Empty Address Book

I had about 40 contacts in my address book before upgrading to Snow Leopard.
Since upgrading, they are all gone!
I feel like they must still be buried somewhere, because Mail still autocompletes their names. Any ideas?

I've heard this a few times, now.
Open up your username/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder and post the file names that are in it. Your old data was in a file called AddressBook.data. It is no longer stored that way in Snow Leopard, but I think the file gets left behind.
If it did the conversion right but botched indexing it, you will find the individual vCards in the metadata folder. However, they will all have Unique ID numbers for names. Some will be groups, also. You can use QuickLook (select a file and hit space bar) to see what each one is and verify that you do have your addresses there.
If that is the case, make a copy of the AddressBook.data file just in case. Close Address Book and delete the .abcddb file from the AddressBook folder. Open Address Book and it will reindex the metadata folder.
If that doesn't work, close Address Book and remove everything from the AddressBook folder except your addressbook.data file. Open Address Book and hopefully everything was converted correctly.
Also note that in one of the cases where I had seen this before, the Poster had changed permissions on his home folder and mucked things up. That is why Address Book couldn't index the files correctly. So, if you remember changing any permissions, and used the Apply to Enclosed option, let us know so we can fix that first.

Similar Messages

Empty address book on iMac, will syncing loose them on the iPhone too?

My mom called me last night saying that her address book on her iMac is now empty. I don't know what she did to have that happen. My question is if she syncs her iPhone, which has all of her contacts, will the syncing delete all of her contacts on the iPhone, or will it add all of her phone contacts back into her address book on the iMac? I would hate to have her sync the phone, and then loose all of her contacts in both locations. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

There is the possibility this data on the iPhone will be lost during the sync process which is why a backup of this data on your computer should be maintained.
The Address Book application includes a quick and easy backup option. The backup file takes up very little hard drive space and only needs to be updated prior to and after making significant changes.
That being said, make sure there is at least one entry entered and available in the Address Book application on her Mac before syncing but there is still a chance the contact information on her iPhone will be lost.

Empty address book in PC removes all contacts in 3g iPhone??

I downloaded my contacts from my old phone onto my PC and saved them into a address book file then into Outlook Express and then initially loaded them into my iPhone, without problems. I then spent hours making adjustments and amendements on the iphone, including adding new numbers. The next time i synced my iPhone I expected it to update the PC with the new information but instead it changed the contacts stored in the phone back to the original (incorrect) ones!!
This has happened twice so much so that I am afraid to sync the contacts again as I will lose my new numbers which are on the iPhone.
I have now manually made the corrections and additions to the address book file and saved them BUT i although I can open Outlook Express when trying to open the address book I get an error telling me to re install it. When OE opens the address book fields are completely empty!!
OE came pre-installed thus i do not have the disc to do this!!
Any suggestions as I have no back up of contacts now?

Hello StreetTriple,
Based on what you've described, it seems very likely that there is a fundamental issue with Outlook Express on the computer. Outlook Express is a pre-installed program that you should be able to reinstall from the Vista install disks that came with your system.
If you do a web search for "reinstall Outlook Express Vista" you may find the means to get a fresh copy of Outlook Express onto your Vista PC. Otherwise, you'll need to contact your computer manufacturer or Microsoft Support to get it back onto your system.
You can try this syncing troubleshooting article:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1692
If Outlook Express opens successfully in a new User on the computer, you can use it to backup your contacts. You need to create at least one contact in Outlook Express before syncing, otherwise there won't be an Outlook Express data file for iTunes to sync your contacts into.
Charles H.

How to delete empty imported address books?

I found similar issues but the solutions offered do not seem to work for me. I have now got 4 copies of implab.mab in my profile folder (suffixes -1, -2, -3). I've tried deleting the extra 3 with explorer but they reappear. I've tried renaming them as suggested elsewhere but then the renamed and original both appear. Deleting them from the address book pane in the Write option has no effect.
Any suggestions? Thanks

Confirm these are address books you have deleted from the 'Address Book', so they no longer display in 'Address Book'.
I'm not talking about empty address books which are still displaying - they must have been deleted.
In 'Address Book'
select the address book
Edit > Delete address book
note you cannot delete any default address books :
'Personal Address Book' and 'Collected Addresses'.
You cannot delete/remove old deleted address book entries via 'Config Editor'.
You can access the 'prefs.js' file located in your Profile folders and open that file using 'Notepad', then edit the file and save and close.
However, you must have exited/closed Thunderbird first in order to do this, otherwise editing the file will have no effect.
I would also advise you create a copy of the prefs.js file before you make any changes and save to desktop to act as a backup - just in case of error.
In your 'prefs.js' file
Each live- not deleted address book shown in the 'Address Book' will have:
'Description', 'dirType', 'filename' and 'position'
eg:
user_pref("ldap_2.servers.testimpab.description", "Test Impab");
user_pref("ldap_2.servers.testimpab.dirType", 2);
user_pref("ldap_2.servers.testimpab.filename", "abook-1.mab");
user_pref("ldap_2.servers.testimpab.position", 1);
Any address book you imported/created and subsequently deleted from the 'Address Book' will only leave the 'position' line in prefs.js.
There will be no other lines associated with that address book.
eg:
user_pref("ldap_2.servers.TEST_1.position", 6);
This is the line you can delete - make sure TB is closed first.
Note: Do not delete anything that says 'pab' or 'history' - these are the default address books.
After editing the 'pref.js file, save the file and then close it.
Then restart Thunderbird.

Address book empty...

...and not for the first time. Actually its happened three times now which has prompted me to try and get to the bottom of it.
I have Address Book on my PowerMac (main computer) that syncs with .Mac and I have a PowerBook that also syncs up with .Mac. The final peice of the jigsaw is Entourage on my PowerMac which I use for work mail. This has sync services and syncs with Address Book.
Currently my Powermac Address Book is empty, as is .Mac. My PowerBook is set for manual syncing and has a full Address Book so I don't see that being the culprit. Entourage has a full Address Book but this doesn't tell me much as while it syncs on new contacts it doesn't empty on this error such that when it happened last time I ended up with two of every contact after restoring the Address Book from my backup.
update: Entourage now has three of everyone after restoring my Address Book. Does this mean that since Entourage never loses the addresses then its not the one causing them to go missing. That leaves my PowerMac address book, or more likely .Mac as the culprit?

I don't use Entourage, but today, after I got Mail, Safari, iChat and Address Book all simultaneously freezing (applications not responding), I had to force quit all of them. When relaunching Address Book I had the really annoying surprise to get an empty address book, all my contacts are lost.
This already happened in the past, and digging the discussions I'm not alone. There is a bug somewhere and it's annoying !!!!
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

HT1414 I recently cancelled mobil me, then I lost all my contacts...no problem I retrieved them from my address book on my mac pro. NOW I can't update my apps when asked. My password is not accepted. The print says to use my mobileme account... Yikes

Please help me figure out why I can't update my apps or get new ones...Thanks. I recently cancelled my mobile me account and a lot of strange and frustrating changes have taken place

I thought I finally found the answer in post https://discussions.apple.com/message/10843915#10843915
I deviated from the instructions by manually deleting all my contacts while in Mobile Me before trying the forced update because it hadn't worked in the past to force transfer the addresses. I thought starting with a clean slate might be a step ahead. Now that clean slate seems permanent.
The gutsy move was to make Mobile Me download the empty address book into my MacPro. My address book went empty until I restored it through the archive I'd saved. It proved the computer and Mobile Me are communicating since it wiped out my address book on my desktop. I restored everything by importing the archive back into the address book. Thankfully that part is fine.
What is not working is for me to get ANY addresses to move back to Mobile Me despite repeated attempts at changing the reset action through the advanced selection of Mobile Me in System Preferences. I've unselected syncing and restarted the computer. I've signed out of MM and signed back in. I've closed the browser and opened it fresh again. I've closed and opened Address Book on the computer. None of those actions make a whit of difference. Mobile Me contacts remains empty when I tell it to replace MM with the contents of my AB on my MacPro.
I see under the gear there is an ability to import vCards. Is there any way to do a batch import? I have almost 700 addresses separated into more than a dozen groups. It will be a mighty tedious process to import them one by one.
No, iCloud is not an option. My computer is one version too old to upgrade to Lion.

Cannot modify or add contacts to Address Book

I tried updating a contact today by adding a new phone number and everything seemed to be okay until I quit and restarted Address Book. When address book loaded again, the new phone number was gone. I tried this again with several contacts and tried creating a new contact and I can confirm that the address book is not saving changes or saving new contacts after a quit and re launch of Address Book.
I've tried rebooting and repairing permissions, same problem.
Console is giving me the error:
9/6/09 11:32:44 AM Address Book[212] couldn't write file '/Users/jax/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Metadata/C49788A4-134A-11D9-8A52-000A95CCEC6C:ABPerson.abcd p'
But there is no explanation of why it cannot write the file.
I am running a new clean install of Snow Leopard with minimal installed software and I imported an address book archive that I exported from Leopard 10.5.8.
I tried deleting my entire ~/Application Support/AddressBook folder and re importing the old address book database, and I get the same issue.
If I delete ~/Application Support/AddressBook and then launch address book and attempt to add or modify a contact in my new empty address book, all of the sudden all my old contacts appear even after deleting the ~/Application Support/AddressBook folder. Where are they coming from.
Is it just me or is AddressBook in SnowLeopard incredibly buggy?

I have had zero problems with Mail in Snow Leopard - it's been rock solid and very reliable for me.
I sort of cured the AddressBook problem but I have no idea why it works and I am not happy with my fix. What I did was deleted the contents of ~/Application Support/AddressBook and ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.AddressBook and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.addressbook.plist. I then rebooted and opened up AddressBook. The database was empty except for Apple and my own card which OSX creates by default. I then attempted to create a new contact and all of my old contacts magically appeared! I then deleted the new test contact and edited the contact I was originally trying to add a phone number to. I then quit address book and re-launched it and the new phone number was still there! I checked console.log and there were no errors reported this time (previously I was getting lots of error messages each time I quit and re-launched AddressBook.
I have no idea where those contacts came from since I cleared out the entire database and the cache, but whatever happened, it seems to work now.
BUGGY!

Using the Photo/send a link/ function does not link to my address book

Having upgraded to FF4 using the Photo/your albums/send a link/ the 'To' data input line does not interact with my Hotmail Address Book.

This usually means that the address book data file is corrupt.
I'd suggest you export your misbehaving address book to an LDIF file, delete the original address book then re-import its data from the LDIF file.
Note that you won't be allowed to delete either ''Personal Address Book'' (PAB) nor ''Collected Addresses'' (CA) within Thunderbird. You'll have to close Thunderbird, open its profile and delete:
''abook.mab'' for PAB, or
''history.mab'' for CA.
When you next run Thunderbird, it'll create a new empty address book to replace the one you deleted. Import your address to a new temporary address book, then move the Contacts (drag-and-drop) into the preferred address book.

How do I create a separate Address Book? I'm not asking about a mailing list but an address book where the addresses are not mixed in with my regular address b

How do I create a separate Address Book? I'm not asking about a mailing list but an address book where the addresses are not mixed in with my regular address book. I already have three address books created for me by Thunderbird. I add all new addresses to one of those but am afraid to delete the other address books because some of their addresses are not repeated in my "main" address book. So if I don't delete all the names in one of the existing books, I need to create an empty book that will not mix the addresses with those in another address book. HOW DO I CREATE A NEW, EMPTY ADDRESS BOOK? I want to be able to create various mailing LISTS using the addresses in this new book so I will eventually have a special address book with a variety of mailing lists I can use as I wish.

In 24.4.0 there is no File|New|Address Book. There is File|New|Address Book Contact. How do I create a new address book ?

Contacts are missing in Macbook pro and iCloud address book

Hi, i backup my iPhone to my macbook pro and Icloud . When i looked into contacts, some contacts are missing and its not sync into macbook pro and iCloud also. How to fix this? how to get all contacts to my addressbook in both macbook pro and Icloud?

I had exported an address book backup: abbu
so since i wrote, i have found my way into the cloud: selected all entries - deleted them all from the cloud.
This wiped out contacts on my iphone and i pad, and MBP, as well as on the cloud. I then imported the abbu back into my now empty address book.
To repopulate the crowd, i selected all in my address book and created a single card vCard for export to my desktop. I then dragged that vcard into my empty cloud. Now my cloud has the same clean contacts as my MBP addressbook. The cloud then pushed the clean contacts into my empty ipad and iphone contacts.
I had to go back to Address Book>preferences>Accounts and Add an I cloud account - but if you accidentally create a second i cloud account - all of a sudden your address book will duplicate itself. I quickly reversed it by deleting one of the icloud accounts in my Address Book>preferences>Accounts.
I created a new entry on my MBP and it is now on all devices and in cloud
I also created a new entry on my iPhone and it is now in the address book on my MBP.
I feel empowered!!
Have i missed anything??

Address Book Locks up on BACKUP

I posted earlier, and tried a number of remedies, but still have this problem:
When I try to Backup my Address Book (about 900 entries), Address Book locks up (Spinning Beach ball of Death). The SBBoD starts about 10 seconds after I click Save for the BU. So, I do a force quit. Strangely, however, I am still able to save that particular BU. So, it is locking after the BU is saved (this is fortunate, because 2X in last month my Address Book has locked up while using, and I've lost all entries, and end up with a new, fresh, but EMPTY address book).
I Have tried the following:
** Deleted the Address Book preferences from User Library
** Have run , successfully, these 3: Repair Permissions, and Check HD, and Repair disk from the original 10.4 disks. No problems
** Did a complete archive and reinstall 10.4
Also, I created TEST user, and was able to BU that address book. However, it only had 4 entries in it.
Ideas?
JON

I had to do forced powerdown. That tell us anything?
Yes, your Disk is corrupted... the first thing Safe Boot does is try to fix the Disk.
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
Unfortunately, Disk Utility can't fix all that much, and the only other Apple Options are erasing the HD, or installing OSX to a second drive, then using Migration Assistant to move stuff over to the new HD.
You must repair the HD, if Disk Utility or fsck should fail to repair it, your best bet is DiskWarrior from Alsoft, you'll need the CD to boot from if you don't have another boot drive...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

HELP my address book has died!

I wanted to help a friend to extract her email addresses from her applemail address book. I exported her contacts to an abbu file, and then exported my own addresses to another abbu file to back mine up. Next I tried to import her abbu file, but the import didn't work and the addresses were not imported, even though it seemed to take time working. So then I tried to restore my own contacts from my own abbu file so that I could continue my own, however my own abbu file did not import back again either and now I have an empty address book. What could have gone wrong with my file import from backup?

Right-click on your backup file and choose Show Package Contents.
Open the Metadata folder and you should find lots of vCards that have lots of letters and numbers as names. If you have what appears to be all of your contacts, then your backup is ok and has what it needs.
If it does look ok, then you might try running it again. If that doesn't work, go into your username/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder and remove everything. Double-click the backup again and see if it works.
Finally, you can just use manually copy everything that is in the backup package (again use Show Package Contents) into the AddressBook folder mentioned above.
If that doesn't work, try running the Import command in AB and select the backup.
If that doesn't work I don't know what will, but perhaps restoring from another backup.

Problem syncing address book/contacts

I was given an iPhone 3G from a friend. I'm trying to sync my computer (OS 10.7 Lion) address book v6.1 to my iPhone contact/address book (OS 4.2.1). For some reason the address book won't sync from my computer to the iPhone. Are the two adress books incompatible? What should I do if they are?

Okay, after spending over 2 hours on the phone with iPhone support this morning I learned two things:
1. My address book data was probably corrupt. An import into a new account did not fix the problem but an import from Plaxo to an empty address book did!
2. There are still bugs in Leopard that make this whole process much more painful than it needs to be. SyncServices needs serious work.
Chad

Address book won't re-import .abbu file

Searching in my address book didn't work anymore so I exported the whole address book as an .abbu file and deleted all entries. Now when I try to import that file, it looks for busy for a few minutes and then ends up having no entries. I tried disconnecting from the internet as I read somewhere to avoid interference with iCloud. I also tried creating a new account and import it there so I could change it into vCards, but it wouldn't import there either. It's a 1.3 GB file. I don't have a back-up file or something I can use instead (which wouldn't be up to date) and unfortunately it already synced with my iPhone which has now an empty address book. I also opened the .abbu file and tried to import the .abcdg files but that doesn't work either

Putnik,
Thanks! This was the exact solution for me. Problem: .abbu loaded then disappeared in a few seconds. As soon as I read your post, it was obvious that iCloud was wiping out the reload, because it had taken a fresh—and empty—copy right after I created the .abbu file. My configuration is basically a MacPro via Ethernet to an Airport. A MacBook via Ethernet and WiFi to the Airport, and an iPhone WiFi to the airport. The situation at it’s worst had no data in the MacBook, MacPro, iPhone Or iCloud. What I did have was the good .abbu file.
My solution:
   1. Move the good abbu file to the MacBook.
   2. Pull power from the Airport—kills all local Ethernet and WiFi.
   3. Put the iPhone in airplane mode just in case—probably not needed.
   4. Do a local import from the .abbu file on the MacBook to the address book on the MacBook .
I now have a clean copy of my thousands of irreplaceable contacts on the MacBook .
I'm pretty sure that since the data in the MacBook address book has most recent date stamp, all will be well, i.e., the MacPro, iPhone and iCloud will sync to the MacBook . But I figure good logic says to think that through a little more, pour a few fingers of Scotch, then synch everything else tomorrow. The contacts on the MacPro are what I need for work now.
<Apple: BTW, You did iCloud well, solid, and fast‑Woulda been nice if you had documented how it REALLY works also. Need any good tech writers who understand both software and hardware?   >

When I try to add an email address (by clicking on the address and slecting the 'Add to Address book' option the email addrss does not stay in my address book

When adding an email address to my address book often it will stay in the address book until I close Thunderbird then it disappears and it won't pop up as a valid address when I am composing a note.

This usually means that the address book data file is corrupt.
I'd suggest you export your misbehaving address book to an LDIF file, delete the original address book then re-import its data from the LDIF file.
Note that you won't be allowed to delete either ''Personal Address Book'' (PAB) nor ''Collected Addresses'' (CA) within Thunderbird. You'll have to close Thunderbird, open its profile and delete:
''abook.mab'' for PAB, or
''history.mab'' for CA.
When you next run Thunderbird, it'll create a new empty address book to replace the one you deleted. Import your address to a new temporary address book, then move the Contacts (drag-and-drop) into the preferred address book.

Empty Address Book

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