HT204150 Self duplicating contact over 22,000 times.

In Address Book & iCloud, one of my contacts has duplicated itself over 22,000 times. In trying to delete the contact, Address Book freezes and so does iCloud. What do I do?

Resolving duplicate contacts

Similar Messages

  • 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

  • HT204150 Step 5 done 20 times and not solved merging of duplicated contacts. What do I do ?

    Having achieved 160.000 duplicated contacts, I turned off contacts sync but can't recover or delete contacts on Icloud.

    Does anyone in the community know the answer to this ?
    Alternatively - which email address should I direct this to to get an answer from Apple?

  • 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

  • Why am I having trouble importing vCards? I follow the Help Center instructions by dragging and dropping, but some don't sync into the cloud. And why can't I drag multiple vCards? I have over 4,000. Please tell me I don't have to do one at a time?

    Why am I having trouble importing vCards? I follow the Help Center instructions by dragging and dropping, but some don't sync into the cloud. And why can't I drag multiple vCards? I have over 4,000. Please tell me I don't have to do one at a time?

    carolinechx wrote:
    i know the description may be a little bit too confusing
    Mostly because you are not using any capital letters or paragraph returns and your post is difficult to read.

  • I tried to manually clear my Time Machine back up drive (a La Cie). But now the Trash is filled with files (over 130,000) and it doesn't seem to want to trash them - how do I get rid of them now in a quicker way?

    I tried to manually clear my Time Machine back up drive (a La Cie) of some of the older backups. But now the Trash is filled with files (over 130,000) and it doesn't seem to want to trash them - it's taking forever!! how do I get rid of them now in a quicker way?

    dear Sue
    i've tried the alt solution to empty trash but it does not work
    I still got the -8003 error
    for emptying time machine backups that i foolishly put in the trash
    i've also tried this solution using terminal and it did not work either
    http://www.imore.com/how-force-empty-trash-your-mac-using-terminal
    any help you might offer would be greatly appreciated
    i am using a 24 inch iMac
    OSX 10.6.8
    Message was edited by: summer_laughter

  • HT203177 I had to get a new hard drive in my 27 in IMac. I used time machine to get everything back on my computer. I just turn on time machine and its says it's preparing over 800,000 items to back-up, it never back-up, it stop and starts the process ove

    I had to get a new hard drive in my 27 in IMac. I used time machine to get everything back on my computer. I just turn on time machine and its says it's preparing over 800,000 items to back-up, it never back-up, it stop and starts the process over again.

    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 repair the backup/TM drive.

  • Have an ipad 2 - gmail works well!  Added my comcast account and it picked up over 29,000 emails and i can only delete 50 at a time - is there a way to "delete all"?

    have an ipad 2 - gmail works great - added account for comcast email and it picked up over 29,000 emails, and can only delete 50 at a time - any way to delete all?

    Delete the account the account from the iPad. Go to the Comcast website and deal with all of those stored emails. Then reinstall the account on the iPad.

  • I downloaded the new version of itunes and it changed my path. I have over 10,000 songs in 100's of play list. This is the third time it has happened. It is putting file://localhost in front front of the path. Does anyone know why and has a solution   RJ

    I downloaded the new version of itunes and it changed my path. I have over 10,000 songs in 100's of play list. This is the third time it has happened. It is putting file://localhost in front front of the path. Does anyone know why and has a solution   RJ

    Hello there, RJ Quick.
    I've located the following Knowledge Base article that might be the information you're looking for:
    iTunes 11 for Mac: Change where your iTunes files are stored
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12165
    The following section may be of help:
    Change where imported files are stored
    Choose iTunes > Preferences and click Advanced.
    Click Change and select a new location for your files.From now on, new songs and other items you import will be stored in the new location. Songs you’ve already imported stay in their current location.To go back to storing imported files in the iTunes folder, choose iTunes > Preferences, click Advanced, and click Reset.
    Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
    Cheers,
    Pedro D.

  • My mac mail is downloading over 100,000 emails from the server every time i click the icon.  i can't receive the current emails

    Was looking to see if anyone has a solution to stop mac mail from downloading over 100,000 emails each time i click on the mail icon.  i can't get newer emails uploaded.  Has anyone dealt with this and were you able to fix it?
    thank you

    does your anti virus has a spam tool? if so turn it off and see

  • TS2570 I have a corrupt jpeg on my desktop. It has duplicated itself 450,000 times freezing my finder. I have reinstalled 10.6.8 but not freed up desktop. I have managed to delete the corrupt jpeg from a shared imac but cannot delete the duplicates. Any i

    I have a corrupt jpeg on my desktop. It has duplicated itself 450,000 times freezing my finder. I have reinstalled 10.6.8 but not freed up the desktop. I have managed to delete the corrupt jpeg from a shared imac but cannot delete the duplicates. Any ideas

    This can be done from Single User Mode. You're going to need a little nerve though since everything is command line based.
    1) Enter Single User Mode by restarting and holding down Command+S on the keyboard. A whole bunch of UNIX stuff will go by on the screen in white text on a black background. When it's done, the command prompt will be sitting at:
    :/root#
    2) Above that, you'll see that it tells you to enter two commands. Run this one first by typing it in and pressing enter:
    /sbin/fsck/ -fy
    This does a system file check. A good thing to do in your case as it may be damaged. It could take a while. When it's done, you'll be back at the :/root# prompt.
    3) Enter the second command and press enter:
    /sbin/mount -uw /
    4) Type the following at the prompt:
    cd /Users/name/Desktop
    Where it says "name" above, the short name of your user account goes there. If you're not sure what it is, first type:
    cd /Users
    Then type:
    ls
    That's a lower case L, not a one. It stands for "list". You'll get a listing of all files and folders in the Users folder. So if your short account name is diane, then the command will be:
    cd /Users/diane/Desktop
    After entering that command, the prompt should read:
    :Desktop root#
    Type:
    rm *.jpg
    Be very careful to type is exactly as shown. rm followed by a space, then *.jpg. Press enter and all files ending in .jpg will be deleted from the Desktop folder. With 450,000 of them, you could be waiting a while for the prompt to come back.
    Type:
    exit
    and press enter to boot back into OS X.

  • Over 30,000 contacts listed in my backup assistant. Help!

    I have somehow been able to accumulate over 30,000 contacts listed in my backup assistant/Verizon online contacts.  How do I delete them or get someone at Verizon to delete them?

    Chrsp wrote:
    I have somehow been able to accumulate over 30,000 contacts listed in my backup assistant/Verizon online contacts.  How do I delete them or get someone at Verizon to delete them?
    Ouch, long night ahead in your near future. You can log on to your My Verizon account, mouse over My Services, click on Backup Assistant in that list. Now you can either mouse over each contact and delete each one that you don't want, or you can mouse over the contact and click the check mark to the right on each contact on that screen that you don't want. After you have checked all the contacts you don't want, up at the top of that window, right above the the contacts and below the letter index is a small box that says "Actions", click on that box and click on delete, it will ask you if you are sure you want to delete these contacts.
    30,000 contacts is massive, get some coffee and be prepared to be in front of the computer for a while, hope this helps.

  • I have over 16.000 duplicated addresses in my address book how do I get rid of them?

    Mac osx 10.9.5.... 2.4GHz core duo..  4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
    I have over 16.000 cards in my address book.... due to duplicates I should have less then 1000?  how do I fix this?

    Under Card in the Menu bar, select Look for Duplicates. After it finds the dupes it will ask if you want to merge I suggest you select this option.

  • HT204150 how do I get duplicated contacts off my I Phone?

    How do I get duplicated contacts off my IPhone?

    See http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4147.  If these methods don't remove them there are apps that will, such as My Contacts Backup Pro.

  • Duplicated contact cards without visible changes

    Hi everyone,
    I'm having duplicate entries in address book from time to time. This time I have 47 duplicated informations found. I can merge them and am out of dupes and out of trouble. But it comes back some time and I really liked to know what changes are done. I don't have 47 duplicated contact cards, maybe one or so. Can I see the changes somehow?
    Thanks.

    UPDATE:
    I made a vimdiff between the old card set and the one after the merge. I saw several of these items that disappeared:
    item2.URL:fb\://profile/1234567879
    item2.X-ABLabel:_$!<HomePage>!$_
    It seems the entries came in through the facebook sync app on iPhone. I also wondered why they are not clickable in address book on the Mac, just on the iPhone. Did they do something inappropriate? And why does address book recognise those entries as duplicates?
    Questions over questions.

Maybe you are looking for