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?

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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'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.

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

Total data loss on Nano after spontaneous reboot

I've got two questions...
1) Is it possible for a 4th gen Nano to cause a problem for a 1st gen Nano that uses the same computer? (see explanation of events below)...
2) What's the best tool for recovering data that's been wiped out on a 1st generation iPod nano?
I have four Nanos in my home — one 1st gen, two 3rd gen, and a brand new 4th gen. I connected the 4th gen Nano to the computer for the very first time, transferred some music and a movie to it, then ejected it. A while later I connected my 1st gen iPod to the same computer and attempted to tranfer a music file to it, and my computer (Windows XP) suddenly rebooted while the file was transferring. After starting back up, I opened up iTunes so I could try transferring the file again, and noticed my iPod was totally wiped clean — all my music, audio books, playlists, photos — everything was gone!
Unfortunately I don't have a backup of most of my music. To free up some space on my computer, I transferred most of my music to an external hard drive several months ago, and a few months ago my son accidentally knocked the hard drive off the desk and it no longer worked, so I lost everything on it. And now I've lost everything I had on my Nano.

Hello and welcome to the forums.
Since you have removed the battery many times, you have, in essence done soft resets. All that is left to try would be a hard reset. First make sure your data is backed up as doing a hard reset will erase all of your data off of the device. It puts it back to "Out of the box" factory settings. To do the hard reset remove the battery. Hold down and continue to hold down on the red power button and insert the battery, continuing to hold down on the power button. When the second screen ( Access powered ) comes up release the red power button. It should ask you to erase all data? If so, hit up on the 5 way navigator to erase the data. You will then have to calibrate the screen and set your preferences. Once all of this is complete you will have done a hard reset sucessfully. For now, don't sync the data back onto your device. Just use it for a day or two and see if the signal strength issue is resolved. If it is not this indicates it is a hardware issue on the device, and all you can do is get the device back to the U.S. and send it in for repairs.

PB crash - total data loss after forced restart.

Hello,
Ironically I was trying to back up a whole bunch of stuff the other day to and from external hard-drive (inc 5000 photos!) when I decided to start up itunes I had a message in German saying itunes needed to be updated (the OS was accidentally installed in German by technicians after a hard drive replacement last year, but I was running it in English) the thing is I was not online at the time and it wanted to update to a version dated 2007 so the first alarm bells started ringing. I did not allow this weird update of itunes fearing I would lose all my folders etc. and cancelled it. Then thinking I would eradicate the problem by restarting the PB when I tried to restart it wouldn't let me saying 'mirror agent' was preventing a restart. I left it for a while but then forced it to shut down. When I restarted it all my data / software etc was gone - it was all in German and like the 1st day the OS was newly installed!! (Icons huge, screensaver blue swirl etc) Everything except a few folders. Also it said only 5GB of hard drive - and it is 120GB hard drive.
What should I do?!! Can I try starting it from installation disk and use disk doctor or something or should I head straight to an apple technician?
I THINK the OS was 10.4.3 or around that mark.
Any help HUGELY appreciated! Thanks in advance and greetings from Berlin.
very worried,
Nicole.

ok i just remembered that I changed the name of my home folder - seems this was a stupid idea - i changed it from 'admin' to 'nicole'
I found this:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854
and fixed it!!
phew!!

Total data loss!

So I plugged in my fully-loaded video iPod as normal to my computer. iTunes then said "You have old songs on your iPod, do you want to transfer them to your library?" I selected "No" and iTunes proceeded to ERASE EVERYTHING ON MY ENTIRE IPOD. Thousands of song! I'm furious!
Is there anything I can do to recover the data?

The machine memory itself is not the problem. When I load up the system, I can see no data.

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

Can't delete address book entries!

I am trying to sync Address Book with Google Mail, and as part of this, I have to delete all my addresses on one side and then copy from the other side.
When I delete all my addresses in Address Book, quit, and relaunch Address Book, I find... all my addresses. Even if I delete them a few at a time, I still find most of my addresses after quit and relaunch. Is Address Book totally broken?
For instance, I have 668 contacts. I delete one, quit, relaunch and I have 667 contacts. But if I have 667 contacts and delete 31, quit and relaunch and I have 667 contacts!
Yes, all sync software is turned off.
A

Thank you V.K. I tried that, and restored from backup. Same behavior.
Turns out that my address book was corrupted, and it appears that the corruption is preserved in the "abbu" backups. When I deleted the Address Book folder, and then imported from a vcf file, it was fixed. All my groups were gone of course.
Still finding lots of bugs in Address Book not related to corrupt data, but this appears to be fixed

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.

Old computer I had is OSX Snow Leopard with Entourage. New one is OSX Mavericks. Using Mail where are my addresses and old address book. Transferred old computer backup by Time Machine and other things work? Can't see a symbol for address book.

Old computer I had is OSX Snow Leopard with Entourage. New one is OSX Mavericks. Using Mail where are my addresses and old address book. Transferred old computer backup by Time Machine and other things work? Can;t see a symbol for address book.

Where are addresses kept on MAIL? I don;t like the new format at all. Frances
Begin forwarded message:
From: Frances Topping <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: - Old computer I had is OSX Snow Leopard with Entourage. New one is OSX Mavericks. Using Mail where are my addresses and old address book. Transferred old computer backup by Time Machine and other things work? Can't see a symbol for address book.
Date: August 25, 2014 at 9:46:01 AM EDT
To: discussions-replies <[email protected]>
Old Entourage is POP and new Mavericks MAIL is IMAP I believe. I don;t know how to export in the forms you mention. Frances

Address Book - Total data loss

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