Address Book's Data getting jumbled

Hello,
I have a user who's data in address book keeps getting corrupted.
What ends up happening is email addresses from different contacts get automatically added to other contacts. Out of about 1500 contacts about a dozen will "merge" there data so that each corrupted contact has each of the others contact info in it. This will then grow and expand, more contacts effected, more email addresses added per contact. The original data is still held in the first line of each category. In addition, many contacts are duplicated, sometimes triplicated.
This problem has been going on across 3 computers. Started on Leopard upgrade. Now on a system with clean instal.
I have repaired the corrupted contacts manually. Exported as address book data. Deleted files from user library. Imported.
This last time I repaired the contacts, exported as vCards, deleted all, imported. Hoping that the issue would not follow in the vCard format.
I have run disk permissions and Disk Warrior.
Logs show nothing.
Any ideas? This one is driving me nuts and is effecting the VP of Sales, so important that I fix.
Thank you.

Thanks, yes I have tried that. It was the first thing I actually tried, forgot to post that.
I have tried deleting the whole ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book folder with no luck. Good idea with the script.
Syncing... well that is a good question. The user has a iPhone but says they never sync it.
I find that hard to believe, have disabled the auto syncing.
When I connect over the network or via vnc I never see the iPhone connected.
I have thought of the syncing and am not ruling it our right now, but it would not explain the growing numbers of corrupt contacts. It would be the same ones repeatedly I would think.

Similar Messages

Address book can't get a new Group Folder & 'large type' function doesn't.

Since loading Tiger a few months ago the Address Book doesn't function as it did. I'd like to reload just the address book software - as that might solve it, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to download specific piece of apple software online. The current irritating problem is I can't create a new folder for a new group - and I'm sure there's other functions that I don't have - besides losing the large type thing and showing the map link on the address etc...

Hmmm...I don't know....I wonder whether this could be a file permissions or ownership problem?
In Terminal.app, when you type
ls -alTk Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook
what do you get? When I type that, I get:
drwxrw-rw- 12 jv user 408 Aug 30 09:23:46 2006 .
drwx------ 12 jv user 408 Aug 29 21:11:26 2006 ..
-rw-rw-rw- 1 jv user 6148 Aug 5 22:56:55 2005 .DS_Store
-rw------- 1 jv user 10 Aug 30 09:23:46 2006 .database.lockN
-rw------- 1 jv user 10 Aug 29 18:26:44 2006 .skIndex.ABPerson.lockN
-rw------- 1 jv user 10 Sep 4 11:58:13 2005 .skIndex.ABSubscribedPerson.lockN
-rw------- 1 jv user 147456 Aug 21 22:36:20 2005 ABPerson.index
-rw------- 1 jv user 139264 Aug 29 18:26:44 2006 ABPerson.skIndexInverted
-rw------- 1 jv user 6144 Sep 4 11:58:13 2005 ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted
-rw------- 1 jv user 942735 Aug 30 09:08:48 2006 AddressBook.data
-rw------- 1 jv user 139361 Aug 17 18:19:33 2006 AddressBook.data.previous
-rw-r--r-- 1 jv user 92 Aug 28 20:12:42 2006 LastImport.plist
Are you seeing similar permissions ("-rw-------", etc.) on all your corresponding files of the same names (AddressBook.data, etc.)? Are they showing the same owner and group as the top two "." and ".." entries (in my case, jv and user -- will be different for you)?

I'm trying to print a custom envelope fro address book and keep getting the message No Pages were selected from the document.

I'm trying to print a custom envelope from Address book using one of my groups. I keep getting a No Pages were selected message. Anybody have any Ideas?

Hello, I find that only entries with Home or Work filled in with an address will show.
Might try right clicking on this link & saving Apple's Addy, then import this vCard, select it & see if it shows one envelope...
http://web.fastermac.net/~bdaqua/AppleComputerInc.vcf

Address book rotating date feature sets wrong DAY

Has anyone noticed that the rotating date setter in address book does not work properly. When you try to set a Birthday date - say 22nd it will end up at say 20th always a couple of days wrong. Even setting on Imac and synching it will sync wrong DAY - month and year are OK.
Weird or What!

Interestingly, I also have this problem, and I also live in NZ... (hi ppls~)
After reading the posts in this topic, namely Holly's posts about problems occuring between Nov to Feb, I went and changed someone's b'day several times to see what happens.
What I found out was b'days that are set on or before October 29 display correctly, but b'days set on or after oct 30 display one day early.
Daylight saving for 2005 starts on the 2 of Oct, so it probably isn't to do with that.
The other thing I found out, is if you have a b'day set to the first of march, it disappears. It doesn't display at all.. until you go to a leap year, such as 2004. There you will see that the b'day is set to the 29 of feb: one day early. But it probably isnt' related to the 29th of feb, because birthdays set on or after 6th of march are correct, but on or before the 5th of march are a day early.
Now... one more thing i found out is that if your week starts on sunday (as set in the preferences), the 6th of march is the first day (sunday) in the second line of the march 2005 calendar. The 29th of oct is the last day (saturday) in the second to last line of the oct 2005 calendar.
This may be a coincidence, but highly unlikely.
These dates don't change if you change the year to 2004 in sys preferences. Maybe it's just a freak bug, or maybe it can't be fooled by simply changing the year in system prefs..
I agree with Andy Burson, though, one day early is better than one day late

LION ADDRESS BOOK. no data

Hi, I have just downloaded LION and everything appears to work ok apart from ADDRESS BOOK. In Snow Leopard I have set up hundreds of names and addresses but this data has not migrated in to the new address book in LION. Has anyone got any ideas how to recover this data

Hold down the option key and select the Go menu in Finder. From there, select Library.
Then, find the AddressBook folder like this:
The above picture is in Column view, as noted by the selection in the toolbar shown.
Delete that highlighted file by selecting it and pressing cmd-delete.
If that doesn't work, do you have a backup from Snow Leopard?

Address book entry data changes

We create a new card, enter name and address - all fine.
Until it comes to numbers data.
For example:
we type in "private" -"754.3434".
Next time we open the contact card it says:
"work" - "75 43434"!
We change "work" back to "private", but the application will set it his way again!
The empty space in the phonenumber was generated arbitrarily, the dot is brutally crunshed!
After changing data back to our old formatting, address book behaves like astubborn child and refuses to do so.
Any help is highly welcomed!
Sparta-Films
Berlin, Germany
P.S. Any tips for a reliable printing software for organizer formats (like in Palm Desktop)?

hold the shift key while starting Thunderbird and try the procedure in safe mode. Does it work then?

Address Book - Total data loss

Status - I am running an Address Book with over 13,000 contacts on a Mini Mac (top of the line) with Max Memory. Several apps open mail, ical, address book, safari, powerpoint, ichat and skype.
I was working on a subset of my contacts a smart group with 350 contacts. Out of the blue all contact, smart group and groups vanish. Address book did not report and error, crash or restart.
I have been able to restore a back up - however, a whole days work is lost!
Does anyone know why this happened and how I can stop it from happening again.
Thanks in advance a SWITCHER as of Oct 2005!!!

I don't know how many addresses it will hold, but with those sort of numbers, make sure you use all sorts of backup strategies.
1) backup directly from within Mail
2) backup the folder yourhome / Library / Application Support / AddressBook / to an external drive
Now to your problem: do you have any widgets active that source data from your AB?
Do you have any plugins active in Mail that uses AB data?
Or anything else that may be active on your AB that interferes while you were selecting such large groups?

MobileMe Address Book Sync - data change warning

I have used MobileMe for years and have always had the sync settings on automatic. Tonight I received the pop-up warning that over 5% of my address book information would be changed with the sync. In viewing the details, it appears that all the address book data labeled "child" on my hard drive is being changed to "brother/sister" from MobileMe.
Did Apple change something on their end with the fields in address book? or is this some conflict on my end?
Thanks in advance for any help/insight.

I just developed this issue out of the blue. Some contacts duplicate, some don't. 2-6 copies of the ones that do duplicate. Strange.

Address Book Birthday Dates

In Address Book I find it hard to maintain accurate Birthday Dates. They are either out by one day (I live in NZ and am ahead of most of the world by a day) or the days are widly off. Any thoughts as to why it seems to have a mind of it's own? Mark.Adrr

I have the same issue on my iPhone 4S ( iOS 5.0.1 ). I live in Germany.
My Mac runs Snow Leopard, no iCloud involved.
Some birthdays are off by one day prior to the real birthday-date !?
This applies to dates in the past and future.
On my Mac the birthdays are displayed correct in calendar !?

Address book mixing data

What is the problem with Apple's Address book mixing contact phone, addresses, notes, names and loosing complete entries? I have had this problem since I started using the Mac. Is there a solution other than using another contact manager??
Message was edited by: Chuckg

Upon further exploration, I'm not sure that there is rhyme nor reason to the sort order of the labels. I played with it a bit and it can't readily figure out how it sorts them. All I know is that Address Book changes the order that I originally input, and would prefer if it retained that order.
Message was edited by: Erik Singer

I made a copy of my Address Book; it now has abbu atop it and when I open it and try to import it, all my contacts appear for a moment,then disappear. How do I get my contacts back?

Before working with ICloud, I made a copy of my Address Book and saved it to my desktop. When ready to import the information back to my blank address book, the data appears for a brief moment, then disappears, leaving me a blank address book. It appears something is over-riding the permanent downloading of the information. How do I solve this problem?

The Address Book data is kept in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Metadata (where ~ indicates your Home folder). The names of the files here aren't easy to decipher, but if you had a photo of the person with the address card then you can see their photo in icon view making it easy to identify who the card belongs to. And with any file selected and Get Info performed (Command I) you will be able to open More Information and see the phone number.
Another approach would be to copy entire AddressBook folder from the CCC drive and replace the same in your booted HD. But if you have a lot of contacts that you removed and don't want to go through that process again then it may prove easier to boot the CCC drive and open Address Book and write down those two contacts.

Address Book "Dates" field

When I change timezones due to travelling, the "Dates" field changes as well. However, the info I have in my "Dates" field are mostly anniversaries and they would show the wrong date either a day before or a day after depending where I'm travelling to. How can I make sure that even if I travel and change timezones, the dates in the Address Book's "Dates" field do NOT change along?
It gets especially confusing when I enter more dates in the "Dates" field during my trip, and then change back to my original timezone. Now, I have to figure out which dates are accurate and which are a day behind or a day in advance.
Help, please!

I would think this is a bit of a bug in Address Book, and I don't think there is any control over it. Tell Apple: OS X Feedback
AK

My address book keeps getting clogged up with thousands of email duplicates.

My address book(s) keep getting filled with hundreds or thousands of duplicate addresses. This causes Thunderbird to slow down considerably when I enter an email address in the "to" field because it has to search the thousands of addresses. I have to manually go in and delete them which takes hours because I can only delete a screens worth at a time without getting a script error. I have three gmail accounts I am using with Thunderbird.

It now appears the duplicate email addresses have showed up again. This is extremely irritating. I would like to get rid of Thunderbird if this can't be solved!

Address Book and iCal Server backups

I'm working to implement a company-wide Address Book, iCal, and iChat server via Lion Server where I work, and I've gotten most of the setup figured out (I think), and am approaching the point where I can roll it out to a few users for further testing. However, before I'm allowed to move forward any further w/ it I have to have two means of backing up in place and ready to be rolled out at the same time as the server—so I'm planning on using Time Machine as one so it does the entirety of the server and its data/settings, but they also want me to do one of the Address Book Server and iCal Server databases individually, like back up the folder the data is, so we can, if ever necessary, import the backup databases to another computer, so we at least have the content, if not the full server functionality. And, for obvious reasons, it can't be backed up locally.
So I'm looking for a means of doing this and would love any input anyone has. Ease of use/setup is pretty important as this is my first time setting Server up and I've no programming knowledge. I'm fairly sure I'll be able to find (or write my own, though that's unlikely) or modify and AppleScript that simply copies/duplicates a Finder item, and I know I can have iCal automatically run a script (so I'd just have it run every night at midnight or something), but I have yet to figure out how to get the script to copy the folder to a specified location on a different server (or, for that matter, if it's even possible, though I'm sure it is...right?). But that's not what I'm trying to ask here...though I certainly wouldn't mind if someone had thoughts on it and wanted to share them ! I just really would like to know which folders to back up, since it's not simply making an archive of the local Address Book.app database.
And, since I'm already here writing a post, I'll ask one other question that's been nagging at me: in Server Admin.app, with the server (not the services) selected in the sidebar on the left, the Access pane selected in the primary Server Admin window, and Services selected, and trying to dictate which users/groups can access which services, the user can click the "+" in the lower-left corner of the window where added users would appear, and another window pops up next to the Server Admin window that shows a list of the users (and groups if you click the appropriate button). My question is, why does it show me _krb_anonymous, _krb_changepw, and a total of 81 other items? I understand more or less what they are (in a very general sense), but why are they shown as users? More importantly, do they have to be listed there? Technically I'm probably the only one that's going to be the administrator, and I'll know not to add them or modify them, but I don't want anything related to those items appearing in a directory search in Address Book when I get it set up (as they are showing up now; for instance, one user I created is Sandy, and I have it set to include directory contacts in searches, so on a client machine that is correctly communicating w/ the server (add a user, it appears in a minute on another client machine, and vice versa) if I go to search for that name as soon as I type "s" Sandy, the actual user shows up, but so do five or six other things, all of which are items from the aforementioned list in Server Admin (pretty much anything that has an "s" in it, which of course makes sense)—and that's what I don't want, I don't want the users to search for someone, see something like _krb_anonymous pop up, then think something is screwed up and call me and demand I come fix their computer!).
Any thoughts, suggestions, and such are more than welcome and much appreciated!
Thank you to all...

See the following:
Folders You Can Move to Your new Mac
From the Home folder copy the contents of Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, and Sites.
In your /Home/Library/ folder:
/Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Application Support/iCal (copy the whole folder)
Also in /Home/Library/Application Support (copy whatever else you need including folders for any third-party applications)
/Home/Library/Keychains (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Mail (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Preferences/ (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/iTunes (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Safari (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Calendars (copy the whole folder)
If you want cookies:
/Home/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist
/Home/Library/Application Support/WebFoundation/HTTPCookies.plist
For Entourage users:
Entourage is in /Home/Documents/Microsoft User Data
Also in /Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
For FireFox:
/Home/Library/Applications Support/FireFox
/Home/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist
Credit goes Macjack for this information.

How do I stop iChat/Address Book image picker attempting to connect to unavailable server?

I'm using Mac OS X Lion. In iChat, if I click on my personal image then select Modify Image, I get the image picker that allows you to change the image, take a picture from iSight, etc. In Address Book, I can get to this same or similar window when I double-click on the personal image placeholder.
In both cases, a spinner starts up in the lower left corner and after a few seconds I get an error stating that "the connection to server XXXX has failed." This message will pop up continuously until I close the program. The server that it is trying to connect to is a local Mac OS X Snow Leopard server that used to be part of the network but no longer exists.
By setting up a DNS entry to get it to attempt to connect to a server that does exist and using Little Snitch, I've been able to deduce that it is NetAuthSysAgent trying to make a TCP connection to port 139 TCP (netbios-ssn).
First, I find it odd that a Mac program trying to connect to a Mac server would use NetBIOS. I also find it odd that either of these programs would need to connect to the server.
I have a new OS X Lion server but I no longer join to its directory services. As the issue seems to be some configuration left over from when I was connected to that server, I tried joining the new server and then unjoining to see if that would clean up the settings, but that did not help.
Performing a find . -type f -exec grep -l "<server name>" {} \; revealed two files:
.viminfo
~/Library/Application\ Support/SyncServices/Local/TFSM/com.apple.Keychain/data.syncdb
The latter was a SQLite database that did not revel anything very legible.
I've search high and low for a setting that points to this old server name to no avail.

First off I want to thank you for sticking with me through this, it's nice to have somebody to shoot ideas around with, it made me think up ideas, what I'm trying to say is, by just writing this down in this thread I solved my own problem. Linc I already deleted almost all of the Login items previously, as I did have the same idea, that something in that spot was trying to connect to the desktop through the network, that didn't work, but for some people it could be a problem. When you first mentioned, "make sure that new windows don't open to a folder on the server.", that comment made me look around for any folders connected to the server, then in my last comment I mentioned the word "alias", turns out that was the problem. In my users folder on the Macbook Pro, I had 2 folders that were alias folders, one was the download folder and the other was the Movie folder, I made new folders and put copies of everything into the folders, then threw away the alias folders and renamed the two new folders I created with their original names, presto no more problem.
Must be getting old, cannot remember making any alias folders, but I probably did, probably had some great idea to save hard disk space on the Macbook Pro, only has 250 GB disk, the Mac Pro has over 8 Terebytes of space so I thought I'd use it probably, bad idea, sometimes I get too Geeky for my own good. Again, Thanks Linc for sticking with me on this.
There were interesting ideas on the internet, seems other people have run into similar problems, one suggestion was the terminal to check for any "open processes". link was here, if interested.... http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/25639/why-is-my-mac-constantly-trying-t o-connect-to-another-server
I'm going to mark your last comment as being helpful, as actually all of it was helpful in forcing me to find those pesky alias folders.

Address Book's Data getting jumbled

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for