Finder and address book problem

A week ago I added a new (wired) keyboard because the old wireless keyboard was broken. There was a 2 day interval where I used an old G4 USB keyboard as a temporary stand in. I installed more RAM at the same time.
Since then columns view in finder doesn't work. Folders will open OK but click any document and finder relaunches back to the finder window that was open at log-in. In icon view and list view everything seems to work fine.
Address book is broken too. The window has most bits missing. There is a search field, the 'Address Book' title and the word 'Edit' with no button at the bottom. There are no data fields - no names, no addresses.
There's a minor glitch with Mail too. The font color for some mailbox folder labels changes from black to white intermittently. Quit Mail and re-open and it reverts back to black. The program seems to work fine.
First thought - preference lists.
I've trashed AddressBook.plist, finder.plist, FontFavorites.plist with no joy.
Second thought - user accounts
Same for all users on this machine.
The Address Book works fine on another machine (a G4 networked to this G5). However trashing the G5 Address Book and copying the good one from the G4 doesn't work.
The data seems to be intact because copying AddressBook.data from the G5 to the G4 seems to show a complete file.
Anyone out there got any ideas about what next? I can live without column view but it's a nuisance. I can't live without my address book.

No joy. Verified disc, ran 10.4.10 Combo Updater PPC, restarted and then repaired permissions.
Finder still relaunches back to where it started after log-in whenever I select a file (not a folder) in column view. Everything else in Finder still seems to work OK (and I'm getting used to using list view instead).
Address Book remains the same. Open from the dock and the Address Book menus appear with no window. Select Address Book from Window menu and an aluminium window appears with no addresses. It looks just as I described at the beginning. The only thing that I hadn't noticed before is that, when I go back to the Window menu, Address Book appears twice with both ticked although there is only one (useless) window open.
I've read through the Maworld article recommended by joshz and can't find any font problem that seems to relate to this finder issue. I've run Font Finagler which, I presume, has cleaned the font cache (whatever that might mean). All fonts seem to be working fine.
The minor issue with Mail might be better. It was intermittent and perhaps it just hasn't shown itself in the half hour since I last restarted.
Everthing else seems to be working fine and no new problem has developed.

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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

Email addresses and address book problems...

Since upgrading to Snow Leopard:
1) Could not add a name to a group
2) Group list disappeared!
3) Email addresses are being assigned to wrong names, even though are correct in address book! I use .mac/mobile me...causing emails to be sent to the wrong people or the wrong names to appear in the "To:....."
Anyone have this problem and if so how did you resolve?

HI and Welcome to Apple Discussions..
Try rebuilding the mailbox.
From the Mac Mail Menu Bar, click Mailbox / Rebuild.
Takes a few minutes to run.
If that doesn't help, go to Mail/Preferences. Make not of the preferences under each tab then Quit Mail and locate this file.
~/Library/Preferences. Move that .plist file to the Trash and restart your Mac.
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

Email and Address Book problems

I just got my blackberry curve 8310 2 days ago. I set up the emails, and I'm receiving them on my phone, but they are not showing up at all in my AOL inbox. Not even in the old mail section.
What to do?
Also, I have been trying to transfer my address book from my palm treo to my blackberry. The Desktop Manager does not work when I try to switch between the two devices, for some reason.
What to do?
Please help.!
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Welcome to the forums.
Do you have an AOL icon for that mail? Are the messages showing up in the main Messages icon (your new mail should show in BOTH the AOL mail and the Messages icon. Are you able to send email from your device?
For the transferring of the address book, what version of Desktop Manager do you have (and do you have Windows or Vista on your computer)? What steps are you doing (every step, please) and where exactly is it failing?
If you find a post here helpful, please consider giving the poster some Kudos

Problems with outlook and address book contacts: my outlook contacts had around 3,000 entries. Outlook duplicated by itself and now outlook and address book have each over 340,000. What should I do?

Problems with outlook and address book contacts: my outlook contacts had around 3,000 entries. Outlook duplicated entries and have now 340,000. I reinstalled microsoft office and, thus, outlook, and reinstalled mac OS X system and applications. While I managed to delete outlook contacts so that I can re-sync with my blackberry, the contacts at Mac Address Book were not deleted and still have over 340,000 entries. I do not mind deleting all contacts since I have back up, but I have not been able to delete them. Also, when I go at Address Book and try to delete or merge duplicated entries, the system takes forever and never ends because of such large amount of entries. Worse, when I do so I run out of RAM memory.
My Macbook pro is just 2 months old.
What should I do? Is there a way to delete my Mac Address Book without having the problem above?
Many thanks
Regis

zlatan24 wrote:
For solving out troubles connected with corrupted or lost address book you may use address book recovery. It owns various features such as restoring wab files, it working under any Windows OS. The utility has modern and easy to use interface due to almost every experienced users.
If it is a windows problem it's not going to run on the OP's MacBook Pro

Problem with iChat and Address Book

Ok, I've been having a problem ever since I used a program to remove my unwanted print drivers and language packs (I forget the program's name). Ever since then, my iChat and Address book will not open. The spinning beach ball appears, and nothing happens. Ichat just continues bouncing in the dock. All I can do with the programs is force-quit them.
I have tried re-installing OSX (not a fresh install), fixing permissions, re-installing the programs, and re-installing the drivers and language packs. Aside from a complete fresh-install, does anyone have any ideas why these programs are not running and how to fix them?
Thanks,
Jared

I have a similar problem.
There are 3 user accounts on my iMac:
I. The admin
II. My account
III. My wife's account
Where only the admin account can administer the computer.
All the applications work just fine when I am logged in as the admin. The problems appear when I switch to my account.
The following apps crash immediately on their startup:
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2. Address Book
3. iChat
4. All the Big Bang board games
Safari browser crashes the moment you enter some input on a page with input edit controls.
Sherlock when trying to actually use any web service.
The crash log for any of the above always reports the same reason:
Exception: EXCBADACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERNPROTECTIONFAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000004
The interesting thing is that each and every crash log reports the crash within the
com.apple.AddressBook.framework always at the same place:
c4Sequence::PropIndex(c4Property const&) + 14
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Any recommendations on productivity for database and project management, Bento was good but no longer sync with ical and address book

I've unfortunately updated to the new Bento on MakBook and iPad and synced my data and in the process it tells me that iCal and Address books will not sync any more. I have several projects I am working on and looking for something that will syn with iCal, address book and Busy Cal to manage my time efficiently and seamlessly. Help?

I think you're in the wrong forum - this is for developers, who write programs for apple products.
As for Bento, their problem is due to Apple's changes in the API. The code that syncs with calendars and contacts is now deprecated, which means at some point in the future, it will no longer work. This problem will affect all developers, so you probably won't find any replacement for Bento.

Mail and Address Book text appears as gobbledygook

The software headings and some of the input text in Mail and Address Book appears as random text symbols. For example in Address Book the headings beside the input boxes (Name, Tel, Fax, E-mail, etc) appear as random symbols. In the far right hand pane that shows the content of an Address Book entry, the two input boxes at the top that should display the christian and surname have also been replaced by random symbols.
In Mail, again it's the software headings that have been corrupted (To, From, Date, cc. But also my signatures are also now made of randon symbols as is any text that I enter into the body of a new e-mail.
This has not just happened and is the result of a series of problems.
In order they were:
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It is probably step two that has mucked things up. Everything else seems to be acting fine - even keychain access (the keychain was dragged across from the old user id) works fine after validating access when the alert window appears.
Complete idiotic user error, I know and, frustratingly, I'm a pretty experienced user with a fairly good grasp of Mac systems...however, this has foxed me.
Any urgent thoughts would be appreciated
Kind regards
Andrew
G4 Powerbook Alu 15" Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Thanks Eric, but unfortunately my Frankenstien Automator app was moving the originals and not making copies. I thank the gods I didn't roll out the app to the guys in the office before testing it myself. You could wreak havoc with these Automator apps if you so chose!
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Roll on Time Machine and OSX.5...plus a back-up regime or a 10gb iDisk account and 100mb broadband!
Regards

Mail and Address book playing up

Hello. I am having problems with my Mail and Address book. For some reason, sent mails sometimes do not end up in the Sent folder, received emails sometimes go to the Trash without me sending them there, and I often have to resort to "Search" in the top right hand corner of the screen to find the mail I am looking for. What's more, my address book has stopped working properly: I can create groups but each group shows the general contact list by its side, even upon creation! I cannot add or delete from the group list. Basically, it seems like the two programes have gone all wonky tonky. This may or may not have to do with the recent Security Update 2012-001 Bricks Rosetta problems. I posted here in that regard but since the problems I noticed disappeared of their own accord, I did not bother reinstalling all as suggested. Reinstalling everything is simply too much hassle for me ... I use address book a lot and need things to work. Does anyone have a quick fix for this? Could this be caused by the faulty Apple January update? thank you in advance!

You should back up what you have.
Then, restart from your Mac OS X Installation Disk (insert disk and hold down C key during startup). At the first Installer screen, run Disk Utility from the menu. Use both the Repair and Repair Permissions routines on the hard drive. Do Repair first, because you problem sounds like a disk directory issue. If Disk Utility cannot make the repair, you may need a tool like DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro.

Mail and address book data file location

Does anyone know where mail and address book saves its data?
My old mac died but I was able to remove the hard drive and mount it in a external firewire case. The drive mounts and appears in good shape. I tried using the migration utility to transfer my data into my new iMac. While a lot of data and applications did make the move, my mail files and folders did not show up on my new iMac. I'm hoping I can transfer the mail files manually. The problem is I can't find where they are located on my old computer. I was using Max os 10.4.11 on my old computer.
The same problem with my address book data. It did not transfer over with migration app. and I can't locate this data either.

The majority of Mail is in...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail
AB...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

Mail and address book crashes with SL, not able to import messages

Hi,
I've got about 10 years of email messages current inaccessible since I upgraded to SL.....
Currently, Mail and Address book both crash upon opening.
I don't need address book because luckily I have jettisoned that program, but I do need to somehow extract my sent messages from mail.
I've already taken these steps to try to get it working again and re-import my messages
-> deleted com.apple.mail, com.apple.addressbook preference files
--> moved mail folder to the desktop
--> deleted mail and address book folders within "application support" folders
I'll be happy if I can find a way to simply open mail and re-import the messages, but so far, I'm locked out. The furthest I can get is the "import" command from within mail, and then I get the spinning beachball.
Something seems to be deeply messed up within my addressbook/mail world, and it doesn't even want to start importing messages without crashing.
any ideas?
thanks
I can't

We have not tried a user account, we can if you think it is worth the time?
50/50 chance of a clue.
If I install mail and/or AB, do I need to move the data files for those first so that they are not wiped out? What about upgrades for those once we install or is the install disk and the current version the same.
Normally it's not a problem, but Archive/Compress/backup just the same.
Wait on the upgrades until we straighten this out.
Or do we do a new install on a partition on another disk? Then migrate files over if the works (mail, AB, itunes, photos...)? Might need to guide me a bit on this?
Excellent Idea if you hace another botable Disk, Install to that one, on first boot it'll ask if you want to Migrate, Migrate everything!
If you want to go that way and need assistance, just ask.

Switching from Entourage to ical, mail, and address book- duplications?

I am tired of the slowness of Entourage and was thinking of switching to all of the native mac programs. Any suggestions or comments on whether this is a good idea or not?
Also, will all of my information be duplicated. I have about 3 gigs of information and I don't want to needlessly store it if I don't need to. Can I get some advice on where to find and extract that information from the entourage program so I am not eating up disc space unnecessarily.
Thank you.

Three weeks ago I switched from Entourage and Palm Desktop to Apple mail, address book and ical. It was a tad painful because I ended up with a lot of duplicates as I had email and some contact info in Entourage and several thousand contacts in Palm Desktop.
However after a couple of solid nights sorting out the duplicates all the contact info for each person is now in one place.
Word of warning though when you are checking address book entries make sure you keep backing up the changes (File - Backup address book) because for some inexplicable reason a couple of times all the entries in address book vanished.
Also the check for duplicates option in address book might be great for some but for me it created contacts that had their addresses and phone numbers duplicated several times.
After initial teething problems (getting used to the different programs) I am now pretty happy with the changeover. I am ecstatic to not be seeing the constant Entourage error message of 'your database is damaged and needs to be rebuilt' which entourage kept throwing at me (even after repeated rebuilds).
I have a Palm Treo and Address Book and iCal sync fine with that as well (after installing the conduit).
You'll also find in mail that you can't do as much snazzy formatting as you could with Entourage (ie numbered lists and bullet points) but hopefully Apple will address that in later updates. In the meantime if I'm desperate for formatting I write the email in rtf and paste it across complete with bluet points.
Sorry to drone on but wanted to give you some moral support.
Oh by the way the entourage data is stored in Home folder - Documents - Microsoft User Data - Office 2004 Identities - main identity - database (almost need a compass and flashlight to find it). To be on the safe side burn it to a dvd just in case and then trash it and all it's little friends (rules, lists, signatures and the other main identity folders.
Good luck

Mail and Address book crash

This problem started right after a made a smart group within address book and then deleted it. Address Book and Mail will not even load now. They open but have to force quit. Address book open with 0 contacts (I should have ~300).
After searching for some help I did the following but still no luck:
Repaired Permissions via Disk Utility
Deleted com.apple.AddressBook.abd.plist and com.apple.AddressBook.plist from Library \ preferences
Under Library \ application support \ renamed AddressBook file to AddressBook.old
At this point I cannot recall what order I was doing these things but eached looked like they worked for some.
Is there anything else I can do? or a trick to the order in which I need to do them? Appreciate any help I can get on this.
Both Mail and Address Book open - as soon as I click on one thing it crashed and have to force quit.
Thanks

Try this - find the /Library/Preferences folder in your user/Home folder and then locate and delete this file:
com.apple.mail.plist
*Caution* - doing this may clear your account settings so be sure to note those first in the event you are required to reconfigure, etc.
If you can get Mail to open and not crash, the first thing to do is to use the 'Mailbox/Rebuild' menu.
If still no joy, do you have a backup of your mail folder(s) you can use as replacements?
Use it if you do, then perhaps use your SL DVD and do a custom install/applications.
I really think the problem is with your main inbox, tho - located in yourUsername/Library/Mail
If you don't have a backup, of your main inbox, copy it, rename it, temporarily abandon the original inbox and see if you can import the clone.

Mail v. 5.3 and Address Book Won't Work from Time Machine Reinstall

I installed a new harddrive in my MacPro 15" (early 2011) running OS X 10.7.5. I successfully reinstalled OS X10.7.5 and all my software/files from Time Machine. However, I get messages on Mail v. 5.3 (1283/1278) and Address Book that "you can't use this version" with Mac OS X v 10.7.5 (Build 11G63) and I should check with the developer. Everything is up to date regarding updates. Can someone help with this problem please? Thanks.

Hello,
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, 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 at top of the screen. (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. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair Disk, (not Repair Permissions). 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.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
If perchance you can't find your install Disc, at least try it from the Safe Boot part onward.
If 10.7.0 or later...
Bootup holding CMD+r, or the Option/alt key to boot from the Restore partition & use Disk Utility from there to Repair the Disk.

Both mail and address book very slow to launch on 10.6 and 10.6.1

Like unimaginably slow. After clicking on the applications, I was able to perform a google search, find this forum, and and start this thread before either application became active.
I am running 10.6.1 and have had this problem since 10.6. not before.
I upgraded my system, I did not install Snow Leopard fresh, and I really hope I dont have to to solve this problem. So much for the speed portion of the Snow Leopard improvements!
Has anybody else seen this issue? I certainly hope so because it's terrible to have to track down a problem like this alone.
Message was edited by: almostinverted

Thank you for this link. Here is the process I used to fix it.
1 - I had one smart group in address book, with a NOT variable. (if contact is NOT in any group)
2 - click on the smart folder, wait a long time for it to be selected.
3 - delete the smart folder
4 - close address book
5 - reboot.
6 - both Mail and Address book now open very quickly. Problem solved
Thanks again!
EDIT:
re-creating the same smart group brings back the same problem!!! So we have broken address book functionality in 10.6? just awesome....
Message was edited by: almostinverted
Message was edited by: almostinverted

Finder and address book problem

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