Contacts or Address Book Problem on iMac

I have tried everything but I can get any Contacts (Address Book) to work on iMac using Yosemite and I am using iCloud. My Contacts work fine on iTouch. I can login to iCloud on the Web and it is fine. But click on the Contacts App bottom of iMac Screen and nothing.
Rebooted. Re-setup iCloud on iMac. Nothing. Even works on Macbook Air? Any ideas?

Hey WilliamCarter,
Thanks for the question. The following resource outlines troubleshooting information for iCloud Contacts on OS X:
Get help using iCloud Contacts - Apple Support
http://support.apple.com/en-us/ts3998
Thanks,
Matt M.

Similar Messages

Address Book problems on iMac & Desktop & Palmtop - **Please Help**

I had the sync working fine yesterday: Mark/space with Tunsgsten T/X
Everything working fine and what folloewed only occured with address book.
My palmtop address books synched with the desktop - which then synched with iMac and all was sweet.
Then I decided to make some changes to the palmtop as the e-mail addresses weren't shown on iMac address book - so recategorised everyone with e-mail addresses on my palmtop - to home/work.
Then came home and synched yesterday (but did have the mind to send all contacts to my desktop as a back-up via bluetooth prior to synching) only for it to delete all my contacts bar about 6 - which I had created the previous day on my palmtop. Nightmare.
So I delete all desktop addresses and imported from the back-up file I had just made. Not too bad - but did lose all my contact folders.
So I spent about an hour re-categorising them on the desktop - then synched - and all contacts are restored.
Now..... my question - why did this happen? All I did was make lots of changes on my palmtop. Why didn't it synch ok?! Just when things begin to look like they're working - they ** up again!!! It's a nightmare.
Also - for some of my contacts on my palmtop I wanted to group them together within a folder - for example:
Folder: Family
Group together cousins so enter -
(Surname)"Cousins, Thomson" (Forename) "Tom"
This seemed to work ok for the palmtop. I get a list of
Cousins, With their name alphabetically to the right
Cousins, e.g.
Cousins, Thomson, Tom
Cousins,
But when I synched to my Mac and then to iMac address book - when I click on preferences (Surname then Forename)
it doesn't do it the same way. It sorts them out:
Surname, Cousins, Forename
Why's that? And also - they are not in alphabetical order (And I did click on the name tab so they would be). They all seem to be messed up. Any ideas why that's happened?
I would go through them all and change the groups I made within the folders - but I'm worried the same thing that happened above will happen and I spend another hour sorting out preferences.
Sorry this os sooo long! Thanks for your help!

If you backed it up onto your external drive it should still be there.
It might be worth booting from your install disc, navigating to Disk Utility, and then repairing your boot drive.
If no joy, you could also check into some of the software for rescuing data like Data Rescue II. I believe you can download a demo to see if it will work for you before purchasing it.
Do you still have the original hard drive in your iBook? If so, it could be beginning to fail, as they generally have a useful life of 3-5 years. Check the S.M.A.R.T. status--if it says anything but "verified", your drive is dying. If it's old, it could still be dying, even if it doesn't show up in the S.M.A.R.T. status yet.
Good luck!

Sync iPhone Contacts to Address Book on iMac

Is it possible to sync or to export iPhone (G3) "Contacts" to "Address Book" on an iMac?
...or will the sync process in iTunes move information form the iMac to the iPhone?

Overview of syncing iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with your computer: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1386
Contacts, calendars, notes, and bookmarks are synced from (or to) your computer, so if you add, change, or delete them on the device, they are changed on your computer, and vice versa.
Before you sync, be sure your Mac's Address Book has at least one contact so you will get a merge prompt.

HT2486 deleting a contact from address book

How do you delete a contact from address book on an imac?

Highlight a card and go to the File menu > Edit > Delete Card

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.

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

Outlook 2011 problem syncing contacts with address book

I am aware that Lion has broken the sync ability of Outlook 2011 with Address Book. Hopefullly this will be fixed at some point.
So my problem is that I have decided to use a workaround to get my Address Book contents into Outlook 2011. I am not concerned with further syncing at this point. I just want to get my addresses into Outlook and hope a better fix is offered at some point.
About the only way I could figure out how to do this was to export my Address Book as vCard. I then imported the vCard file into Gmail and then exported that as a CSV file. It contained 550 addresses. I opened it in Excel and it contained 550 rows. Great so far.
I then Imported into Outlook 2011 and chose import a text file. When the mapping window opened, it showed over 890 files instead of 550 and the fields were not mapped correctly. I could not complete the import because it was so screwed up.
So I'm back to square one and very frustrated. There must be others who have the same issue and maybe have figured out a way to do this. Please help.

Hi Michael Erb1,
As per your issue, i.e Outlook 2011 problem syncing contacts with address book, activation of this issue is usually can solve out through various ways. One of the simplest way, i.e by restarting Outlook 2011 application and need to chase few necessary steps which are clearly mentioned below blog link, from where you can utilize this method and can get a proper solution for Sync Outlook 2011 for Mac with Mac Address Book.
Source link: http://www.blogs.olmtopst.com/how-to-sync-outlook-2011-for-mac-with-mac-address- book.html
Hope this information will assist you and makes you competent to Sync Outlook 2011 for Mac with Mac Address Book easily.

I have lost the contents of my Address Book on my iMac Intel. The Contacts on both my iPod Touch 4th Gen.

I have lost the contents of my Address Book on my iMac Intel. The Contacts on both my iPod Touch 4th Gen. & my iPad 1st Gen. are ok but synching them with the iMac doesn't restore the Address Book.

John,
The synch with my iPad didn't restore my Address Book, but when I changed the Contacts preference on my iPod Touch & synched it my Address book was restored. Thanks for the help.

Contacts in my Address Book on my iMac don't sync with iPhone

I'm a real newbie to my iPhone 4S, so I'm sure this is something that should be really obvious to fix. Searching for an answer has not helped.
I have an Exchange account in Mail and all the contacts in that account show up as Contacts on my phone. However, those are the only Contacts the phone has. None of the Contacts in my Address Book on my iMac were copied over to the iPhone when I sync. What do I need to do that make that happen?
Thanks.

Depending on how your Address Book is organised it may be relatively simple or not, but basically you need to drag the contacts you want to move to On My Mac to your desktop, delete them from Address Book and add them back (double click on the file on your desktop) once you have selected All On My Mac from the groups list.
If you don't have an All On My Mac group, you'll need to go to preferences > general and make set your default account to On My Mac.
You can drag more than one contact at a time so if you have them in groups already it will help, if not you can work through the list of contacts using cmd click to select just the one's you want.
You can turn off the sync with Google and Yahoo from preferences > accounts > On My Mac.
Summary:
Select all the contacts you want to move
Drag them to the desktop
Delete from Address Book
Set default account to On My Mac
Select All On My Mac from groups
Double click the file on your desktop

Contacts in address book do not show in iCloud

I have set up the iCloud and got Calendar working fine. Contacts don't. When I merge contacts from iCloud they don't upload and disappear from my Address Book in my iMac ( I have a back up so I ca restore them....). I tried several times but no result. They are fine in my iPhone, though.
Anybody can help?
Thanks!
Claudio

I ask this because I presume that my Macbook Address book is the master of all, and if I add a contact in here for example, it would be pushed to iCloud and then to my iPhone? But when I add contacts or make changes in my Address book on Macbook Pro, these are not appearing in iCloud
I think you misunderstand the way it works. First, there are two places on your computer to see the data.
1. "On my Mac" that is not synced to iCloud.
2. "iCloud" that is a slave to the Master iCloud dataset. It is somewhat similar to IMAP email.
When importing data, you can choose which place it goes to. The option is a bit obscure, you need to point to the icon to produce the alternative location ("On my Mac" or "iCloud").
Don't close iCloud in System Preferences (the term "logout" is confusing, It's actually like deleting an email accout). If you want to "logout" say, on a shared computer, do it in Safari as a session logout.
What your iPhone or iCloud on your computer is seeing, is the iCloud dataset. With the proviso that it sometimes takes a while for the server to reflect the changes. You also see the "On my Mac" dataset, which may look like duplicate data, if it is the same.
If your changes to the address book on your computer are not being changed in iCloud, it is either a server problem, or more likely, that you are working in the "On my Mac" dataset, which is not synced to iCloud.
If you want to have a simple iCloud only system, I suggest you:
A. make archive copies of the Address Book by File>Export>Archive
(and each Calendar in iCal as .ics files by File>Export>Export)
B. Delete the "On my Mac" Datasets.
You are less likely to see duplicate data showing, unless it all got horribly merged in iCloud, and duplicated up there already.
(Beware the "merge" option when creating an iCloud account, if there is already data in it)

Double contacts in address book & iPhone

I have double contacts in my address book on my iMac and on my iPhone I have "linked cards". Does anyone know how to fix this? My sync is not checked in iTunes, so I don't think that is the problem. I have tried to "search for duplicates" in my address book, but it doesn't match anyone. Anything else I should try?
Thanks!

One reason you may have duplicates is that you have each contact listed under your 'iCloud' account AND under your 'on my mac' account. Only contacts in the iCloud account will sync.
Click on the ribbon in the Address Book to reveal 'Users & Groups', and then by selecting each account on the left side you will see which contacts are in which account. (make sure nothing is typed in the search field)
If this is the reason you have duplicates you have two options of dealing with the situation. Either you can leave the duplicates alone and click on one account or the other before clicking on the ribbon again to limit what you see to that account when you return to the main part of your Address Book.
Or you can delete all the contacts from one account (usually the 'on my mac' account if you want to continue syncing with iCloud). Click on the account you want to delete contacts from on the left side of the Address Book and select the first contact in the list on the right, shift click the last contact to select all and delete.
Finally, You may want to check your default account is set correctly in the Address Book preferences.

Using O2M I imported my contacts into Address Book. However upon exiting the contacts are not saved. This is on a new Macbook Pro Lion OS. How does one save the newly imported contacts?

Using the program O2M I successfully imported emails from Outlook 2003 to Mail, and calendar events to iCal. However, repeated attempts to import contacts to Address Book have failed. The contacts appear to import, but when I close Address Book and reopen it, the contacts are gone. I tried File-Save, but Save is greyed out. This is a new Macbook Pro with the latest Lion OS. I wonder if O2M has not been updated to work with Lion. Or is there something I am overlooking in the import process?

Hi Denisej and others who have encountered the same problem,
I tried your work around. Unfortunately it did not work out for me because in my contacts there are an unknown number that still "refused" to be imported like that. When such a contact was in the group I selected for import the whole lot would be lost again after re-opening Address Book. Finally that meant that I had to import each contact one-by-one, each time with the need to close down Address Book. A job to go nuts and end up with a mouse injury. So I decided to use the Migration Assistant that Lion now offers
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3284404
together with Windows Migration Assitant on my old PC. Obviously both Mac and PC have to be on the same network. For this I did not need to do anything special. Both make use of the same router and that is apparently sufficient. When migrating the contacts Lion creates a new account, so you need to log in to that new account to see your migrated contacts. I used the Export Address Book Archive function in the Address Book menu to copy the lot to my own Apple account. I got rid of the new account and I was finally where I wanted to be in the first place.
Kees

Group sync from iphone contacts to Address Book

I have read numerous entries regarding this but I have not been able to solve the problem. My Palm was never this difficult to synch. Has anyone been able to come up with a universal solution for new groups in Address Book not synching with groups in Contacts in the iPhone? After I first synched the phone, the existing groups in Address Book showed up, but all new groups since then do not transfer to the phone. I have reset the synch software, and rebooted the mac to no avail. Many thanks.

tnarg nosegref,
When you say you reset the sync software, did you follow all the steps in article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1865 ? If not, it's the most thorough method of doing so.
In addition to this, have you tried backing up your Address Book as an archive, and then reimporting it, overwriting the existing contents?
Archiving your address book
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=AddressBook/4.1/en/9158.html
Importing contacts into Address Book
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=AddressBook/4.0/en/ad808.html
Hope this helps,
Raleigh

Synch new contacts from Address Book no longer works.

My iphone will no longer synch new contacts in my Address Book on my Mac. It was working fine and then I loaded too much audio content and ran out of memory so I think it could not synch properly without memory available. I've since deleted all my audio and have plenty of space yet new contacts in Address Book do not show up on my iPhone even though the synch process appears to complete. Any ideas?

I hope you are doing this over wifi, if you are not then you may have exceeded your monthly data limit, but I doubt that's the problem. All I can say is that Address Book will be getting refurbished soon, and according to Apple, it will be far more simple to transfer data between iOS and Macs.

Mail and address book problems after updating to snow leopard

Hello, I recently installed snow leopard on a an imac running os10.2. The installation process stalled and I called Apple and spoke to someone who had me shut down the machine and start again. The second attempt worked but when I first opened Mail there were no messages all mailboxes were empty and I was unable to send messages. I tried "rebuild" and nothing happened at first but on a later restart the messages finally showed up and the program worked normally. OK. But now I find that of my hundreds of contacts in "Address Book" only a few of them remain. "Address Book" doesn't have a rebuild command. "Help" says to look for the particular folder from the old system and copy it to the new but I can only locate that folder in the new system. None of the old system is there, and why should it be? I wouldn't want the old system software taking up all that space when it isn't needed.
Does anyone know how I might recover those contacts?
thank you for your kind attention,
Julian

Hi,
I'm sorry that number was from memory. I checked the disk that came with the computer and I find that it was version 10.4.1
Thanks for your interest.
Julian

Contacts or Address Book Problem on iMac

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