Address Book "Merge Cards" is losing unique information

The Merge Cards function has stopped working. Instead of combining all the info on two cards, it preserves only some of it. I can't see how it selects which info it preserves, but it is certainly not all that it should preserve. What can I do to restore the old functionality?

I too am experiencing frustrating difficulties with Apple Address Book.
I am trying to merge my Gmail contacts with my Address Book contacts (and then with an export via Yahoo Address Book of my Facebook contacts).
The problem is that in Gmail I keep everyone's old email addresses on their contact card to make it easier to find old emails from the same person... you know when someone has moved from job to job.
I name these in Gmail as "Old" and often there are up to 5-6 emails.. some "Home", some "Work" and some my custom "Old".
When I import the Apple VCF export from Gmail into Apple Address Book it tells me there are duplicates. I click on review duplicates. A whole lot of information is not being preserved when the two cards are being "merged".... it just deletes stuff randomly :X
Any assistance as to how to get around this would be appreciated!
Cheers.

Similar Messages

Why does address info in Address Book merge in weird ways?

I have two computers, and I sync them via .Mac. I can't figure out why this strange problem occurs: When I sync Address Book, I often end up with information from addressees that are businesses embedded in the address information of individuals. For example, the person's name remains the same, but a company name (such as the name of the radio station) is inserted under the person's name in the address card. All the contact information of the radio station is also put on the card. So I end up with a card for "so-and-so" with a company name of "such-and-such", with the personal phone number of the person listed as a "home" number and the radio station phone number listed as a "work" number. This really befuddles me. Anyone have a clue what is going on?

You may want to try this:
How to reset .Mac Sync

What is the smallest data structure record in a .TXT file record to be recognized as an Apple Address Book "Data Card"?

Hello! This is my first time in this discussion group. The question posed is the subject line itself:
What is the smallest data structure record in a .TXT file record to be recognized as an Apple Address Book "Data Card"?
I'm lazy! As a math instructor with 40+ students per class per semester (pCpS), I would rather not have to create 40 data cards pCpS by hand, only to expunge that info at semester's end. My college's IS department can easily supply me with First name, Last name, and eMail address info, along with a myriad of other fields. I can manipulate those data on my end to create the necessary .TXT file, but I don't know the essential structure of that file.
Can you help me?
Thank you in advance.
Bill

Hello Bill, & welcome aboard!
No idea what pCpS is, sorry.
To import a text file into Address Book, it needs to be a comma delimited .csv file, like...
Customer Name,Company,Address1,Address2,City,State,Zip
Customer 1,Company 1,2233 W Seventh Street,Unit 543,Seattle,WA,99099
Customer 2,Company 2,1 Park Avenue,,New York,NY,10001
Customer 3,Company 3,65 Loma Linda Parkway,,San Jose,CA,94321
Customer 4,Company 4,89988 E 23rd Street,B720,Oakland,CA,99899
Customer 5,Company 5,432 1st Avenue,,Seattle,WA,99876
Customer 6,Company 6,76765 NE 92nd Street,,Seattle,WA,98009
Customer 7,Company 7,8976 Poplar Street,,Coupeville,WA,98976
Customer 8,Company 8,7677 4th Ave North,,Seattle,WA ,89876
Customer 9,Company 9,4556 Fauntleroy Avenue,,West Seattle,WA,98987
Customer 10,Company 10,4 Bell Street,,Cincinnati,OH,89987
Customer 11,Company 11,4001 Beacon Ave North,,Seattle,WA,90887
Customer 12,Company 12,63 Dehli Street,,Noida,India,898877-8879
Customer 13,Company 13,63 Dehli Street,,Noida,India,898877-8879
Customer 14,Company 14,63 Dehli Street,,Noida,India,898877-8879
Customer 15,Company 15,4847 Spirit Lake Drive,,Bellevue,WA,98006
Customer 16,Company 16,444 Clark Avenue,,West Seattle,WA,88989
Customer 17,Company 17,6601 E Stallion,,Scottsdale,AZ,85254
Customer 18,Company 18,801 N 34th Street,,Seattle,WA,98103
Customer 19,Company 19,15925 SE 92nd,,Newcastle,WA,99898
Customer 20,Company 20,3335 NW 220th,2nd Floor,Edmonds,WA,99890
Customer 21,Company 21,444 E Greenway,,Scottsdale,AZ,85654
Customer 22,Company 22,4 Railroad Drive,,Moclips,WA,98988
Customer 23,Company 23,89887 E 64th,,Scottsdale,AZ,87877
Customer 24,Company 24,15620 SE 43rd Street,,Bellevue,WA,98006
Customer 25,Company 25,123 Smalltown,,Redmond,WA,98998
Try Address Book Importer...
http://www.sillybit.com/abee/

Merge iPhoto name with Address Book contact card?

I have a lot of pictures named on iPhoto under faces. But then I just put some contacts in my Address Book and I wanted to know if theres a way to merge the Faces name and the Contact Card. Or maybe if I can just rename all of the Faces at once under one person, and change them to the contact card name? P.S. I am currently running Snow Leopard. But i I need Lion for it, I will be biying it tomorrow anyways=) Thanks anyone who helps!:D

Oh wait! Nevermind! I found I can just rename it! I'm a little new to the Mac:P

Address Book: Merging contacts drops information

Since some time my address book app shows a weird behavior: When I merge two contacts information is dropped. If one entry had the mobile number and the other the work phone the merged result only shows the work phone but not the mobile number. Also addresses are lost this way. Anything I can reset?

I finally found out a workaround:
I copied all VCF to a folder on the Dashboard, deleted all contact from the Address Book and imported them again. So now I can at least use the "first name" and "last name" field. But I expect merged contacts in the future to not work properly either.
So my question is not really answered I think.

Address Book combines cards that should be kept separate

A few weeks ago I encountered a problem with Address Book where "Look for Duplicates" was merging non-duplicate entries. The affected entries are all cards with no name, only an e-mail address. What would happen is that every time "Look for Duplicates" was run, any card that had only e-mail and no name would be merged with another card that had only e-mail and no name, with no discernible pattern.
I assumed that this was because Address Book was matching by name, and saw the e-mail only cards as duplicates, even though they were in fact distinct cards. However, I started with a fresh Address Book database as a test, and populated it with several cards that had only e-mail addresses and no names, and was unable to get it to behave this way. I have been unable to duplicate the problem with any file other than the one that is already affected.
Unfortunately, restoring the Address Book file from a backup is not an option because earlier versions of the Address Book file going back for several months are already affected. Apparently it started happening in the Fall and went unnoticed for quite some time. The most recent backup that does not have unwanted merging is far too old to be of any use, because of all of the additions that have been made to the file since.
Has anybody else seen anything similar happen, or does anybody know what might be the cause. I should add that the contacts sync over .Mac with another computer, though I tried my test with a fresh address book and .Mac syncing, and was unable to duplicate it.

I too am experiencing frustrating difficulties with Apple Address Book.
I am trying to merge my Gmail contacts with my Address Book contacts (and then with an export via Yahoo Address Book of my Facebook contacts).
The problem is that in Gmail I keep everyone's old email addresses on their contact card to make it easier to find old emails from the same person... you know when someone has moved from job to job.
I name these in Gmail as "Old" and often there are up to 5-6 emails.. some "Home", some "Work" and some my custom "Old".
When I import the Apple VCF export from Gmail into Apple Address Book it tells me there are duplicates. I click on review duplicates. A whole lot of information is not being preserved when the two cards are being "merged".... it just deletes stuff randomly :X
Any assistance as to how to get around this would be appreciated!
Cheers.

Pages and Address book Merge

Hi
I have a simple pages doc with basic merge fields for contact and address details. It all works fine when dragging and dropping address cards from address book when those details are located "on my mac" however the merge fields don't recognise the info when I drag and drop a card from a contact stored in either my hosted exchange address book or my shared cardDAV address book.
When I drag a card from a contact to my pages doc the information reverts back to the merge codes if that contact is being dragged from an address book other than the one located on my mac.
Can anyone shed any light on if this is possible?
Thanks

According to Apple:
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/addressbook-server.html
This is all supposed to just work.
If you find that it isn't:
+Menu > Pages > Provide Pages Feedback+
Also as Snow Leopard is a recent install you are entitled to Apple's support. Contact them and see what they can offer.
I don't know what country you are in but search for the local phone number starting here:
http://www.apple.com/support/contact/
I highly recommend getting AppleCare with your computer as this also offers software support for 3 years and in my experience has been well worth the money.
Peter

Custom fields in address book merged in pages document

I viewed this Paragraph below from the following link on the Apple Site
http://www.apple.com/business/profiles/iwork/sara.html
As an administrative tool, she says, “All the documents we create with Pages — contracts, correspondence, receipts — are set up with data fields for the customer information I keep in my Address Book.
The drag-and-drop ease of Pages’ Mail Merge is just huge for us. Not only names and contacts, but wedding dates, locations, and the details of the service package they’ve ordered. So I can just drag the contact over any document, and it automatically populates the fields with the client’s information. This ensures that all our crucial customer information stays up to date and in one place, and we never have to duplicate work when we create documentation.
__ I cant find out how to do this as all the forums say this is not possible. I have contacted the person but do not have a response from them as yet. I have tried to do this but it wont populate the fields into the pages document..hmmmmm
Can this be done as described

Broker1972 wrote:
Sorry! I reposted because it wasn't answered.
Does Apple post this stuff on their site that the program cant do?
Did you check out the link? Did I read the article wrong? Can we advise them of this?
It seems that you don't understand what this forum is.
Here we are users trying to help other users.
The terms os use ask everybody to search in the existing thread before asking a question.
It seems that you didn't do that because searching in
"more options"
"iWork '08"
with the keyword "Addressbook"
gave some threads in which I peeked:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6559156
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6374991
So, as you may see, I checked the links, I knew what was written in them.
There is no false advertising or misleading here because the contents of these forums is not written by Apple's employees, just by users as you are.
So, I repeat: you reposted when the response was already available:
_iWork components are unable to import custom fields from AddressBook._
Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE vendredi 15 février 2008 16:30:55)

Address Book - Merging w/ Word

Hey There Knowledgable Apple Friends!
I am trying to figure out if it is possible to merge the information that I have in address book into a word document. For example, I do bookings for artists and send them to colleges. I already have the colleges information in my address book, and I don't want to copy and paste it all into the word document. Does anyone know if it's possible to merge these?
Thanks so much!
Bjork

You have three options:
1. Entourage Option (the least easy):
Make sure your contacts in AddressBook and in Entourage are synchronized (you need to update entourage to its latest version). Create a mailmerge category in it, and add your contacts one by one to this category. Entourage is really bad at this, as you can only search by Name or Company and not by Country or City (so you are out of luck if you want to mail everyone in a given city!).
Move into Word and do your mailmerge. Unlike the equivalent on the PC, you can't just select a few contacts, it will use all of the contacts you have available. Your best option is to mailmerge only the contact in the mailmerge category you previously defined.
2. Buy iWork and do the mailmerge from iWork. This is just as easy, but AddressBook is so stupid that it will not allow you to display per country, so again create a 'mailmerge' group, and add your contacts one by one to that Group.
3. Buy Parrallel, install Windows and Office and do it from Outlook who can display sory per country or per city. You do not need to create an additional mailmerge group, you will then work from Word.
Sadly, Apple did not put much thought into its AddressBook when using in the context of a commercial application. On the other hand, Microsoft did something nice but with too many shortcomings.
Good luck to you.

Address book merges

Has anybody ever succeeded in merging more than one telephone number in one letterhead (or similar)? If I try to merge work phone and mobile phone into a letter head (and yes both fields are filled in the Address Book card) I either get the work phone number twice, or I get work phone number and the field name (Mobile phone) in the second position. Any suggestions?

This is the closest thing I have foudn for this so far. Maybe someone else has a better solution.
OSX hints website
Hope this is what your talking about,
Jason

Address book family cards

The Mountain Lion forum was my best guess where I might post this. Does anyone know of third party software to accomplish what I wish were standard in the Contacts app?
Here's what I want: Family cards (or just Families).
I've got a brother, John Doe. His wife is Jane Doe. They have three kids: Tom, Dick and Harry Doe.
So in Contacts I've got cards for John, Jane, and Tom, but not for the youngest kids. They just moved. Now I've got to change the mailing address separately for all three, though it's literally the same piece of information. Ditto for their land line phone (how quaint!). Tom has gone off to college, he has a different mailing address, though it's sometimes appropriate to mail things to him at John and Jane's home. When John and Jane moved, Tom's college address stayed the same, of course.
I've got two friends: Jimmy Jones and Janet Jones (not the mass murderer or the actress). They're really just acquaintences, but I send them a holiday card every year. I currently have one address card, "Jimmy & Janet Jones," which irks me, because it's not one person with the odd first name "Jimmy & Janet" but two separate people. One day I may have need to call them, though, and they have two cell phone numbers. I could add them both to the contact and create custom labels like "Jimmy" and "Janet"...but that doesn't scale if I do that often.
What I would REALLY like is a new Family card. I would create such a card, say "John, Jane and Family". I would associate Joh, Jane and Tom's cards with this family card. I could also add the names of Dick and Harry to the card, and optionally create new cards for them. Each individual card would contain the data unique to the individual: mobile phone, email, Facebook page, Skype account, birthday, whatever. The Family card would contain shared information, like mailing addresses and land lines.
View the Family card, and see all the aggregated information, such as everyone's individual cell numbers, auto-labelled with first names; plus the shared family information, such as mailing address. View any individual's card and see that contact's info, plus any shared info for the family. Tom would list the shared family address (John and Jane's) and would also have, individually, his own college address, which is also displayed on the Family card, appropriately labelled.
Right now, I have a "Holiday cards" group. We access it each year. It's a mishmash of individuals, shared "&" address cards and other inconsistent constructs. What it SHOULD be is a list of Family cards and unconnected individual cards.
Does anyone know of a piece of third-party software that creates this kind of arrangement? One that would integrate with Contacts (even if it's just behind the scenes managing the existing Contacts structure but doing the legwork of updating each individual card to reflect changing data)?

I'm trying to overcome a different problem but wonder if your problem might have something to do with you preference settings.

Pages and Address Book Merges

I am thinking of getting this program but what i need is the ability to merge information from my address book and merge it with letters and envelopes in i work 05. Does anyone know if this can be done, or if it will be able to be done in the near future. I dont understand why Apple had not made this a primary tool within this program.
Moe

ave you considered the dashboard widget Easy Envelope by Ambrosia?
it's suppoosed to do envelopes in a super-easy way.
I could understand needing this functionality in Pages if you were using Pages to create logo-ed envelopes or trying to merge the addresses within a document, but for now this thingipoo from Ambrosia might be useful.
er, useful if you have Tiger, that is.

Address book "me" card

Suddenly all the devices that share my home network and apple address - two macbooks and two ihphones - all have the same "me" card in the address book. Everytime one changes they all change. Two of these devices belong to my wife, so it would be better if we could have hers reflect her ownership. This wasn't a problem before, but since Lion it has popped up. Suggestions?

Didn't say your wife couldn't sync up with it. Just said it would be a a single address book and a single calendar. Your wife will have to log into your iCloud signin account. I don't think you can create separate accounts and link them.
In iCal, you can make different calendars (home, work, yours, hers), but all the calendars would show up on all devices. But, it's still a single calendar application.
For address book, you can't make different address books.
I'm not Apple and I'm not an expert on iCloud. So, others make inject a more information to clarify or give workarounds.

Address Book Merge results in *Crash*

My goal is to 1) eliminate all duplicates in my Address Book and 2) sync the fixed address book across all devices via iCloud.
In 10.7.2 I select "Look for duplicates" and the Address book finds like 8000 dupes. I select MERGE. It starts to merge...but then Crashes.
What should I do?

Peter, that is not a solution -- try selecting the same contact again from spotlight and you'll get the same "Import" dialog box, asking you what you want to do.
The expected behavior from Address Book is to open the existing contact.
No other application does this from Spotlight that I'm aware of, and after 7 years of OS X, this is still very, very annoying.
I wish there were a fix -- I'm activley looking and will report back.

Can't Select or Copy Text or Data from Address Book Contact Card w/out Edit

Is it something I am doing wrong or did someone at Apple have the weird idea to make it impossible to select/copy text in a contact card in Address Book?
Can you drag/select/copy a URL in a contact card in Address Book, e.g. if you had to paste it into another program or even a different contact card? Thanks.
Imran

IMRAN wrote:
Is it something I am doing wrong or did someone at Apple have the weird idea to make it impossible to select/copy text in a contact card in Address Book?
that would be the latter although i suspect it's a bug. it is now also impossible to select all in an address card to quickly copy and paste into a text document. you have to do it one field at a time and it doesn't seem to work with URL at all.
Can you drag/select/copy a URL in a contact card in Address Book, e.g. if you had to paste it into another program or even a different contact card? Thanks.
Imran

Address Book "Merge Cards" is losing unique information

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