Lost all Address Book entries

All of a sudden I've lost all my Address Book entries. There's nothing there. I use iBackup onto .Mac, but for some reason I can't get it to restore. It keeps saying that backup fails.
Please help. Big problem.

You had no backup before upgrading to Snow Leopard, and you didn't make a backup of your Address Book?
Upgrading OS X is not something that would cause that data to disappear, so that would seem to suggest that something else is at work, such as human error. Regardless, if you're running 10.6.3 as your profile states, you should run Software Update and get 10.6.8, as it fixes a number of issues.
You can try to recover your Address Book contacts like this:
1. Quit Address Book if it's running.
2. Go to Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook
3. Move the AddressBook.data file to your Desktop or to the Trash. Then, in that same folder, make a duplicate of the AddressBook.data.previous file and rename one copy simply to AddressBook.data and launch the Address Book application. If you're lucky, your data is there. If not, well that highlights the reason for making backups.

Similar Messages

Lost my address book entries and current mail program.

I recently installed Leopard on my G-4 and was not satisfied with it so I attempted to downgrade back to Tiger. In order to do this I had to reinstall Panther which I did, only I lost all my user settings, etc., even though I had checked the box to save. When my desktop appeared, my address book and mail program was empty. I backed up my mail program but have been unable to access my mail from 2007, only up to 2006. I went to Previous Systems, but again, only up to 2006. I have been all over my hard drive looking for my old address book but haven't found anything. Would my old address book still be there and if so, where? And how can I access my mail from 2007, even on the program that is backed up?
Any help on these two topics is greatly appreciated.

Hello Allan -
Your help on a previous post was great re: my wanting to know how to delete the Address Book contents so I can re-import an updated list form my office Outlook, via my yahho/sbcglobal import.
Well - here is an interesting quandary:
I have successfully exported my yahoo address book/contacts as a .vcf file Yet - once I have expunged the prior Address Book data and want to now import the NEW Yahoo data to rebuild the database it only takes (enters) the phone numbers and does NOT import ANY of the address information. I am positive I did this once since our original exchange and everything transferred just fine, but now….?!
What I cannot determine is where the fault may be: does the export NOT include the addresses (in which case I am doing something fundamentally stupid wit the export) or the vcf cards are complete, but Address Book is not “seeing” anything other than the phone #s and e-mail addresses.
Any thoughts?
Dazed and confused
Theo

Lost most address book entries after upgrading to S.L.

Hi Everyone,
I upgraded my machine from Tiger to Snow Leopard and consequently lost most of the addresses in my address book. I had about 300 or so; now I have 68. This is particularly bad timing since we're in the holidays...
I have a backed up version of the address book (on an external disk that still has the backup of my old system), but I'm not able to open it in Snow Leopard. Suggestions? This is quite frustrating.

The metadata folder has the same number of items as the current address book (68). The other contents of the .../application support/address book file are:
ABPerson.skIndexInverted
ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted
AddressBook-v22.abcddb
AddressBook.data
AddressBook.data.previous
Configuration.plist
Images folder
lastImport.plist
MailRecents-v4.abcdmr
Metadata folder
Hmmm... Is the "AddressBook.data.previous" relevant here?
Thanks for your help.

Lost all Address Book info upon upgrading from Snow Leopard to Mavericks.

Contacts is empty. I did a Carbon Copy Clone before upgrading so I have the abcddb file, but not sure what to do with it to get the info into Contacts. Thanks for any input.

Any ideas how to input Address Book (Snow Leopard) into Contacts (Mavericks)?
Thanks for any help.

Address book entries lost

I noticed on a parallel topic that no one had answered.
I just started a new Macbook. I transfered address book via fire wire.
It tranfered fine. I used it.
I shut down my computer and then re opened it.
All address book entries disappeared.
Also, the book marks which I had transferred disappeared.
Any one know what is happening?
Mac book Mac OS X (10.4.8)

From the first computer I made a back up of my address book. My zip drive would not recognize this.
I transfered it to my new computer on a flash drive.
Then I told the new computer to use the back up copy of the address book. It worked.

PLEASE HELP!!!! My Address Book Entries Keep Disappearing

I work on contract for multiple companies and have 6 different email accounts. Until today, I only had 1 profile in my address book that was marked with my main email address. Today I went to add my name and the corresponding email into Address book, and then my email and ical froze and I had to Force Quit. All Address book entries were gone. I reloaded my address book, went back to ical to view the invitation and AGAIN!!! all address book entries were gone. It appears that I can't set up "my info" with different email addresses. I would be ever so grateful if someone might have a solution.
Many Thanks for any ideas....
ibook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I recommend that you book a Genius session at an Apple Store. It sounds like your iMac or iPhone has a corrupted Contacts function and it will keep generating blank contacts.
If you can open Contacts on the iMac then create a new group (file menu), drag your genuine contacts to that group then File/Export the group with Export vCard. You can use this to recover the contacts later.
BTW - best not to post your iMac serial number and UUID online.

My original computer hard drive crashed. I have a new laptop, but I lost all my address book entries. Is there a way I can transfer my contacts on my ipad to my non-apple laptop? Tom B

My original computer hard drive crashed. I have a new laptop, but I lost all my address book entries. Is there a way I can transfer my contacts on my ipad to my non-apple laptop? Tom B

If you have a Mac, it's pretty easy. But you don't (should I make a pitch for you to get a MacBook Pro in the future)?
This should help you out to sync it back to several non-Apple software:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1296

How can I delete ALL of my Address Book entries and start fresh?

Yes. I know that sounds extreme, but……
I use Outlook on a PC at my office, and I have an sbcglobal/Yahoo mail account. I look upon my office Outlook as my ultimate contacts list (over 1,100 entries) and my calendar.
I use the sbc supplied free Intellisync software to sync all of my calendar and contacts from my office PC into sbc/Yahoo. That way I actually get e-mail reminders of appointments, etc. in addition to my Outlook notifications. It is actually pretty nifty.
I have also successfully signed-on to my Yahoo account at home on my MAC and exported all of my contacts from Yahoo (which had been populated by the PC Outlook listings via Intellisync) onto my desktop and then imported them into Address Book. But I did that some time ago and now my Outlook listings have been updated rather substantially. I would like to able to do a complete re-install of the new and improved contacts from the Yahoo repository.
Again - I certainly do not want to delete the Address Book app itself – I just want to start with a clean slate so there are no conflicts or duplicate entries (which in fact is seemingly a bug in the Yahoo/Intellisync. Is there a way to completely wipe clean all of my Address Book entries?
Thanks
Theo
G4 (FW800) Mirrored doors Mac OS X (10.4.8) Dual 1.42GHz; 1.5GB DDR SDRAM; 20" HD Cinema Display; iSight;

Hello Allan -
Your help on a previous post was great re: my wanting to know how to delete the Address Book contents so I can re-import an updated list form my office Outlook, via my yahho/sbcglobal import.
Well - here is an interesting quandary:
I have successfully exported my yahoo address book/contacts as a .vcf file Yet - once I have expunged the prior Address Book data and want to now import the NEW Yahoo data to rebuild the database it only takes (enters) the phone numbers and does NOT import ANY of the address information. I am positive I did this once since our original exchange and everything transferred just fine, but now….?!
What I cannot determine is where the fault may be: does the export NOT include the addresses (in which case I am doing something fundamentally stupid wit the export) or the vcf cards are complete, but Address Book is not “seeing” anything other than the phone #s and e-mail addresses.
Any thoughts?
Dazed and confused
Theo

Multiple Address Book Entries that all send to the same GW account ?

Our CIO wants a few address book entries that if chosen, will all send to
the same account.
Seems easy enough but I haven't found a way, without creating a new account
that has some Forward or Delegate rule.
Is there a nicer way to do it without having another real GW account created
and using Rules?
I was kind of hoping to just create an External User that simply points to
the one account but it complains that that e-mail address already exists.
Thanks
Marc

Marc Charbonneau wrote:
> Our CIO wants a few address book entries that if chosen, will all
> send to the same account.
>
> Seems easy enough but I haven't found a way, without creating a new
> account that has some Forward or Delegate rule.
>
> Is there a nicer way to do it without having another real GW account
> created and using Rules?
>
> I was kind of hoping to just create an External User that simply
> points to the one account but it complains that that e-mail address
> already exists.
Why not using nick names ? The only downside is gw7 and earlier
nicknames don't show up in the address book. GW8 does show the
nicknames in the address book.
Cheers,
Edward

My IPhone4s (cell phone) and my SIM card have destroyed.now I have lost all phone book number. I have just an mini-ipad2 ,it contain just contacts name which I had their email address in my yahoo Bookmark. how can I restore and reassume my phone numbers?

The best regards
DearSir/Madam
My IPhone4s (cell phone) and my SIM card have destroyed.now I have lost all phone book number. I have just an mini-ipad2 ,it contain notes and just contacts name which I had their email address in my yahoo Bookmark. how can I restore and reassume my phone numbers?
Please help me because I need to much to my phone Directory.
Thank you so much
Mehran

mehranheidari wrote:
Yes I have failed,unfortunately .
Then from where did you think you could recover your data?

Time Machine will not restore Address Book entry

I noticed that one Address Book entry has become 'corrupted' possibly when synched with my mobile phone. The name had become truncated and I had lost my notes and address details, retaining just the telephone numbers. When I access Time Machine I can see the original file. When I click restore it 'drags' this file to the current desktop, and the file appears for half a second within the address book and then disappears. When I do restore all it asks me whether I want to import all records and allows me to deal with duplicates, but still nothing is restored. What is going on?

I think you may be missing step:
Open a window for the item you want to restore.
For example, if you accidentally deleted a file from your Documents folder, open the Documents folder. If you want to recover an email message, open your inbox in Mail.
If you’re missing an item from the desktop, you don’t need to open a window.
Click the Time Machine icon in the Dock.
If Time Machine isn’t in the Dock, look for it in the Applications folder.
Use the arrows or the timeline along the right side of your screen to browse through all the backups Time Machine has created.
If you need more information about an item, double-click to preview it.
The windows behave just like Finder windows, so you can open folders, click items in the sidebar, and use the search field in the upper-right corner of the window.
When you find the item you want to restore, select it and then click Restore.
You can restore individual items, multiple items, folders, or your entire hard disk.
If an item you restore has the same name as another item on your computer, you’re asked if you want to keep the current item, the restored item, or both.

Lost Exchange Address Book

After the upgrade to SL, I had many duplicate contacts and groups. Looking in the ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book folder, I found two 'AddressBook-v22' files. I moved the older file to the desktop, and the issue of duplicates was resolved. However, I lost all my connections to the Exchange 2007 address book. What is the best way to resolve this?
Update -- I did the obvious and recreated the Exchange account in the address book preferences and I am re-connected to our server. But again ... I have a host of duplicate address book entries that show up when I click on 'All Contacts.' They do NOT appear when I select 'On My Mac.)
Interestingly, I have two AddressBook-v22' files again: One at ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book and another one layer deeper at ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/Address Book. Interesting to see the nested 'Address Book' directory.
Message was edited by: Frankns

Thanks ...
I ended up doing something I didn't really want to do, that is deleting all my contacts on our Exchange server and retaining my address book records.
My Exchange contacts came from Entourage, prior to SL, and were mostly simple duplicates. After the upgrade to SL, I had nearly 6,000 entries in my Address Book and response time was beginning to lag.
Not the best or most elegant choice, but I've never found AB to handle large collections well.

Reply works, but address book entry doesn't

I have an odd problem that's making me a litttle batty. I have an friend I e-mail regularly and--since recently switching to Mail from Eudora--I've been finding that some of my messages are not getting through.
I'm not 100% certain, but it seems that when I send a new message that's addressed from the Address Book entry, the message is never received. But when I REPLY to a message from this same recipient--same address--the message goes through just fine.
I've reviewed the address again and again and it's entered correctly.
When I look at the Long Header, one difference I note between the received and no-received maessages is under Content-Type.
A successful message has:
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=Apple-Mail-8-603300258
And a failed message:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Another difference is that the failed messages--the ones that originated with me have something called:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
While the messages I reply to don't have that line at all.
The recipient--by the way--is at work at a large organization. So I wonder if their mail servers are blocking messages with certain kinds of encoding?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
OK, OK...this just in. While I was composing this message, I was also franticly corresponding with the adressee in question, trying to troubleshoot this. I may have solved my own problem, but I'm going to post this anyway... In hopes of solving someone else's problem, and possibly getting some responses that will enlighten me further (cuz I just don't get this).
On a wild guess/hunch, I went into PREFERENCES/COMPOSING and changed the Message Format: from Rich Text to Plain Text. The next test message got through! One difference (if it matters??) I found in the Long Header was the
Content-Type changed from:
text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
to
text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
So anyway...I'm completely flummoxed. Any ideas, clues, answers out there? I'm not going to trust yet that this problem is completely solved. So I'll leave this as an open question for now.
verbosely yours,
Roger
Mac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Hmmm... there's nothing fancy about the signature (no bolds, itals or other styles or colors). But does that mean that it IS plain text? My setting when I made the signature(s) was Rich Text, I'm sure. So would that apply, even though it's plain for all intents and purposes? And if it's not. How is it changed to Plain Text?
As far as the SMTP settings. I tried one change last night. I changed the Server settings from "smtp.ispname.net:username" to "smtp.ispname.net:[email protected]". When I tested a message to the address/server I've had the most problems with, the message arrived successfully. But I don't think that proves anything as yet. The nature of the problem has been mysteriously intermitent anyway. (that message had my regular signature as well).
AS I'd mentioned, I've been moving stuff out of my Sent Mail folders to keep things organized and for reference (Is doing that OK? is Sent Mail suppposed to be left wher it is for some reason?). But on informal investigation, I would say that all of the messages I've sent--original or reply--HAVE shown up in the Sent Mail folder.
The discussion thread I'd been involved in with you before is:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=347863
However, I haven't added any posts since way back then.
Thanks you for any insights you can give me with this. If you're not on Apple's payroll, you should be.
Roger

Multiple Address Book Entries

Hi
When I add a new contact into my address book on my MacBook Pro iCloud adds 20 - 30 copies of it onto the Contacts app on my iPhone!
Can anyone help me diagnose the problem please?
Thanks
David

Marc Charbonneau wrote:
> Our CIO wants a few address book entries that if chosen, will all
> send to the same account.
>
> Seems easy enough but I haven't found a way, without creating a new
> account that has some Forward or Delegate rule.
>
> Is there a nicer way to do it without having another real GW account
> created and using Rules?
>
> I was kind of hoping to just create an External User that simply
> points to the one account but it complains that that e-mail address
> already exists.
Why not using nick names ? The only downside is gw7 and earlier
nicknames don't show up in the address book. GW8 does show the
nicknames in the address book.
Cheers,
Edward

Duplicate Contact/Address Book entries on iPhone

why do I have duplicate contact and address books entries on my iPhone? I never had this problem until I upgraded to iCloud. I have an iPhone 4 and it is upgraded to the current OS.

If you are using Outlook 2011, make sure you have the latest service pack and update.
Make sure your Mac Book and all devices have the latest update.
If the Calendar on the Mac Book is correct go to step 3
Assuming Mac Book Calendar is correct, remove accounts from iPhone, iPad.
Reconnect account to iPhone, iPad account.
All calendars should now be in sync.
There are times when the Mail, Calendar, Contact application has been corrupted (Outlook 2011, Mac Mail, Entourage, etc). This will cause all kinda of issues on your devices. You have to repair the mail client first. In the case of Outlook you can delete the profile and recreate it. In Mac Mail you can rebuild (from Tools on the menu bar)

Lost all Address Book entries

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