Can't modify contacts in Address Book

For some reason I can't modify any of my contacts. I read in a previous post to try this:
"Try dragging (quit Address Book first) file ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb to the desktop and restart Address Book. If that doesn't help, quit Address Book, put the file (AB's database) back where you got it (or just delete it if AB has made a new one), and drag ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist to the desktop. Again restart AB."
When I go into Library/Application Support, I do not have that file. Any ideas? I'm so frustrated

The tildé (~) means your user home folder. So, ~/Library/ means /Users/yourusername/Library/.
So, open you home directory and open the Library folder that is in there, then continue through Application Support to AddressBook folder (or to Preferences for the plist file).

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Can I overwrite contacts in Address book with my iPod Touch contacts?

I'm an idiot - I somehow managed to delete ALL of my contacts in Address book. I don't use Time Machine (not enough external HD space) so I can't restore that way.
I did happen to sync my iPod Touch shortly before I deleted everything so my contacts are fine there. Short of re-typing everything into Address Book, is there a way I can tell iTunes to overwrite my contacts with the ones from the iPod touch?
It's the only place I have my contacts - and because I enabled Google sync, it deleted all of my Google contacts too! HELP!!

If you sync, the contacts will be copied back into Address Book on your Mac. You should get an error message that pops from iSync (a warning about changing more than 5% of your data), which you should Allow.
In case you're worried, I have tested this (backed up my address book, then deleted the contents, then synced and my contacts were restored from my IPT).
Hope this helps...

Can't edit contacts in address book under Lion

Instead of the "Edit" and "Share" buttons that normally appear at the bottom of my listed contacts, I only have "Add Contact" and "Share." What gives? Why can't I edit any of my contacts?

Hey - I just found a post on another thread which cured my problem (same as yours). Here are the details.
If you just upgraded to Lion, you get 90 days of complimentary support, so don't be bashful. Call 'em. I called Apple support and they resolved this specific issue. We first verified that a newly created Admin account could create and edit Address Book. When it did, we rightly assumed corruption in the Address Book Library files.
Here are the steps from that point.
Back up your Address Book: From Address Book, choose File > Export and choose Export vCard to a desitnation of your choosing.
Close Address Book.
From the Desktop, Hold Option and click Go in the menu at the top of the screen.
Choose Library. If this is not an option, you are not pressing the Option key or you are not an Admin.
Expand the Application Support folder and drag the AddressBook folder to the Trash. Close window.
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How can I delete all my contacts in Address Book?

I had syncing issues between my Entourage 2008 contacts, my Address Book contacts, and the PowerMac for Blackberry application. As a reference, I have around 5,000 contacts. I have solved the issue, but there is some collateral damage: read on.
Address Book duplicated my contacts two or three times, and it also created around 60,000 empty contacts. I have been able to clean the Entourage contacts, which only suffered from duplication but not from new empty entries.
I tried to delete the Address Book duplicate and empty entries. The easy way out, I thought, was to Select All and delete. It does not work. Given I have ended with around 80,000 contacts, after I Select All, and try to delete, the program hangs, and I have to Force Quit the Address Book application.
I tried to locate the Address Book file where contacts are stored, but I have not found an obvious name that would point to it, nor have I read anything about such file in the different discussion forums. So no success on this.
I have even used scripts in the past for deleting duplicates and merging contacts in Entourage, but I have not found one for Address Book that could take care of the massive number of empty entries with "No Name".
So, is there a way to delete all my contacts in Address Book?

There are two possibilities you can try:
1. Delete all your duplicate entries. You can try downloading and running this Applescript Remove Duplicates, which will create a group named Duplicates in Address Book, from which you should be able to delete those entries, by selecting the Group, then in the next column to the Right, select all the entries and choose Delete Cards from the Edit menu.
2. If that doesn't work, you can do this:
1. Quit Address Book if it's running.
2. Go to ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook and delete an of these files/folders you find there:
• ABPerson.skIndex
• ABPerson.skIndexInverted
• Address Book - xxxxx.abbu
• AddressBook.data
• AddressBook.data.beforesave
• AddressBook.data.previous
• Images
• LastImport.plist
3. Restart Address Book and see if the default cards are there (Apple card, and your Me card) and if all seems to be working correctly.
Mulder

Can I add my AOL contacts to Address Book?

Need some help getting AOL contacts into Address book, even or Mail for that matter.
Thanks

You can not add MSN Buddies to the AIm Buddy List.
You can however create a Jabber ID and then with a Third Party App link to what is called a Transport that will connect you to the MSN Service for Text Only chats.
Read the first two links in this section
http://www.ralphjohns.co.uk/page5.html#_jabber
The third link is the most up-to-date List of Jabber Servers with Transports I have found.
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my link to my website.
9:23 PM Monday; March 31, 2008

How can I email a group list from my contacts/Mac address book?

I love the Apple address book for making media lists for my PR business because it enables me to add dates and actions. But when a client wants to see the list via email, I'm flummoxed. I've been rewriting as a Word document, but that eliminates the convenience of Address Book. I could print, scan, and send,but that's cumbersome. If we can share a contact, why can't we share a Group list? Or, am I missing something simple?
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Howdy J-carolyn9,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
Take a look at the article linked below, it’ll walk you through the process of printing a group of contacts from Address Book on your Mac.
Mac Basics: Address Book - Apple Support
If you'd like a tangible address book, print out a pocket-sized version of Address Book. Select the names that you want to include from the contacts list, or select a group, and choose Print from the File menu. Click Show Details, and choose Pocket Address Book from the Style pop-up menu, select any other options you want, and click Print.
Ciao,
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Lost all contacts in Address Book. How can I restore them?

I have inadvertently deleted all my contacts from Address Book, as a result of trying to delete them all from MS Outlook. (I deleted them from Outlook and they all vanished from Address Book too)
I gather I can restore them using Time Machine, which I have set up on a Time Capsule, but I've never used it before.
What is it that I restore to get my contacts back into Address Book please? I have tried restoring Address Book itself, but that doesn't seem to restore my contacts.

restoring the address book, restores the application but not the files.
Launch Address Book application and while opened, Launch the Time machine by clicking on its icon on the dock. Go back in time, confirm if you see all your contacts. This is what you need to establish and KNOW first else forget Time machine since its not there.
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How can I extract a picture from a contact in Address Book?

How can I extract a picture from a contact in Address Book? Address Book is version 5.0.3 with Mac OS X 10.6.8. Btw, I don't have access to the original picture anymore.
Message was edited by: Cormac

You need to go to ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Images and Control-click on each file and open it using Preview. Then you can export the image if you choose. Just keep in mind that these will be thumbnail quality, so don't expect large images, either in file size or physical size.

Can I retrieve deleted contacts from Address book

Can I retrieve deleted contacts from address book on my mac or contact list on my iphone?

Yes if you have been backing up using Time Machine it should be pretty simple. If you haven't been backing up then they're gone.

Help, I can not drag and drop address book contacts into numbers.

i have read the manual. watched videos on youtube, but I can not drag and drop address book contacts into numbers or pages. I upgraded to Numbers 09. set up the fields as stipulated, but when I drag a contact to the numbers canvas it just bounces back to address book. I tried reinstalling 09 thinking it was a faulty install. no luck. Have tried dragging to balnk part of canvas, to the table, and to a table with fields, no luck.
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Could be a preferences setting. See Jerry's post in this thread.
Regards,
Barry

Can this be done somehow? I would like to see an App or Apple guidance were I can identify my name or number to certain phone contacts that I can choose from within my address book?

Can this be done somehow? I would like to see an App or Apple guidance where I can identify my name or telephone number to certain phone contacts that I can choose from with my address book. As it stands now, it all or nothing. Thanks

Not sure what they offer in Canada, but I use Google Voice. It provides a phone number that will ring through to your phone (or multiple phones if you want). There is a free app you can use to place calls so they appear from your Google Voice # instead of your 'real' number.
I use the Google # for business calls/texts and only use "my" number for personal stuff. Google gives you control over things like call screening and allows you te set timers for when it is permitted to ring through to your normal number, which is great for business calls. If I'm not on call, I keep the timer set to shut it down except during business hours.
Might be worth looking into.

Can I sync my iMa address book with contacts on my iPhone?

Can I sync my iMac address book with my iPhone?

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Keep a list of email addresses, w/out making contacts in Address Book?

Hi everyone. I frequenly send out emails to a long list (~30-40) of email addresses. I do not know the names of every person on the list, nor do I wish to make many new contacts in Address Book. Is there a way to simply keep that list of addresses as an email group, without having to add new contacts for each email address?
For now, I'm copying and pasting the list from TextEdit into the "To:" box. It works well enough, but I'd like to streamline the process. Thanks in advance!

Hi Alexander.
If I’ve understood it correctly, you could just select a message previously sent to that list, then do Message > Send Again and change everything except the To header. The name of the Send Again command is actually a misnomer, as it doesn't really cause anything to be sent. It just creates a draft copy of the selected message which you can then modify and send like you would do with any other message.

Problems syncing from contacts to address book

I have an iMac which now runs OSX 10.6.8 and an iPhone 3GS that runs the latest iOS 5.
Long story short, I downgraded from OSX Lion back to OSX 10.6.8 a few months ago. Got quite a few problems doing so... ended up creating a brand new user and transferring music, videos and photos manually. Then, the iOS 5 got out and I upgraded my phone right away. I couldn't figure out icloud at first but understood yesterday that it works only with Lion. I thought I'd keep it on my phone if I ever want to install Lion again.
I also realised that I never transfered back in my iMac all my iCal events and Contacts.
So yesterday, I tryied to sync my Contacts, iCal and Notes from my iPhone to my iMac. In the iTune info tab, under each section, there was a message mentioning that since I use iCloud, I don't need to sync my info through iTune and doing so would possibly create duplicates. I try to sync them anyway since I only had to in Address Book. I got the message to merge or replace. I selected merge (yes I had at least one contact in Address Book). Nothing happened... iCal didn't merge anything and neither Address Book. I tried to create new events in my phone and iMac and these were syncing but not the original ones. Also added a contact in Address Book and it got sync with my phone. I didn't try creating one on the phone to sync it through but assumed that it was working.
After going through a few discussion threads, I decided to delete the iCloud account on my phone since I didn't need it and try re-syncing. The iCloud message in the iTune's info tab was gone so I thought everything would be good and I could select merge my contact again without any problem. I was wrong... I lost all my contacts... I freeeeeeeeaked out !! Thank God I didn't unplug the phone and restored it right away to get everything back.
I tried it again this afternoon but only tried to sync iCal. I didn't get to choose between merge and replace and the same thing happened again... lost everything... iCal but also Contacts which I find strange because I didn't check the Contact option in iTune.... I got everything restored back even thought it's always scary to try things like this.... So for now on, I don't delete my iCloud info on my Phone and do not sync any other info. I'm actually scared to plug it in and always double check that my contacts are all there before unplugging.
So here I am... don't really know what to do... I read stuff about removing apple.isync files or something... or other options but they never quite answer my problem...
There is still the option to type all my contacts back in Address Book.. I don't have that many... but it's a pain...
Sorry about the long message here
Thanks for your help and for your time.
Ben

Clearly iSync has got confused about what new data it needs to pull from the phone. Usually resetting the sync history solves this, but as it hasn't for you... try this:
I would suggest sending all the contacts from the phone to the Mac manually via Bluetooth: *Contacts > Options > More > Advanced > Send all Contacts > Via Bluetooth* (or similar, depending on the exact phone model)
This will send vCard(s) which can be imported into the Mac Address Book simply by double-clicking the file that arrives on your Mac.
Merge or remove any duplicates as they are imported. You can also use the *Card > Look for Duplicates* command in Address Book.
Once all your Contacts are exactly as you want them in Address Book do a full backup of them:
*File > Export > Address Book archive...*
Finally, load iSync, click your phones icon and choose *Reset Device...* from the Devices menu.
This will force iSync to remove all the existing contacts from the phone and completely replace them with all the new nicely sorted out ones from the Mac Address Book.
From this point on, iSync should keep track of what needs updating on each subsequent sync.

Can I have a different address book for each mail account?

I have several email accounts that I use with Thunderbird. When I create a new email and begin typing the address, it autocompletes based on my personal address book. I would like to know if I can have a different personal address book associated w/ each account.
For example, I have an account for work and an acount for personal use. Suppose I have two contacts: "Mark Smith" a friend & "Mark Jones" a colleague. If I type "M" in the adress field of my email I would like for only "Mark Smith" to appear if I am composing that email from my personal account and only "Mark Jones" to appear if I am composing that email from my work account.
I am running Thunderbird 31.3.0 on Ubuntu 14.10.

@sfhowes: That sounds just like what I'm looking for. Thanks.

Can't modify contacts in Address Book

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