Address Book Folder??

I deleted my user (For reasons I'd rather not say) so I am moving things to my new user by the "Deleted" user folder. I just realized I don't have my Address Book contacts! Is there a folder in the Home Folder that contains the Address Book Contacts?

you still have the "old" files right? just keep them as back up.
ok, quit ab ad all other applications, go back to your new homefolde/library/application support/address book folder and locate the three following items 1) addressbook.data, and tell me what size it is, then 2) metadata folder and 3) addressbook-v22.abcddb
your addressbook.data file should (depending on how many contacts you have) be of a sizeable size, if that is the case it means you did drag your address book data ok, so you only need to remove the two other items, the metadata folder and the .abcddb file. once you have removed them to the desktop for example, then open ab again and see if all your contacts are there. if so, then you can delete the two files you moved to the desktop.
hope this helps

Similar Messages

How do I import existing contract with just "Address Book" folder?

I did a clean install of Leopard, and now my Tiger backup is unbootable. I do have access to the files, though. I need to get my contacts from my address book from my Tiger backup. I can't seem to get the Leopard Address Book to recognize any contacts from the old ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/ folder on my backup.
How do I accomplish getting my old contacts to my new install?

I figured it out. I took the ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/ folder from my old Tiger backup and placed that in my new Leopard /Library/Application Support/ while temporarily renaming the original. Opening up Address Book from there then opened up my old contacts. I then did an export.
After that, I deleted the old ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/ folder from my Tiger backup I put in my Leopard system, and restored my original Leopard /Address Book/ folder.
Then, I just imported the export I did from the old data.
Tada.....it worked.

When forwarding an email, is there a way to have an Address Book folder drop down to allow selecting the adressees?

When I forward emails, I usually want to forward to a number of folks from one or two of my Address Book folders and I don't normally want to send to all of the people in each of those folders. I like to tailor the mailing list for each email and in other email apps I've used, once I click on the TO: or BCC: box, a list of my Address Book folders drops down and then I can select a folder from which I can just click on each of the recipients I want for that specific email message. Is this a capability of Thunderbird?

Once you have the Write window open, press F9 to open the Contact Sidebar. Select your contacts from there.

Address book folder missing

Address book contacts were missing but tyhe folder was there till yesterday (Library->application support). But today is mising and on teh top is missing from all time ma

Thanks for the "helpful" star feedback.
koabehr wrote:
Is there an option for us non-Time Machine users?
I am getting an external hard-drive this winter, but I don't have one yet. So a solution other than that is ideal.
(1) Instead of Time Machine, you could restore your contacts from other backups you use. Moreover, there is no requirement for the backup files to be on a hard drive.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553
Even if you do not backup your entire startup disk, you will want backups of any important, expensive, or irreplaceable files plus those shown in this Apple article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8771.html
(2) If you have no backup, the only way I know to get your Address Book contact info back is to recreate it.
As soon as you re-enter your Address Book info, use the Address Book > File > Export... > Address Book Archive... menu command to create an archive.
The archive can be used to restore your data should the problem occur again. Rather than recreating the entire Address Book database, you can restore the archive and will then need to recreate only the changes since the archive was created.
Typical Address Book archives are only a few megabytes, so, in addition to keeping a copy in your Documents folder, you can save an extra copy on another computer, writable CD or DVD, or even Flash (jump) drive. To safeguard against loss due to hard disk crash, it is vital that you keep your principal backup/archive somewhere other than your startup disk. I think you can see that more than one copy on more than one media is a good idea.
I am slow on the keyboard, so I recreate my archive monthly in addition to Time Machine and the other backups I keep.
Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz Mac OS X (10.6.4); MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.4)
LED Cinema Display; G4 PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11); iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9); External iSight; iPod touch 4.1

Address Book folder in /Documents/ ?!?

Just opened /Documents/ folder to find that there's a folder in there at the top level named "Address Book" which contains subfolders named "Metadata" and "Images" Can anyone tell me how it got there, what it is, and what I should do with it?!? Many thanks!

macwiz1220 wrote:
If the one in ~/Library/ApplicationSupport was accessed at the time you just opened AB, than you can delete the one in your Documents folder.
I would check first!
If the AB got accidentally moved 10 days ago, then maybe the new one has only recent entries. So CHECK FIRST!
If the one in the Documents folder is much bigger, post back. If they are roughly the same, do as macwiz suggests.

Missing Address Book Folder in Application Support

I've been having problems with my Address Book for a long time, now. Ever since my friend accidentally synced his iPhone with my computer and merged all our contacts. I had gone in and deleted the contacts, but the program has been buggy. As it stands, there are 0 Cards in my Address Book.
I loaded the BETA for Face Time for Mac to see how it worked, knowing that I had nothing in my Address Book. Or so I thought. The BETA application pulled names from way back when my friend had all his contacts on my computer, and my old ones, but they aren't around!!
I started looking around for what could be wrong, and realised the folder for Address Book in the Application Support folder is missing (i.e. ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/)... What do I do?
Please help.

Thanks for the "helpful" star feedback.
koabehr wrote:
Is there an option for us non-Time Machine users?
I am getting an external hard-drive this winter, but I don't have one yet. So a solution other than that is ideal.
(1) Instead of Time Machine, you could restore your contacts from other backups you use. Moreover, there is no requirement for the backup files to be on a hard drive.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553
Even if you do not backup your entire startup disk, you will want backups of any important, expensive, or irreplaceable files plus those shown in this Apple article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8771.html
(2) If you have no backup, the only way I know to get your Address Book contact info back is to recreate it.
As soon as you re-enter your Address Book info, use the Address Book > File > Export... > Address Book Archive... menu command to create an archive.
The archive can be used to restore your data should the problem occur again. Rather than recreating the entire Address Book database, you can restore the archive and will then need to recreate only the changes since the archive was created.
Typical Address Book archives are only a few megabytes, so, in addition to keeping a copy in your Documents folder, you can save an extra copy on another computer, writable CD or DVD, or even Flash (jump) drive. To safeguard against loss due to hard disk crash, it is vital that you keep your principal backup/archive somewhere other than your startup disk. I think you can see that more than one copy on more than one media is a good idea.
I am slow on the keyboard, so I recreate my archive monthly in addition to Time Machine and the other backups I keep.
Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz Mac OS X (10.6.4); MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.4)
LED Cinema Display; G4 PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11); iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9); External iSight; iPod touch 4.1

I want to use a Thunderbird address book folder to mail merge into MS Word letter [name, address]. How to?

I recently migrated from Outlook 2010 to Thunderbird. I have contact folders. I publish a newsletter in MS Word. I want to mail merge my newsletter with now a specific contact database [folder] in the Thunderbird address book. So my question is, how to do this?

Unfortunately, the tight and smooth integration you have experienced between Outlook and Word is due to those two products having come from the same Office stable and having been designed from the outset for such interoperability. With Thunderbird coming from a third party author, there's not much incentive for Microsoft to support or encourage interchange of data between Office components and Thunderbird.
If you have Outlook and Word, what advantages do you anticipate in using Thunderbird? (Personally, I do exactly the same because I dislike Outlook and its Ribbon in particular). But I don't have much call for the sort of task you are attempting.
The long and short of it is that you'll probably have to export your TB Address Book to a format that your Word mail merge can use. Since I haven't tried this for myself in a long time, I don't know what Word can use. I'd hope that CSV would fit the bill.
If you are thinking about moving away from Microsoft Office, then you might look at Libre Office, which can, IIRC, use a data source such as Thunderbird's address book as a mail merge source. But this alone may not be a very good reason to move away from tools you know. :-S

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?

How to sync iPhone contacts back to Address Book.

I came across this problem and found a work-around on the forums, but some guys there–including myself–felt that iTunes should sync our contacts bi-directionally from iPhone to Address Book on our Macs, and vice versa.
As it turns out, that's really the default behavior in iTunes when syncing between iPhone/Address Book on the Mac. However, if you've been using iCloud to sync everything lateley, this will not be the default behavior, because your iTunes won't sync anything back to your Address Book on the Mac unless you completly disconnect from iCloud services.
So..... if you want to sync your contacts from your iPhone back to your Address Book on your Mac, I'm providing this simple, yet tedious, solution:
Step 1: Open Address Book on your Mac, select all of your contacts, and press delete. You'll be asked if you really want to delete the contacts. Hit ok and continue.
Step 2: Navigate to: Macintosh HD/Users/(YourUserName)/Library/Application Support/Address Book.
Note* On OS X Lion, your Library folder will not be shown. You'll have to navigate there a different way. The way I did it was:
Click the "Go" option up in the Finder menu bar.
Toward the bottom of the pull-down menu, click on the "Go to Folder..." option.
Type "~(YourUserName)/Library/Application Support/Address Book.
Once there, I searched through all the folders included and deleted anything that ended in ".plist" or ".log". This way, Address Book is completely reset when next open it.
Step 3: Open Address Book, add at least one contact if none are automatically created for you, and make sure iCloud is Disabled (if an account is there) in your Address Book Preferences pane, which you find by clicking "Address Book" in the top menu bar. Then, quit Address Book.
Step 4: On your iPhone, open your Settings app, go to the iCloud option, and turn all services off. After turning each one off, it will ask you if you want to keep the data on you phone. Always select "Yes", otherwise you may lose your data.
Step 5: Connect your iPhone to your computer, open iTunes, select your iPhone in the left column, select the "Info" tab, and check the box to "Sync Contacts"–further down on the page, in the Advanced section, make sure the Contacts checkbox is unchecked. If it's checked when you sync, iTunes will overwrite the contacts on your phone with the contacts from Address Book on your Mac.
Step 6: Sync your iPhone–This will sync the contacts from your phone to the Address Book app on your Mac.
Step 7: Open up Address Book, and add an iCloud account, or re-enable the one you disabled in step 3–This will sync all of those contacts to your iCloud account again. Then, you can also go back to the iCloud settings on your phone and turn all the services back on.
After all this, you should have been able to first sync your contacts from you iPhone back to your Address Book app on your Mac, then have them both synced up through iCloud with the same contacts being pushed everywhere.
Hope this helps!

Hi, thanks for all this, unfortunately it's still not helping me. Last week I turned on iCloud for contacts and not only did the iCloud sync fail, but now with iCloud off I haven't been able to sync iphone-to-mac thru iTunes.
I've checked that iCloud contact sync'ing is off, on both my Mac and iPhone. I've even turned off all other iCloud services on both devices. I followed your instructions precisely and even deleted more than you suggested from the App Support | Address Book folder. Step 6 just doesn't work. iTunes whips thru the Address Book sync progress when it should pause a bit to do the transfer—my Address Book archive is 44 Mb.
I have no desire to waste more time with iCloud, just want it to work the old fashioned way. I'd gladly do a clean system re-install but not sure even that would do it…hard to tell where the problem lies.
Appreciate any light you could shed!

How can I restore my Address Book from Time Machine, iCloud keeps overwriting

This was all done on my MacBook Pro, using Mavericks updated. With the Address Book, and iCloud.
Ok, this is really a mess. I have close to a 1,000 contacts in my address book. I'm not going to manually sort them. I have a bunch of groups in my address book. These groups are very important, and not something simple to sort out. I have already read this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18790074?searchText=How%20can%20I%20restor e%20my%20Address%20Book%20from%20Time%20Machine,%20iCloud%20keeps%20overwriting# 18790074
My situation is similar, and yet a little different.
I accidentally deleted a group in my address book. So, with my handy dandy Time Machine backup, I quickly went into Time Machine, and restored the group. However, I was connected to the internet, and iCloud promptly deleted the nicely restored group. So I went into Time Machine again, and restored the username/Library/Application Support/Address Book folder. Again, opened the Address Book, was content to see my group was intact and there. After about 20 seconds it disappeared before my very eyes. I was now starting to get frustrated. iCloud had again erased my ‘restored’ group.
          I promptly disconnected from the internet, restored my address book, and exported a copy in abbu format. I then reconnected to the internet, and as I expected, iCloud once again deleted my ‘restored group’. I then imported my abbu ‘backup’ file, and everything was once again intact… for about 20 seconds before iCloud again deleted my group.
          Ignorantly, I deleted everything in my address book (while connected to the internet). I then allowed iCloud to update everything. After it seemed like it was done (it doesn’t tell you what is going on). I went ahead and imported my abbu file. This again resulted in nothing in my address book. I again disconnected from the internet, and imported the abbu file. I then exported all my contacts and each group in the vcf format. I started importing each group into iCloud.com online, and everything was working smoothly. Then, it started getting errors, and not importing all the contacts.
          OBVIOUSLY there is a bug, or problem, or something wrong here. iCloud is being extremely stubborn, and extremely un-friendly to it’s user. I’m kind of at my wits end with this. If anyone has any ideas, I really could use some help I think that iCloud could use some help too. Perhaps some lessons in politeness. Perhaps a lesson in ‘restoration.’ Perhaps a compatibility with Apples own Time Machine??? Please any help would greatly be appreciated!
Shane

I don't know why you moved the app. Move the application back into your "Applications" folder which is where it belongs and should always stay. Then drag the app down to your Dock, if the Dock icon is not there already.
Now, open AddressBook. The click on the TM icon on your Dock. Now do you see the TM screen with AB open? Good. Use the TM time arrow back button until AB appears the way it used to be. Then click restore.
-mj
[email protected]

ICloud Deleted Local Contacts From Address Book

Okay, so I tried setting up an iCloud account so a family member could receive texts and messages via iChat. That was the original goal. I successfully set up an account, but iChat does not allow me to login via the iCloud account that I had set up. After sever attempts I decided to put that on the back burner until I had a little more time to look into it. In doing so I seem to have caused some other collateral damage which I didn't anticipate (see below).
Unfortunately, as I logged out of iCloud on the iMac, it wiped/deleted every last contact that was in the address book. My question is: How can I get them back?
I suspect that there is a "previous" or "prior" image of the data what was there. I'm guessing that Apple put some type of safeguard in place for just such an occurrance, though I could be wrong.
The Machine is a 2011 27" iMac running 10.7.5. The last backup of the address book that I can get to is from 2011. Actually it's the Address Book Folder in users>Library>Applications Support. I made a copy of the entire system drive AFTER everything was migrated over from the old system that was replaced, and have it on an external drive.
Some notes:
- Time Machine was not active or on
- iCloud was never activated until just recently
- the person does not own an iDevice with any of the contacts
- iCloud does not seem to show any contacts to even bring back onto the iMac
It seems like a really silly thing to have any local data removed AT ALL upon signing out of iCloud. What's on the machine should remain on the machine unless the enduser literally goes out of there way to purposly delete the information stored there. There should be no dialog box what so ever even indicating that data will be removed, and even if the data was removed there should be an easy way to undo the action in case the enuser misinterpreted the action. Before any of the data is removed from the local the information (or at least a copy of it) should have been automatically stored to the cloudspace PRIOR. Why on earth would Apple set it up in such a way where the default is to delete any local data at all?

No. Absolutely not. We'll just have to agree to disagree. iCloud should be able to be turned on or off on any given device associated with said account. Local stores should be synchronized and that synchronization should happen continuously if connected. When not connected, local stores should maintain their state. What would be the purpose of even bothering to "sync". Or are you saying that in effect everything is copied to a central location (ie the cloud) and any devices wanting access to that data need to be "signed in", and in effect becoming nul terminals with no local store? Why should the default assume users would want to delete the synchronized data upon sign out? iCloud should be a "use as needed" tool and not an "either/or" tool. In this case *it* should have backed the data up to begin with. That is the purpose after all. I (wrongfully) assumed in haste that the information was backed up or copied elsewhere and that even if I chose to delete it from the local device, I would still have access to it because it was stored "somewhere". And if the data wasn't synced/backed up to "the cloud" upon sign-in, then a friendly reminder alerting the user that now data had yet been saved would certainly go a long way. But this derails the entire thread. All I want to know is whether or not there is a way to retrieve the data that was erased from the iMac?

Can't edit shared address book, which also shows over 400 "no name" accts

My wife and i each have an iPhone and a work/personal computer. In order to make syncing of contacts easier (yeah right). I created a shared account on our family MobileMe account. In that account i dropped all of our contacts and set up sharing to allow both my wife and myself to view and edit. It was a little ugly in 10.5 but it worked. After installing 10.6 everything is screwed up. Now neither of us can edit or delete contacts in the shared account. Also, even though we only have 507 contacts we also have an extra 395 "no name" accounts that have no data associated with them. I've tried everything. I've killed syncing of the address book on all computers, backed up the address book and deleted the ~/Application Support/Address Book folder and reset syncing etc. It seems sharing is no longer an option?

update: my address book is now up to 1009 contacts...seems every time it syncs it adds new "no name" accounts.

Lion Address Book problem - all of over 2,000 contacts disappeared - one mysteriously reappeared - then they all reappeared during resync with Gmail!

The subject iine pretty much describes what happened.
I am wondering if it is anything to do with what looks like an odd file in the directory ~ Library -> Application Support -> Address Book
As well as the "real" database file there is this zero bytes one:
AddressBook-v22.abcddb.0F392545-78F2-4AE6-8D30-457C138332B2.unknown
From the date, it might be something to do with installing and linking Cobook to Address Book maybe?
These are the files and folders in that directory (sub-directory files not shown):
I have enabled the debug menu in Address Book but have not been able to find any info about how to use it. I lie! I did read that I might possibly have been able to "retrieve" the contacts using the debug menu "Force Refresh" - however that was after I had started to resync with Gmail contacts.
I realised that something odd was going on during resync when I saw that there were over 4,000 contacts being processed rather than the 2,000 or so that I was expecting. Initially, none of the contacts groups from Gmail were showing in Address Book after this partial sync (I stopped it when I saw what was happening). However, after quitting and restarting Address Book, the groups appeared again.
I have not lost my contact data - as well as Gmail contacts I also have an Address Book backup from about two weeks ago and also the backup created by Cobook about two weeks ago. (Installed Cobook as it looked like a very efficient way of getting to view individual contacts quickly - Quicksilver just isn't finding them at all). I used third party app "Contacts Sync for Google Gmail" to link Address Book with Gmail as it gives you options about what to do for each duplicate card that it identifies.
I then spent a lot of time sorting through the contacts on Address Book, finding duplicates, updating data, etc. with the intention of managing contacts in Address Book from then on, rather than in Gmail. Not all of these changes are reflected in the Cobook backup or Gmail.
My worry is, with Lion being such a god-awful Pig's Ear in so many more ways than this, that this Address Book mess might happen again.
I seem to have spent most of my time over the last month wrestling with the numerous problems that keep cropping up with Lion and getting little to show for it.
WARNING! FOOT-STAMPING WHINGE ABOUT LION - LOOK AWAY AND DOWN TO THE HOWLING FACES - IT WON'T BE ANYTHING THAT YOU HAVEN'T HEARD BEFORE:
I gave up on OSX when I tried Panther - that was dreadful - but was lured back by Tiger, have used Leopard very comfortably for about 5 years, had a very happy couple of months with Snow Leopard and now - this mess that is Lion! I have repaired OSX install permissions and "home user" permissions time and again, TinkerTooled it until I am blue in the face and it seems that every few days I manage to fix something and then almost immediately something else screws up. I can't upgrade to Mountain Lion on this machine and am seriously considering installing or running Linux as these problems with Lion are just never-ending - and then there are all the other stupid changes that have subsequently been sensibly reverted, mitigated or worked around in ML).
I have never bothered much with Address Book or Mail in the past as I have found them too limited. I have used either the Gmail web interface or Thunderbird. However, Gmail has started crashing my favourite browsers (Seamonkey and Firefox), Thunderbird has got just a bit too complicated and I cannot get Quicksilver to play ball with Gmail. The Lion version of Address Book is better than Gmail Contacts and Mail Smart Folders can emulate Gmail filters and labels - a huge improvement. So, just when these apps look good enough to be worth bothering with, they come part and parcel with what I have seen mocked, and rightly, as "Apple Vista"!
Sorry for that but I am about at the end of my tether with it all ;-/
I would be very grateful if anyone can offer any advice about:
1) That strange looking zero bytes file in the Address Book folder.
2) Whether the Address Book debug menu options might be of any help in this situation?
There seem to be lots of people having problems with Address Book in both Lion and Mountain Lion, if not exactly this issue, so maybe the answers will help others too.
Fingers crossed!
Ms Mousette
ps. In the product list to tick for this question they are grouped so I cannot specify that this is actually nothing to do with the iPhone. I have got a load of contacts on my iPhone too but I am not going to sync them until I have got this issue sorted out.

Could this font be the cause of the problem?
Possibly, since that font is not the one that Address Book uses and there is no method to specify or change the font used by Address Book. You could have recovered your Address Book contacts without syncing, so that could also be part of the problem. You should always make a keep a backup of your Address Book on your computer and in another safe location whenever you make any change to it.
May I ask why you haven't updated to 10.4.11 yet, as it provides various bug fixes and security enhancements?
Mulder

How to delete ALL contacts in Address Book 10.6.3.(1091) in Macbook?

I made no effort ever to add the contents of my iPhone to my Macbook. Ever. Right now in my Skype app that I have only Just downloaded have I just found ALL of my iPhone contacts in it's contact list. NOT GOOD. I am looking for a way to remove my iPhone phone book from the Address Book on my Mac and then remove ALL those same contacts from the Skype contact list.
I am now removing my iPhone contacts from Address Book on my Macbook one by one manually. Is there a shorter way of doing this?

Are you using iCloud?
What is the file format you intend to use to import contacts? If it an Address Book Backup (.abbu) then perhaps you can import it. That would delete your entire Address Book and replace it with the backup.
I might suggest simply moving your entire ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book folder to the Desktop. That seems rather drastic though, and if your contacts are stored in iCloud it might not make a difference.

How to delete all contacts in address book?

I cannot delete any entry in my address book on my MacBook running 10.5.8. Help.

Are you using iCloud?
What is the file format you intend to use to import contacts? If it an Address Book Backup (.abbu) then perhaps you can import it. That would delete your entire Address Book and replace it with the backup.
I might suggest simply moving your entire ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book folder to the Desktop. That seems rather drastic though, and if your contacts are stored in iCloud it might not make a difference.

Address Book Folder??

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