Issue importing .abbu backup and syncing to iCloud

Question

Here's the issue:
I accidently deleted some information I needed in my address book.  I thought everything would be okay because I could just import the backup .abbu file I recently exported. I tried to import the .abbu file and it looked okay for about 3 seconds.  Then, all of my conacts disappeared! I scowered the internet and found other people have had similar issues.
I struggled to find a way to fix this or at least find a workaround.  Needless to say, I did find a workaround, but it's very time consuming.  I'm posting on this board to see if anyone knows what the real issue is here.  I have already conacted apple support and they basically gave me the same workaround I came up with. They weren't able to provide me with a straight answer.
Here's my workaround for people having issues with importing their .abbu backup:
1. Disconnect from the internet to prevent icloud from trying to sync.
2. Import your backup .abbu file (which will import perfectly)
2. You have to drag and drop all of your groups individually onto your desktop to export them in the vcard format.
3. Once you do this, delete all of the contacts in your address book
4. Then, create a new group and name it after one of your old groups you exported into a vcard.
5. Drag and drop the appropriate vcard file into the group. Do this for all of the remaining groups.
6. Connect to the internet and everything will sync again.
This is a very tedious process since I have about 20 groups. The SENIOR apple support guy basically told me this is how I should backup my address book and not to delete large amounts of contacts if I didn't want them restored easily.  This solution makes no sense to me.
My question is this:  What's the point of backing up an .abbu file if it can't import it back in and have it sync to iCloud with all of my groups? I thought that was the way it was supposed to work.
If anyone can shed some light on this, it would be most appreciated.

Answer 1

There is actually a solution that will require less overall work if you have a lot of groups. The basic strategy is to get the system to copy everything with groups intact to the On My Mac contacts, and then pull everything back into iCloud. That effectively updates all the timestamps and gets around iCloud not wanting to import old contacts.
1) DISCONNECT ALL NETWORK CONNECTIONS - ethernet, WiFi, everything.
2) Create a new account on your Mac, so you have a fresh Address Book with nothing in it. (Note that the new account shouldn't have any passwords in the keychain, so disconnecting from the network is just a safety precaution. If it asks for a password, hit 'cancel.' You don't want to connect to iCloud until the end.)
3a) If using a .abbu backup, copy the .abbu file that has your iCloud contacts to the new account. Double click the .abbu file to restore all the contacts.
3b) If you're attempting to restore from a file level backup solution, replace the ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder from your backup. Make sure the user id matches, and change it if necessary.
4) Open the Contacts application. You should see everything as it was at the time the backup was created. If you have other accounts besides iCloud that you're not having issues with, you can remove them using Contacts->Preferences...->Accounts. And if there is anything in On My Mac that you don't want pulled into iCloud, you should remove those entries now. If asked whether you want to keep contacts on your Mac, just delete them. To restore iCloud cleanly, you ONLY want iCloud contacts from this point forward.
5) At this point, if you want to, you can export to a .abbu file as a checkpoint so that if something goes wrong, you can start over without having to clean things up again.
6) Under Contacts -> Preferences... -> Accounts, delete the iCloud account. You will be asked if you want to delete contacts or keep them. Click KEEP CONTACTS! This makes a copy on the local system, under My Contacts, complete with the all of the group information intact.
7) Reconnect your Mac to the network if you disconnected it at step 1.
8) If you're going for a clean restore, and you're happy with exactly what is in the On My Mac contacts, log into iCloud through a web interface. Make sure all contacts AND groups have been deleted from iCloud. (If empty groups are in there, they'll still be there looking like duplicates. If you have a lot of groups, start by clicking the last one, hit delete, hit return, hit delete, hit return... repeat until they are gone.)
9) Add your iCloud account back to Contacts. It will attempt to merge all contacts. Since you only have a pristine copy in On My Mac with all of the group information, it will look exactly as it did at the time of the backup when you are done.
Now when you go back to your regular account, or your iPhone, etc.; your iCloud contacts should be restored after synchronizing.
I had 34 groups, and this saved me a lot of time over trying to work with .vcf files. It also ensures an exact restore, instead of accidental duplicates if you have contacts in multiple groups.
Mike P.