Address book fix or replacement?

In Lion Address Book, is there any way to see your groups, contacts and lists in one screen as you could in the Snow Leopard and previous versions? You have to keep flipping back and forth, and it is SO inconvenient and kludgy. What on earth was Apple thinking when they approved this atrocity? In all honestly, I absolutely DESPISE this. It is so much less useful and less user-friendly than that of the one in Snow Leopard and previous versions.
If you can't change it, is there a good replacement for AB? One that will restore the convenience of previous versions?

When you sign into iCloud, all data should merge. Make a backup of your contacts before trying if you don't have a backup already.
Once done, you can deselect Conatacts from iCloud preferences and choose delete from the Mac. Once done, reselect Contacs and your address book should only have iCloud contacts listed and no local.

Similar Messages

  • Address book: Find and replace characters?

    Hi all,
    I just imported VCF file from Outlook to Address book. I am in Iceland and the Icelandic characters came wrong. Is there any way to batch find and replace characters in Address book? That is in individual cards.
    Thanks,
    Hilmar

    I believe the only way would be to write an AppleScript.

  • Entourage Sync with iCal & Address Book - Fixed!

    Finally found a solution that really works.
    Background
    I had the infamous issue of trying to get Entourage Calendar and Contacts to Sync with iCal & Address book for the purpose of syncing with iTunes on my iPhone.
    I've had most of the symptoms listed on this site.
    It only syncs one way, Entourage Calendar shows up in iCal, but it's blank, Entourage Calendar does not show up at all in iCal, but contacts show up in Address book.
    I've read nearly every post about it and tried all the various fixes listed, but none of them worked, or at least not consistently.
    My setup:
    OS X 10.5.5 MacBook Pro (latest updates)
    Entourage 2004 (latest patches)
    (If your using Mobile me, log out before you do this)
    Here's what you'll need to do:
    1. Backup your Main Identity which contains all your entourage info, email, contacts, calendars, etc. (Just in case you goof something up)
    It's located in your home user account ~User/youraccount/documents/Microsoft User Data (Backup this whole folder)
    If you don't know all your email credentials such as username, password, smtp, pop info, jott it down as it will save you some time later.
    2. Launch Entourage and uncheck the Sync Services. Quit Entourage and all Office Apps.
    Also you should archive all your entourage data if you want to copy it to the new setup.
    Archive the contacts and Calendar Events separately.
    3. Launch iCal and manually delete the Entourage Calendar (if present) Quit iCal.
    4. Now open your documents folder and locate the folder named Microsoft User Data and rename the folder to Microsoft User Data Original
    5. Create a new OS X User from the System Preferences... Accounts
    6. Logoff your current user account and login to your new user account.
    7. Launch Entourage and enter your email info.
    8. Now create a single calendar event.
    9. Go to Entourage Preferences, and check the Sync Services. (click OK, etc.)
    10. Wait 5 minutes, then launch iCal and you will see the Entourage Calendar with your single event.
    You should also see your contact that was created when you setup email in the Address Book.
    If this worked you've isolated the syncing problem to a corrupt file in your user account or corrupt data in your entourage account.
    You can go back to your original user account and delete all the info from entourage to see if you had corrupt data in entourage, (youd did back it up first, right?) or you can follow the procedures below to move all your stuff over to the new login account.
    Now you'll need to migrate your data from your Old login account to your new login account.
    (I've tried just moving the new Entourage identity back to the old account, and it didn't always work)
    The easiest way to move data between accounts is to login as root.
    To enable the root user, Go to Utilities, Directory Utility, and under the edit menu, select enable root user, enter a unique password, later you can disable root login when your all done)
    Logout of your new login and login as root with the new password you just created
    When it prompts for a username type "root". If you don't have that option click the Other login and then type in root as the username and the new password.
    Once your logged in as root, be careful as you can pretty much trash anything without any warnings.
    Now Open your original user folder located in ~User/youraccount as well as the new user you just created
    (not the root account)
    Open the folders side by side and drag the contents from old to new:
    Desktop
    Documents
    iTunes
    Movies
    Music
    plus any other info you need.
    Log back into your new user account, and run a repair permissions from disk utility.
    Launch Entourage and enter a new event and contact. Then wait a few minutes and verify that it made it over to iCal & Address book.
    If it did, and it should have, you can then import your entourage archives, do contacts first, then wait a few minutes and verify it shows up in Address Book, then do your Calendar events and verify.
    When everything is syncing between entourage and iCal/Address Book you can connect your iPhone and enable syncing.
    A few important notes:
    -If you have Years worth of Calendar Items in entourage, you will most likely run into problems, so archive your old Events and only restore that which you need.
    -You may also need to retrieve old application preferences.
    -Once your sure you've got everything, you can delete the Microsoft User Data Original folder that we renamed and put in your Documents Folder.
    Hope this helps somebody out.
    LJS

    Entourage calendar does not sync as you are expecting, with iCal.
    Turn your Entourage sync services on (to sync your calendar) and you will notice in iCal a new calendar on the left, called Entourage. Mind has a purple color to it, for example.
    Now, in iCal, create a new appointment and assign it TO the Entourage calendar. Now sync, and hey presto it shows up in Entourage.
    This is by design, Entourage does not sync ALL of your iCal calendars, it will only sync the Entourage calendar which is created in iCal.
    For example, I have Home, Work, Personal and Entourage calendars in iCal - appointments I make with my Home, Work or Personal calendar will not appear in Entourage, period. Only appointments made in iCal using the Entourage calendar will appear in Entourage (after a sync).
    Likewise, appointments made IN Entourage Calendar, are sync'd to iCal and are only visible if you show the Entourage calendar in iCal - (it's switched ON by default, but can be switched off by un-ticking the calendar in the left pane of iCal).
    Does this make sense?

  • Restored Address Book information is replaced by iCloud

    Long story short, another user messed up my address book contacts, and they synced with iCloud.  Fortunately, I have an Address Book Archive that's current.  So, I restored the Archive, which replaces everything in the Address Book.  Then, it starts to sync immediately with iCloud, and the Address book is automatically reverted back to the previous "messed up" state.  I've tried turning off iCloud Address Book syncing in System Preferences, but that doesn't seem to have any affect.  Any suggestions?
    Thanks,
    J

    Ok, figured this out.  You need to use the Export vCard feature, NOT the Export Address Book Archive.
    To rebuild the groups, I selected all contacts in each group, and exported them one group at a time.
    When re-importing them, I recreated the group, imported the contacts from the vCard export from the group, then went to the Smart Group "Last Import", and dragged the contacts into the new group.
    Thanks again for the tips!

  • Is it possible to have two different address books on one user account ?

    I currently have my address book on my mac however I would like to IMPORT an address book that I saved from our family reunion which was stored on someone else's macbook. I would like to keep this new address book separate from my own on my mac. Every time I try to Import the saved Address book, i get a message that says that if I import the new address book it will replace the old one...which is not what I want to do. Also, I do not wish to create another user account just to assign an address book to it.

    You can install additional language packs if you want to run the same Firefox version in different languages like I wrote above.<br />
    Select the one(s) that you want to install and click them on the XPI site to trigger the installation.
    http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest/win32/xpi/
    The Locale Switcher extension allows to switch the language.

  • How Do I Make Import Address Book Archive Work Properly?

    I have several address books archived. I have one for Christmas cards, I have another for my neighborhood watch program and others that I use at various times. Some of the archives were made using Tiger and some I have created in Leopard. When I Export an Address Book Archive it does so without a problem. When I Import one of my Address Book Archives, to replace whatever address book is currently located in Address Book, the import does not work. Once I try to import, I must quit Address Book then reopen it and I still have the Address Book resident that I was trying to replace. The only way I have found to replace the resident address book is to first archive the current book for the sake of having it backed up, then delete all the names in the book by selecting all then deleting by hitting the delete key or by selecting Delete Cards using the Menu. After the names are deleted, then Importing an archive works fine.
    Is anyone else having this problem or possibly have a solution to making Address Book work properly without having to delete all the current names before Importing an archive?
    Information: I have deleted the Address Book Folder located within the Home/Library/Application Support folders and rebuilt it under Leopard OS and then pasted the names that were resident before deleting the folders. So far, I still cannot get the Import Address Book Archive function to work properly. Thanks in advance for any helpful information or hints.

    Ok! Hmm... I indeed have tried to import an archive, did get the message, replaced all and had it working fine for me so it should for you I would think.
    Have you tried to log in your computer as a different user, launch AB and try to toggle back and forth between archives to see if you experience the same issue? If not, then it is a user specific issue, if yes, then it may be more a case of app/system issue.
    If you are able to overwrite in AB under a different user, then I would suggest you log in back to your main user and repair permissions (applications/utilities/disk utility repair permissions.
    As for your use of AB and different archives, I am sure no one is bothered by that. We are all users here trying to learn and/or help others. I would only point out that if you cannot find a solution to your problem, you may want to consider working with AB in a different manner than you have in the past and by your description of usage groups and smart groups will more than handle your contacts while avoiding mixing apples and doughnuts - but I am sure you have thought of that already !!
    hope this helps

  • Apple Address Book Won't Open

    On my iMac G5, my Apple Address Book won't open. It has been working perfectly and I've never had a problem since buying the computer about a year ago. Though the name appears on the top menu bar and the triangle shows beneath the Address Book icon on the Dock, nothing appears on the screen. I ran the Disk Utility Repair Permissions, but aht didn't correct it. I've rebooted and that didn't solve the issue either. Any suggestions? Thanks.

    Verify/repair your disk first (not just permissions), as described here:
    The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
    I don't know how to troubleshoot Address Book, other than replacing its data with a backup copy if you have one, or just getting rid of that data. Address Book stores the preferences in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist, and everything else in the ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder.
    You may try moving those files out of there, to the Desktop. You may try removing just the com.apple.AddressBook.plist preferences file (so that Address Book re-creates it again), for example, or removing just AddressBook.data and renaming AddressBook.data.previous to AddressBook.data. Whatever you do, make a backup copy of those files first, just in case.
    Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder.

  • Can't Import Previous Address Book After Reinstall

    Had to reinstall my Mac OSX 10.4.3 on my G-4 PowerBook after the G-4 showed only blue screen and refused to startup. The reinstall went so well I decided to upgrade to 10.4.9, and was able to locate and move/import my old Mail email messages from a saved copy off my "confused" harddrive. But I've had no such luck with Mail's old Address Book. vCards seem to be important to this operation, but so far I'm not able to do ANYthing with my former Address Book, much less export that data as a vCard. Any tips for how to fill out the new address book with my old addresses?

    How is it you are trying to restore the data. You can just drag the AddressBook.data file over to your ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/ folder and replace what you have there, already. You might want to copy what's there to another location, first, if you have already added anything. That way, you can go back to it if this doesn't work. Open Address Book. If the file is ok, it should open with all your old address data.

  • Recovery of address-book content

    Hi, I recently installed Leopard. I did the install as an upgrade. I found that I was getting many of the problems experienced by many other people. I then proceeded to re-install using erase and install. Since then I have had no problems to date, however I now find that I have a blank address book! This was to be expected doing a silly thing like this. Time machine had created several backups prior to my re-installation. How can I use Time Machine to recover my contacts.
    Hoping that you can help Mel.

    Open Address Book and then click on the Time Machine icon in the dock. Once you are in the Time Machine browser you should see Time Machine's version of Address Book. Go back in time to before you wiped your hard drive. Once you see all your contacts choose Restore All from the bottom bar. I've not tried it but this should be the correct procedure.
    If that doesn't work quit Address Book and try replacing the AddressBook folder on your main hard drive with the one that is in the Time Machine files via the finder. Pick from a Time Machine backup that contains all your contacts. The AddressBook folder is in your hard drive > Users > your user folder > Library > Application Support.

  • How to delete originnal Personal Address Book folder when importing address boook from another PC?

    When importing an address book file into Thunderbird the original Personal Address Book remains as the default even though it's empty. Is there a way to delete this empty 'Personal Address Book'? Thanks .. Andy TB version 24.3.0

    For some reason, ctrl+a didn't move the whole list. I had to move them one at a time. Is it so hard to let the user delete the Personal Address Book default and replace it with an address book of their choice?

  • Address Book Retrieval

    BB Curve water damaged.  Home screen will not come on.  Power light alternates between red and green.  No computer back-up of address book and computer can't recognize BB.  Question:  Is there a method that a BB service center may use to retrieve the address book data?   Yes, I am now employing the latest BB Desktop Manager to back-up the nearly empty address book of my replacement BB.

    it took my 30 seconds to use the search box at the top to find your only solution
    http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=8100&message.id=12491&query.id=293688...

  • Strange items in Address Book

    I have a very strange situation, open Mail to do a new email, to address the email I type in Frank, nothing comes up, but yet I have 4 names with Frank in them. If I try the same thing addressing with Larry it shows all of the Larry's I have. The names show in the address book within the Mail program
    Everything is listed last name then first name, I have rebuilt the address's in Address book an have replaced the address book .pilst. This is happening on just one computer, the other works fine, I have copied over the address from one computer to the other.
    When typing in the name Frank the wheel just goes round and round
    Any suggestions?
    thanks
    Mike

    And does that address correctly populate the To box in the new message composition window?
    Would it be possible for me to see that address, as in not a privacy issue? If OK, then Save as Draft, use one click to open it in the Draft mailbox, then with a New Message addressed to me, click on Edit and choose Append Selected Messages.
    My address can be found by clicking on my name to the left.
    Ernie

  • Possible cause of Address Book & Mail issues following 10.5.5 upgrade

    Dear all,
    Upgrading to 10.5.5 caused problems with Address Book on my computers.
    In my situation, the problem was due to 'Smart Groups' with NOT conditionals. The existence of 2 such smart groups caused Address Book to become unresponsive and ThunderBird/Mail to crash as they were unable to look up the Address Book.
    This may (or may not) have been the cause of the problem. I am also running The Missing Sync and the Google Maps plugins -- so there may have been other conflicts. All I can say is that by rolling back to 10.5.4, removed the offending smart groups and rolling the forward into an empty 10.5.5 Address book fixed my problems.
    Unfortunately, even selecting the problem smart group then means that Address Book becomes unresponsive. Unfortunately quitting (which I was still able to do) and re-opening still leaves Address Book unresponsive -- as there is a default selected group set in com.apple.AddressBook.plist.
    HOW TO AVOID - BEFORE UPGRADING TO 10.5.5
    Remove any smart groups with NOT conditionals when in 10.5.4.
    NOTE: Exporting to an Address Book archive format still includes the smart group definitions. While this will not fix your problem, it will give you something to work with ... back in 10.5.4.
    HOW TO FIX -- DISCLAIMERS
    It was possible to fix -- but I do not know if this is a sound approach (clobbering Address Book files? -- probably not) AND if you do not know your way around some key directories YOU COULD CREATE ADDITIONAL PROBLEMS.
    It would be advisable to try testing this on a temporary account first. This means you are also going to need to know about permissions -- Address Book Archives appear to be some kind of package format.
    HOW TO FIX - IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO A 10.5.4 MAC
    It is possible to create an Address Book Archive from 10.5.5 and then import that into a 10.5.4 account, remove the offending smart groups, re-export as an Address Book archive and then import this into 10.5.5.
    However, to do this does involve editing the relevant Addressbook.plist files (10.5.5), then exporting as an Address Book Archive (from 10.5.5), importing (to 10.5.4), editing (in 10.5.4) and then exporting (from 10.5.4), clobbering the 10.5.5 Address Book database and then importing (into an empty 10.5.5) Address Book database.
    HOW TO FIX - IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO A 10.5.4 MAC
    It is a little simpler (fewer steps) but you will loose all of you groups. In this situation you will need to export all of your address book entries as a vcard file (better export an Address Book Archive as well -- just to be safe), clobber your 10.5.5 Address book and then re-import the vcard file.
    HOW TO FIX - IF YOU HAVE A 10.5.4 BACKUP
    Alternatively, roll back to before the 10.5.5 upgrade (ie to 10.5.4). Edit your smart groups. Export an Address Book Archive (just in case) and then re-apply the 10.5.5 patch.
    GOOD LUCK
    When I contacted AppleCare they were very helpful but did not have any visibility of this particular problem.

    After I sent this initial post I did some more testing.
    Creating a new Smart Group in my now working 10.5.5 address book which has a NOT conditional caused Address Book to lock-up again.
    My Smart Group was pretty simple -- 'list all cards that are NOT a member of any group'.
    So, the steps in the posting above do NOT fix the problem, they only identify a particular type of Smart Group which will cause a problem and how to get a version of Address Book working again.
    I have not gone back and undertaken a thorough set of tests. I am just not going to create any new Smart Groups without first creating an Address Book Archive -- or alternatively overriding Library/Application Support/AddressBook from a Time Machine backup if there is a problem.

  • I fixed my iSync Problem it now syncs Address book and iCal on 10.4.9

    Ever since updating to the latest version of OS X 10.4.9 iSync didn't work anymore with my Sony Z520i.
    Neither Address Book or iCal wouldn't sync at all and I tried everything even a fresh erase and Install.
    Someone here on this forum told me to delete the folder SyncServices found in ~/library/Aplicatrion Support/SyncServices. I did that but it still didn't work so I replaced the same folder from the trash. I then launched iSync again, it did sync my address book only. I couldn't select the option for iCal in iSync anymore until I resynced my iCal in my Mac prefrences, after that I could select it in iSync but it would still fail.
    So I deleted two files that belong to iCal located in ~/library/Aplication Support/iCal the two files are sync.plist and syncState.plist
    When I tried it it worked perfectly iSync synced both address book and iCal and I have been testing it without any problems updating my address book and iCal for the last few days.
    It's 100% fixed :)
    17" Powerbook G4 Airport Express   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   1.67 GHz, 93.04 GB, 1GB RAM, 128 MB ATI 9700

    You only get the one hour difference if the Time Zone or Daylight saving setting is set incorrectly on your phone, or if you are viewing events before the last time the clocks changed (March), or after the next time the clocks change (October).

  • I just upgraded to Lion and lost my entire address book. Ack. Fix?

    I just upgraded to Lion and so far so good,  EXCEPT I lost my entire address book. EVERY contact  missing. I didn't back up my address book before the upgrade (see me slap head) altho did have my contacts on my iPhone, slightly out of date, but more current than my last Mac backup. So I followed the iPhone to iCloud to Mac contact synch steps and the contacts repopulated on my Mac but WITHOUT the mailing ADDRESSES. Now addresses are also gone from my iPhone.
    Is it possible to revert to the  Snow Leopard address data file? And if so, how do I do this? Or is there a better fix?

    I had the same problem and also didn't have a back-up of my SL Address Book archive. But a minute or so's mucking about I came up with this workaround:
    1) Quit Address Book and in the Finder, hold down Option, click on Go in the menubar and choose Library.
    2) Go to Application Support/Address Book.
    3) In that folder you should see a file called Migration XXXXX-XXX.abbu.tbz (that's a compressed TAR file).The "XXXs" will be a jumble of numbers which from what I can gather relate to the date when you upgraded to Lion. Open it using the free Unarchiver program available for download from the App Store.
    4) This will open up a folder also called Migration XXXX-XXX. Click the flippy triangle to the left and you'll see it contains the Contact Book archives that existed before you upgraded to Lion, including any images and most importantly the Metadata (the names, addresses etc).
    5) Move the Metadata folder from the Migration folder up into the main Library/Application Support/Address Book folder. You will get an alert saying the folder already exists: click Replace. I also replaced the existing AddressBook-v22.abcddb file from the Migration folder as well. I don't use images in Address Book so I didn't replace that: if you do, you probably do want to replace that folder too.
    6) Open Address Book and gasp in wonder to find all your contacts resurrected.
    Since it's an Apple app that you've been playing around with, run Repair permissions to tidy things up.
    Hope this helps.

Maybe you are looking for