"do not import" issue in Address book

Question

Hi, well I just switched and bought my first mac. I managed to get the address book from the ancient dell laptop into the desktop of mac as a .csv file(from excell in windows). The import utility recognizes all the addressed and names, but by all of them it has the "do not import" checkmark....would Love to know how to uncheck that....also tried to save it as a textedit file...can read it on the mac but address says no...I do not have ability to make vcard at this moment....any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I had the same problem. Here is the background and the solution. I purchased a new iphone4 and had the contacts transferred from my old iphone 3g. When I added a contact using the option to add the contact from a received phone number or received text, the contact would not show up in "Contacts." If I did a spotlight search, I could find the contact. I also had the same problem with the 3g phone, but it didn't occur as a problem then since I didn't need to access the people I added that way very often.
The problem is that there was a corrupted address or photo attached to the contact data file. When I performed a reset (go to settings, general, reset, reset all settings) on the iphone, the missing contacts magically appeared in Contacts...but ONLY the first time I opened Contacts. So, I opened my Mac Address book and manually entered all the contact information from the missing contacts into the address book. Then I went into iTunes, connected my iphone, and performed a Restore. (WARNING: You will need to make sure that any purchases you made on your iphone have been transferred to your computer (songs, videos, apps, etc. plus you will need to sync any Notes as well) BEFORE you perform the Restore...otherwise you will lose these things and have to repurchase them!)
When you perform the Restore, you will be asked at some point to either set up the phone as a NEW phone or Restore from a backup. You MUST choose to set up the phone as a NEW phone. Otherwise you will simply place the corrupted file back on the phone. You can, after selecting the NEW option, allow the computer to place the address book, apps, and other files back on the iPhone. Your Contacts will then work as it should, and people you add from options outside of Contacts will be added to Contacts as they should.
Yes, it is a pain and will take an hour or more of your life to fix. But, it fixes the problem. The key is in setting up the phone as a New phone and not restoring from a backup.
Hope this helps.