre iOS 5 devices, you may find the simplest way to do this is simply copy the whole bunch of contacts from iCloud to On My Mac every now and again, this should save painstaking searching to identify new contacts and copy them across individually.
To do this:
Go to the groups (Either from the view menu, hitting the tag at the top of address book or typing cmd+3)
Select 'All iCloud'
Ensure the search field is empty
Select the first contact in the list
Shift-select the last contact in the list (This should select every contact)
Drag all the contacts to the 'All on my Mac' group
Select 'import' from the dialogue box that appears
This will not end up with duplicate contacts within the same group, if you add any new contacts using your pre iOS 5 devices, you can copy in the same way from 'On My Mac' to 'iCloud'.
Take a little time to see how choosing groups in the group section affects how your contacts are displayed in Address Book, to avoid working with the wrong groups.

Upload address book to iCloud

I have Lion running on a macbook with an iCloud account and a archived address book. I have installed Lion from scratch and set everything up. I set iCloud in system preferences and create an iCloud account in address book. At this time the address book has the default card based on the account information. I inport the address book archive which when imported replaces everything, wipes out the icloud address book account and leaves the address book with a single on my mac account. I do not see where I can direct the import to the created icloud address book account. If I go ahead and syn with iCloud by clicking the address book in the iCloud system preferences it goes ahead and asks me to merge the accounts. When done, I have only the single card left and all of the imported address book contacts are gone. How can I upload an imported address book to iCloud???

First, make sure you are running Lion on your iMac
If so, go to System Preferences --> iCloud --> check off the contacts tab.
Your calendar will now sync to iCloud.

Data in my iMac address book and iCloud contacts do not match.

The data in my iMac address book and iCloud contacts are different. How can I get my iCloud data to accruately reflect that of my iMac address book? It appears to be an initial synchronization issue. New entries synchronize fine. Appears that initial entries in my Address Book are not showing up in the iCloud Contacts list. Hense, My iPhone coantacts don't match those in my iMac.
Is there a way to clean out my iCloud contacts on reload/re-sychronize it with my iMac Address Book?

Nuts isn't it. This seems to have been an issue snce dAY 1. iT FROSTS ME THAT THERE IS NO SIMPLE QUICK WAY TO UPDATE OR CORRECT the data in both programs simultaneously.. Thats why i decided to just put everytning into the i cloud address brook, and let the one other sit and rot.
then i got smart and said, why don't I delete the outlookaddress book files. and save on confusion.
result - both addresses books and their contents became invisible to outlook.!!!!!! and I can find no way to correct this...to go back to the imperfect world that was.
I did get the outlook contact s back from an archive - but any thing from icloud has become inaccessible from outlook. (fortunately i can get the vcard infformation directly from icloud. but I can't access it from outlook mail.... means no replying, forwarding etc - and a time swallowing nuisance..
aNYONE WILLING TO DUMP SEWAGE ON MICROSOFT AND aPPLE... UNCOOPERATIVE TWITS. - boh should be smacked.

Sharing contacts in Address Book through iCloud

I work in an office where the contacts in our Address Book App. need to be shared with multiple users over multiple computers/devices. We currently have all of our contacts in the Address Book App. but whenever a new contact is added we need to physically transfer it to each machine. Ultimately, we need to accomplish 3 tasks:
1. We need to be able to create, edit, and share contacts on and between multiple computers/devices/accounts. Access is needed by all employees, including our boss.
2. Some of our contacts need to be kept private, (not shared across all machines) associated with a single account. These are our bosses private contacts that are included in the mass of our current Address Book App.
3. Do all of this in iCloud
Is it possible to share groups in Address Book over iCloud while keeping other groups private from sharing. Of course, these private entries would still need to be accessible through iCloud by our boss. I've read threads explaining that setting up a "Family Account" alongside individual accounts allows one to share contacts through the "Family Account" while keeping contacts in the individual accounts private. It seems though that this solution has its issues.
If there is an efficient and effective way of doing this, please share!
Thank you in advance!

If iCloud can figure this out Google is toast. Hope someone from Apple monitors these discussions.

Address book on iCloud

After having bought a new iMac and register to iCloud, I noticed after a while that certain names on my Address book on iCloud were reproduced a great number of times, contaminating also my new iMac.
Yesterday, I erased all the adress book on iCloud, made a copy of the adress book from my old iMac to the new one and synchronised with iCloud and my iPhone.
The operation seemed to be successful, but today I see that the poblem is the same again : a great number of duplication.

Finally, I stopped using iCloud for address book. I cut the link with my iMac and my iPhone and I synchronized iPhone with my iMac.

Syncing Mac Address Book with iCloud

Hello, I am trying to sync my Mac Address Book with iCloud. All contacts that are created under iCloud on Mac Addess Book are immediately synced. But if I create a contact on the Mac book exclusively, that contact will not get synced with iCloud.
Does it mean that if we want to sync Mac address book contacts with iCloud, they should always be created under the iCloud category on the Mac? Can someone help me with this. I have checked all sync options are switched "on" and sync is working fine across all other apps.
Thanks,
Farhan

I believe the duplicate address books stems from the move from MobileMe to iCloud.
In system preferences I found an iCloud icon and also a MobileMe icon. I was logged in under both.
1) In the Address Book preferences I selected iCloud and unchecked Enable this account.
2) In the Address Book I selected iCloud and clicked on the minus “-” to remove that account – leaving only the local Mac address book.
3) I went into system preferences and logged out of MobileMe
4) In system preferences I opened iCloud and the “Contacts” was not selected (from above) and I selected it.
I got a dialog box asking if I wanted to merge the iCloud contact with the local contacts – clicked YES.
… spinning wheel for a minute … voila – only one address book account – iCloud with syncing to iCloud and my iPhone.

HT4489 how do you move your address book to icloud contacts?

how do you move your address book to icloud contacts?

In Address book on Mac - right click on the group you want to export.
Select Export Vcard
log in to iCloud and select contacts.
Select group you want to import them into
Bottom left click on the gearbox icon
Select import Vcard
Select same location you exported from the Mac
Mine populated in about a minute
Hope this helps.

Address book empty on mac, won't sync with iCloud

Hi everyone,
I've got a Macbook running Lion and an iPhone running iOS5, I'm using iCloud to sync. I discovered today that my Address book on my macbook is empty. On my iPhone, I have all of the sync services turned on in iCloud. I also have iCloud set up on the macbook, but the contacts box is unchecked. If I check the box in iCloud preferences, it won't stay that way. Once I close the preferences pane and reopen it, the checkbox is empty again.
I'm not sure if this is a related issue, but this is also driving me nuts. I have an exchange account that I no longer use that will not go away no matter how many times I delete it. I can delete it from "mail, contacts & calendars" and in my address book, but it comes back every time.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you!!

Ok, I fixed it. I had to dump the entire ~Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder. Once I did it solved both of the issues I was having. Hooray!

How to synchronize address book (empty) with contacts in icloud (ok)?

All my contacts appear in iCloud. None of them show in the Dock's address book. How do I synchronze one with the other?

I think some third party solutions can solve your problem, here is one, just found it on VersionTracker : http://www.slamslash.com/address-o-sync

Address Book empty, not allowing imports

Following upgrade to Lion my desktop address book is empty. Big problem, because this is the one used by mail and for other purposes. The address book is successfully populated in iCloud and on my iPhone, it's just the desktop address book that is empty.
I exported all the address cards from iCloud to desktop, then double-clicked to open them in address book. Nothing happened.
Would like to populate the address book via import, but that option is grayed-out on the address book drop-down menu. Pressing option-O (the import shortcut) achieves nothing.
In systems settings > iCloud, "Contacts" is checked - so what appears in iCloud and iPhone should be appearing on my desktop.
I have no idea why my desktop address book is empty, or why it is refusing imports. Any ideas?

EDIT: Read next post first.
Create a new User go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > "+" (make it an admin acct) and test the appin this new account, if it works the problem is isolated to your User and not systemwide.
If you reinstall and migrate back your Users you'll be in the same place if the issue is isolated to your User.
If the issue is limited to your user account try starting up in Safe Mode (It will take more time to startup because it runs a directory check.)
If AB functions correctly that way, go to System Preferences >> Accounts >> Login Items and remove them.

Personal Address Book Empty

We are running GW 7.0.3. BES 4.1.6.23 I don't remember the mr number. The BES is running the GW 6.5.7 client. I have one user out of 40 that is experiencing this. The personal address book that the Blackberry (BB) is supposed to sync to is empty, however, all of the contact entries are on the BB. We tried to track this down the other day and while we were looking at her GW client the entries popped back in. Now they are gone again. We have not done anything that would cause the entries to pop back into the address book. We did notice that her BB had just synced in the last minute.
Thanks,
Bill

Filter on the BB is based on catagory, so I would suspect that it wasn't done on the device; now if the user could have don it on the GW client but I wouldn't expect that to effect the sync to BES? That's a odd one, I may have to try that myself and see if I duplicate it!
But no, if the filter was turned on in the GW address book, only the user could have done it or someone logged into GW as that user.
<[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
We found that the view filter in the GW client had been turned on so only groups would show. The problem is the user did not make this change. All of her addresses returned when she turned filtering off. Is there any way this could occur without manual intervention by the user? Thanks.
>>> <[email protected]> 2/4/2010 7:53:AM >>>
SOAP. Also we will be upgrading GW to 8.0.1 on 2/13/10. Are there issues with my system after the upgrade that I should be aware of? I will post back with test results. Thanks.
>>> Michael Rae<[email protected]> 2/3/2010 1:16:PM >>>
Are you running your BES in SOAP mode or OAPI? Soap on 4.1 has major issues.
Regardless, what you might try is in the properties of the user in the PIM sync, turn off address book sync, wait and then enable it. Also once the entries are in on one place such as the BB, select the sync to be one way such as device to desktop only. Remeber too that contact sync is a low priority function, it may take up to 4 hours to see results from any changes made so don't get to rushed with making changes and then not see them take effect so you change them again with no results after a few minutes. Stopping and restarting the BB Sync server can speed this wait up.
Another thing to look for is the devices radio coverage, make sure you have as much coverage on the device as possible as I have seen some really weird contact sync issues when a BlackBerry drops in an out of data coverage.
FYI - Hang in there, you may well see BES 5 for GW by late summer or early fall of 2010, it's moving along very well and it's a major improvement.
<[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
We are running GW 7.0.3. BES 4.1.6.23 I don't remember the mr number. The BES is running the GW 6.5.7 client. I have one user out of 40 that is experiencing this. The personal address book that the Blackberry (BB) is supposed to sync to is empty, however, all of the contact entries are on the BB. We tried to track this down the other day and while we were looking at her GW client the entries popped back in. Now they are gone again. We have not done anything that would cause the entries to pop back into the address book. We did notice that her BB had just synced in the last minute.
Thanks,
Bill

HT1865 Address Book Empty

I played with sync settings in iCloud yesterday and today, my address book is EMPTY. Is there a file somewhere I can restore my addresses from? An entire business relies on this. We don't use TimeMachine. I don't see them in our iCloud. HELP!!!

This stopped happening; not sure why it happened. I'm assuming one of my upgrades fixed this.
I am being more careful about making backups now -- keeping copies of most files in my home directory as they were every day for the last week and once a week for the last month or so. This way, I can recover to a recent version, even if I don't notice the problem immediately; once I had to recover from a very old backup...

Help! Address Book Empty

My address book is completely empty. It was all there yesterday.
How can I restore it from a Time Machine backup?

first, did you happen to do a back up with file>export>address book archive? if so then the easiest way is to locate that archive and go to file>import>address book archive.
in the absence of an archive, you should be looking for the following:
com.apple.addressbook.abd.plist and com.apple.addressbook.plist which are files that should be located in homefolder/library/preferences on your back up and get them back in the same location on your computer.
the folder homefolder/library/application support/addressbook in your back up and get it back to the same location on your computer.
hope this helps

Address book empty...

...and not for the first time. Actually its happened three times now which has prompted me to try and get to the bottom of it.
I have Address Book on my PowerMac (main computer) that syncs with .Mac and I have a PowerBook that also syncs up with .Mac. The final peice of the jigsaw is Entourage on my PowerMac which I use for work mail. This has sync services and syncs with Address Book.
Currently my Powermac Address Book is empty, as is .Mac. My PowerBook is set for manual syncing and has a full Address Book so I don't see that being the culprit. Entourage has a full Address Book but this doesn't tell me much as while it syncs on new contacts it doesn't empty on this error such that when it happened last time I ended up with two of every contact after restoring the Address Book from my backup.
update: Entourage now has three of everyone after restoring my Address Book. Does this mean that since Entourage never loses the addresses then its not the one causing them to go missing. That leaves my PowerMac address book, or more likely .Mac as the culprit?

I don't use Entourage, but today, after I got Mail, Safari, iChat and Address Book all simultaneously freezing (applications not responding), I had to force quit all of them. When relaunching Address Book I had the really annoying surprise to get an empty address book, all my contacts are lost.
This already happened in the past, and digging the discussions I'm not alone. There is a bug somewhere and it's annoying !!!!
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Address Book empty iCloud is empty too?

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