Recover Address Book Contacts

All my Address Book Contacts have disappeared (0 Cards), and I don't know why. When I attempted to recover them by syncing with the contacts stored on an iPad, the result is that all the iPad's contacts were deleted, too (the most recently accessed card briefly appeared, but then vanished along with all the other cards). Can I recover the Contacts from a Time Machine backup, and if so, how do I do that?

Yes you can recover all your contacts from Time Machine. Just restore Address Book from a time when you know the contacts were there. Also you have a misunderstanding about syncing your iPad (or any other IOS device), the computer sycs data such as contacts, music etc with the device, the device DOES NOT sync with the computer. So if you lose music or contacts from the computer you cannot restore them from the iPod. That is why you backup the computer it's to safeguard your data.

Similar Messages

  • Address Book Contacts are Gone

    This is a really odd problem that has been going on for sometime now. It first started when I was running Tiger and the problem continues now even with Leopard. The problem is that periodically without warning, all of the contacts in my address book mysteriously disappear - I mean they are gone - deleted. At first, I thought this was an issue with .Mac syncing as I had it set to sync automatically every hour. I have disabled .Mac sync and now only sync manually so I know that it is not an issue with .Mac sync.
    Earlier today I checked on my computer and everything was good, all of the contacts were in place. I put in my iPhone and hit sync and left the room. I know for a fact that my iPhone had all my contacts and I know that Address Book had all my contacts. When I came back to the computer a few hours later, Address Book is completely empty - the iPhone has lost all of it's contacts. I logged into .Mac on the internet and all of my contacts are still there. My last sync to .Mac was last night at 7:30. Back when I had .Mac sync set to automatic syncing, it was not uncommon for me to come in and find that all of my contacts would be gone in Address Book and on .Mac as well. I've tried contacting Apple about it and I never received any kind of a response.
    Of course I can easily recover everything with my Time Machine backups, but this is perplexing me greatly. How in the heck can this be happening? Is anyone else experiencing anything like this? This is starting to drive me crazy as I cannot figure out how the Address Book is mysteriously losing contacts unless it is happening during the sync process with the iPhone. I would certainly love to hear any suggestions on how to remedy this issue as this is extremely annoying. Thank you.

    OK, now I am worried and ticked off! I still dont have my contacts back in place...after spending now over 3 hours with three different apple experts. Where my address book contacts went to no one knows. No "experts" at Apple Care or at the local retail store "Genius Bar" seem to have any answers that are working! Even my .mac backup is not working when I try to "restore" my data from several backup dates before when my contacts vanished suddenly.
    I have written several emails today to the .Mac support (Unfortunately only available via e-mail.... I had an apple care rep tell me that .Mac is not really Apple, but an outside firm that runs .Mac).
    Here is my last email to .Mac support that I just sent out:
    <<Apple and .Mac engineers out there: PLEASE help us. There is a bad bug going around where our contacts are being vaporized and making many of us go crazy. Help us get out of this twilight zone of losing all our contact data!!!!
    Read all about it from many upset users at:
    <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://">http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6939388#69393 88
    Then call me at (my phone number) so I can tell you whats going on with my case and HELP me get my info back! I have sent several other emails to you here today.
    Thanks!
    Marcel Howard D.>>
    I hope this gets us all some help from the Apple Engineers and customer service.
    1. What are the common details, including any error messages, related to our problems that we are discussing on this thread?

  • Address Book contacts vanished - help!

    I'm hyperventilating....my entire Address Book contact list has disappeared, four years' worth of critical info! I'm hoping someone can help me find/recover the data on my iMac.
    Background: Last night, some of the apps on my iMac froze for an unknown reason. I was using Safari, left for a bit, came back and all of the Mac apps - Address Book, Mail, iCal, etc. had stopped responding. I Force Quit out of them, and rebooted my Mac. Mail and iCal were fine, all data still there.
    Didn't use Address Book until just now - I opened it and it's empty - just the default 'new' data file that has my basic card and the Apple card. EEEKKK! I have years of irreplacable data in that missing file. What happened? I've never had such a problem in the 3 years I've had this Mac and system. Someone help ASAP, please! I have no addresses to send mail, no key business data or anything!
    The Address Book app is still there, and the data folder has these files: ABPerson.skIndexInverted (292 kb, yesterday 9:51 pm), ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted (8 kb), AddressBook.data (32 kb, today, 12:32 pm), AddressBook.data.previous (yesterday 9:53 pm), plus Images folder.
    Thanks in advance if you can save my sanity and data.
    Abby

    Well, if it's not being found thwn it's likely some kind of Disk corruption, the files may or may not still exist, but if the OS or other APPs can't find them then it's very likly the space those files use has been freed for use in writing to the Disk, which OSX does far too often.
    a virus or something?
    Not likely a virus.
    And, what am I supposed to do next if I do recover from another computer (all I have is a PC laptop...)?
    Cannot be done from a PC, sorry.
    Am I just looking to find the Address Book file?
    Yes, mostly.
    more panicked than before....
    Very sorry to be the messenger here, but if that stuff is important to recover, I've given you my best advice... You need another Mac, or another HD to install to, boot from, try to recover to.
    If I can or need to explain it better/clearer please let me know.

  • Lost address book contacts and restore?

    Hi All,
    I know it has been discussed a while ago, but I have lost all my contact details by overnight. Luckily I have .mac account (now mobileme) and all the address synched with my previous address book items is there. The question is how I can restore it from mobileme.
    Thanks: Szimi

    How could I recover address book's contact info
    There are two possibilities. If you have a backup of your Address Book (AddressBook.abbu file), you can use the File > Revert to Address Book Backup menu option to restore your contacts. If you don't have a backup, you need to get in the habit of always making a backup when you make any change to your Address Book.
    The second possibility is to enable the Debug menu in Address Book using this Terminal command (Address Book must not be running when you do this):
    defaults write com.apple.AddressBook ABShowDebugMenu -bool True
    then press Enter, then quit Terminal.
    Start Address Book, go to the Debug menu and choose "Revert from MetaData" and wait to see what happens. With any luck, your contacts will be restored, after which you should make an immediate backup. If they are not restored, that means all the data was lost and you will need to restore from MobileMe, which is a question for their forums.
    Mulder

  • 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

  • How do I sync my address book contacts on my iphone and clear all other contacts on my phone (issue with icloud?)

    When I purchased my iphone 4S, I had all my old phone's information transfer over to my new phone. 
    I organized my address book on my mac powerbook and then hoped to sync my computer's address book to my phone - in hopes of erasing all the junky contacts on my iphone and only having the my address book contacts on my phone.
    I did all I could trying to make this happen (through iTunes) but it hasn't erased/replaced all of the contacts on my phone - I believe since my phone is synced to icloud.  So I'm stuck with a very unorgaized contacts list on my phone...
    How can I make it so I only have the contacts from my address book on my phone?
    Thanks in advance,
    Suzanne 

    Also, I just noticed that syncing my phone effected my calendar in that all my events now repeat.  So instead of having one event schedule on a day, I have two of the same events scheduled for the same time.
    It seems as if I can't sync my phone to my computer through iTunes and iCloud. 
    Help???
    Suzanne

  • Number of address book contacts on MacBook Air using iCloud is one less than my other iDevices using iCloud.  Is this a known bug?

    Number of address book contacts on MacBook Air using iCloud is one less than my other iDevices using iCloud.  Is this a known bug?  I've checked for duplicates on my iDevices and I can't find any.  Additionally, I have wiped all the data from the Application Support folder of the address book and re-connected to iCloud, but it always shows 308 contacts instead of 309 found on iCloud and the rest of my devices.  Any ideas?

    Number of address book contacts on MacBook Air using iCloud is one less than my other iDevices using iCloud.  Is this a known bug?  I've checked for duplicates on my iDevices and I can't find any.  Additionally, I have wiped all the data from the Application Support folder of the address book and re-connected to iCloud, but it always shows 308 contacts instead of 309 found on iCloud and the rest of my devices.  Any ideas?

  • Mac OS 10.4 Address Book Contacts

    Niether the Palm Data Transfer Agent nor the MissingSync program work under Mac OS 10.4, and I do not want to pay for 10.5 when 10.6 is coming out in September.  Here is how I have found to copy all of my Address Book contacts to the Pre.  It requires you to have a gmail account.
    1) In Address Book, select all the contacts you want to export.  You can select multiple contacts by shift-click or command-clicking.  For example, to get all of your contacts click on the first one, then scroll to the last one and shift click on it.  All of your contacts will be highlighted.
    2) From the File menu, choose Export vCard..., enter of filename (or leave it as the devault "vCards"), note the directory where the vcards will be saved, and click the Save button.
    3) Go to your gmail account using your favorite browser.
    4) Click on the Contacts link (on the left side of the screen).
    5) In the upper right hand corner of the contacts box, click on Import.
    6) Browse to find the file of vCards you saved, and click on the import button.
    At this point all of your contacts will be loaded into gmail.  If you have already sync'ed your Pre with gmail, then your contacts should automatically update.  Otherwise, follow the instructions for sync'ing with gmail.
    While this procedure will copy all of your data over to the phone, it is not a real sync in that if you make changes either on the phone or in Address Book, you will have to manually push the changes over.  I'll probably get MissingSync when I upgrade to a more recent version of OS X, but it would be nice if the Pre came with this functionality built-in...
    Post relates to: Pre p100eww (Sprint)

    Does anyone have a solution for converting Palm Contacts?  I'm happy to buy software to make this happen.  I have 2500+ contacts and use many of the fields (and would like to keep them).  I am on a mac and use a droid phone (Samsung Intercept).  Sprint says that they can convert the contacts, but that they will then only be on my phone.  I need to be able to update on my computer and have that sync with my phone.
    thank you!

  • Trying to link Address Book Contacts with Outlook 2011 - iSync??

    Hi There,
    Would be grateful for some assistance.
    I've got all my contacts and other things in iCloud - wonderful!
    I've managed to get all my contacts from iCloud to show up in Address book.
    I want to sync my address book contacts in Outlook 2011 - after three days of trying I'm still stuck.
    I've checked the Syncing set up in Outlook, that appears to be correct.
    I've checked addressbook, and other than having two folders one entitles iCloud (which has everything I need in it) and one entitled On my Mac, which has a couple of testers in it but nothing else, everything else seems fine.
    I've checked that iCloud is synching into the iCloud folder in Address Book by putting some stuff on my iPhone and seeing it got pushed from the iCloud to my MacBook - all working fine there.
    I have read lots of forum posts and keep seeing references to iSync, and how its on all Mac's but then I see people saying that its not on with Lion - I'm running Lion, and I can't find iSync...so this would seem to be true.
    Can anyone tell me how I might achieve this sync process - I would much rather be using an integrated programme like Outlook...any thoughts

    Enthusiast: I just got back from the Apple Store. This is the solution they suggested and seems to work. We got rid of iCloud contacts. We just set up Yahoo account in the "mail, contacts, calendars" of the iPhone. Under the "contacts" section we have the "default Account" set to Yahoo. When any additions/delete/mods happen then it is updated on Yahoo.
    On the MacBook we deleted the "on My Computer" and deleted "iCloud" and then added the Yahoo account for synching. This is basically used as a secondary backup for the yahoo contact and used if using the computer. It is not necessary to use the computer for any of this.
    I've been having lots of problems with Yahoo contacts. I had previously pulled in facebook contacts. This was NOT a good idea. I cleaned up my contacts, exported them out to CSV. Scrubbed some more. Imported them to a new yahoo account. Then deleted all contacts from my main Yahoo, permanently deleting them. Then imported my contacts. I did lose all my "lists" settings. That was a small price to pay.
    Now iPhone, iPad and MacBook address book and Yahoo are all in sync.
    I was shown at the store is to refresh the Yahoo webpage (CTRL R) and then refresh the contacts on the iPhone. There is a slight delay in update. iCloud is faster at it. But its best to avoid iCloud if you are using Yahoo contacts. Also avoid Facebook contacts. If you really want to use the Facebook feature, I would do it on a different account and then bring in the contacts that you want through an import.
    I was having problems with Yahoo contacts and it might be that it was being flaky or they were experiencing problems ... because all of a sudden it started working again. I've seen similar problems with Yahoo Calendar.

  • Disappearing Address Book Contacts

    This is a duplicate or my response to another similar problem, but I think this problem should have it's own topic.
    My Address book contacts have been occasionaly disappearing, I would open Address book and all my contacts would be gone except for the "Apple" and "Me". And I would end up restoring from a backup, which I been doing fequently when this problem first started.
    Recently I discovered what the problem is. I have an external drive connected and somehow my Address book contacts have defaulted to being stored on the external drive in a folder I had created for some temporary work some time ago. When I noticed it was still there (some time later) I trashed it.
    It took a while for me to make the connection that when I deleted the folder, the address contacts would be gone. Because I wouldn't use my Address Book for days or maybe weeks afterwards
    I finally realized that this "temporary" folder kept mysteriously reappearing, so when I checked, it contained the same folder structure as the <user>/library/application support/Address Book/ and sure enough that is where my address book is storing my contacts.
    This has me baffled, there are no preference settings to even change the default storage location (or I couldn't find them) Looking at com.apple.addressbook.plist has no storage folder either.
    Any ideas on how this can be corrected? Or even how it happened?
    Little more information. This is my primary user account which has FileVault turned on and also syncs with dotmac to my MacBook. The sync works fine by the way, but those contacts should be within the secure volume.
    My only thought for a fix would be to back up my user folder (data only, no settings). Delete the account. And then recreate the account and restore my data, but I'd rather not do that if I don't have to, I'm hoping for the quick and simple fix.
    What do yo think?

    Replying to my own post.
    I think I've fixed my problem by simply disconnecting the external drive. With the drive disconnected, Address Book came up empty again. So I restored from my backup and checked that the files updated in the correct (home) folder.
    <user>/Library/Application Support/Address Book/
    Still haven't any clue as to how my contacts suddenly started saving themselves on my external drive to begin with.

  • Address Book contacts not showing up in Mail

    I'm unable to access my address book contacts from Mail.  The wheel on the right side of the recipient box spins but never finds the contact or group I'm searching.  Can anyone help?

    Please follow these directions to delete the Mail "sandbox" folder.
    Back up all data.
    Triple-click the line below on this page to select it:
    ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail
    Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
    Services ▹ Reveal
    from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a folder named "com.apple.mail" selected. If it does, move the selected folder — not just its contents — to the Desktop. Leave the Finder window open for now.
    Log out and log back in. Launch Mail and test. If the problem is resolved, you may have to recreate some of your Mail settings. You can then delete the folder you moved and close the Finder window. If you still have the problem, quit Mail again and put the folder back where it was, overwriting the one that may have been created in its place. Post your results.
    Caution: If you change any of the contents of the sandbox, but leave the folder itself in place, Mail may crash or not launch at all. Deleting the whole sandbox will cause it to be rebuilt automatically.
    *If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C). In the Finder, select
    Go ▹ Go to Folder...
    from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

  • When forwarding an e-mail I have lost the address book contact list on the left side.

    I used to have the address book contact list on the left side of the page being forwarded to allow easy selection of addressees. It's gone and I need it back.
    Thank you very much

    Open a Write window and press F9 to toggle the Contact Sidebar on and off.
    You can also turn it on from the View menu in the Write window.

  • Importing AOL Address Book/Contact List into Apple Mail Program

    This is probably an old and already answered queation, but it has just come up for me. Does anyone know how to export the AOL Address Book/Contact List so it can be imported into the Apple Mail Program? I would like not to have to reinter all the address when I drop AOL.
    @ GHz Intel Core Duo   Mac OS X (10.4.4)   No DVD

    The AOL Service Assistant works fine for transfering the AOL contacts to the Apple Address Book. However, I was unable to get the AOL favorites to tansfer to Safari. It keeps hanging up with the rotating basketball. Any further suggestions?
    466 MHz PowerPC G4   Mac OS X (10.3.9)   No DVD

  • Import address book contact list into ichat

    I am going to make a new aim screen name, and i was wondering if i do, will i be able to import my address book contacts back into ichat for the new account?

    The AOL Service Assistant works fine for transfering the AOL contacts to the Apple Address Book. However, I was unable to get the AOL favorites to tansfer to Safari. It keeps hanging up with the rotating basketball. Any further suggestions?
    466 MHz PowerPC G4   Mac OS X (10.3.9)   No DVD

  • How to create a duplicate address book contact?

    This seems so simple yet I cannot determine how to create a new duplicate address book contact. I have a few contacts from the same company and want to change the variable data instead of re entering the data
    I can create a new contact, copy the data of the record I want to duplicate yet when I paste the info into the new record - address book puts everything into one field.
    Why not a duplicate contact command?
    GRRRR

    Rich,
    According to Address Book Help:
    To duplicate an address card:
    Select an address card.
    Choose Edit > Copy, and then choose Edit > Paste.
    Works for me

Maybe you are looking for