Restoring invidual address book entries

My AddressBook suddenly is missing the card for one of my brothers. Possibly it is missing more that than. I have lots of .abbu backup files, but they're in an opaque format.
Let's say I have an address book with the following entries:
ABCDEGHIJKLNOP...
Looking at it that way, F and M are missing. Is there a way that I can dump an .abbu file to another format to see if F and M are in that .abbu file? Ideally I would do that, extract just the F and M entries from the .abbu file, and then import them back into AddressBook. Some kind of diff util would also be nice.
I've looked around, but all I found was advice to move the current DB aside, restore an .abbu file, export specific cards, move the DB aside again, move the original DB back in, and import the specific cards. I guess I could do that, but it seems feature poor and risky in general for newcomers to AddressBook.
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Nothing???

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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 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.

Multiplication of address book entries

I have 2611 address book entries. I have this pristine file backed up, so I can go back to it. However, every time i restore my address book, it balloons up to over 19,000 entries, and slows down the processor in the meantime. I thought it was being caused by Now Contact still being on my computer, so I uninstalled it, but it still happens. It's not a sync issue, I believe, because I have turned off syncing and it still happens. I've tried putting the original addressbook on (2611 entries) and replacing the MobileMe info with it, and it still balloons up, whether syncing is on or off. This is really crazy. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening, or how I might fix it? Thank you.

You can export your contacts to CSV (comma separated value) format and pull that into Numbers or Excel, then export it back. Use the first part of this program (it's a converter for GMail) to do the CSV step.
Matt

Address book entries erased - need help

Does anyone know how to recover erased Address book entries? I've found that Contact info inside a card can be easily erased/typed over and there does not appear to be an easy way to "undo" as the Edit/Undo command doesnt seem to work in this application. The downside of using Mobile Me is that my devices are getting wiped out quicker than I can copy down the info and save it.

c9ky6qk3 wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions VK. Turned out I had some core operating system files that had been corrupted,
how did you find that out exactly?
Genius said I had to re-install.
did you try what I said? i suggest you do that before reinstalling. that's quick and easy and won't hurt anything. if the problem is with your AB database file then reinstalling won't help but what I said will. and since you have time machine you should not reinstall in any case. you should just do a full system restore from TM from before the problem started.

How do i remove my photo from my Address Book entry?

two questions: first, how do i remove my photo from my entry in Address Book? i should be able to click "Edit", select my photo and hit the Delete key and be done, but no - hitting the Delete key does nothing except make the photo blink.
second, i just posted a comment on a web page that i've never been to before, on a site that i've never been to before, and my photo appeared on the web page next to my comment. very creepy. anybody know why this is and how i make it stop? does it have something to do with my Address Book entry?
update: i've consulted Address Book's help and it tells me to select the card then go Card -> Clear custom image, but when i do, that menu item is grayed out.
further update: i've worked around the problem by taking a screen shot of a blank white area of a webpage and making that my photo...but i shouldn't have to do that and would still like to know how one actually deletes one's photo from Address Book. Address Book's help indicates that i'll find such photos in Library/Images/People, but there's no such directory in any of my Library folders. Address Book's help is not being very helpful today.
tia...

there is actually no way to completely delete an image for you address book entry. you can only change it to something else as you did.
as for the image on that website, most likely it pulled your photo from your webpage on some site like My Space, Facebook etc. do you have a page like that? some sites will tap directly into your webpage and pull your pic from it.

How can I restore my Address Book from Time Machine, iCloud keeps overwriting

This was all done on my MacBook Pro, using Mavericks updated. With the Address Book, and iCloud.
Ok, this is really a mess. I have close to a 1,000 contacts in my address book. I'm not going to manually sort them. I have a bunch of groups in my address book. These groups are very important, and not something simple to sort out. I have already read this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18790074?searchText=How%20can%20I%20restor e%20my%20Address%20Book%20from%20Time%20Machine,%20iCloud%20keeps%20overwriting# 18790074
My situation is similar, and yet a little different.
I accidentally deleted a group in my address book. So, with my handy dandy Time Machine backup, I quickly went into Time Machine, and restored the group. However, I was connected to the internet, and iCloud promptly deleted the nicely restored group. So I went into Time Machine again, and restored the username/Library/Application Support/Address Book folder. Again, opened the Address Book, was content to see my group was intact and there. After about 20 seconds it disappeared before my very eyes. I was now starting to get frustrated. iCloud had again erased my ‘restored’ group.
          I promptly disconnected from the internet, restored my address book, and exported a copy in abbu format. I then reconnected to the internet, and as I expected, iCloud once again deleted my ‘restored group’. I then imported my abbu ‘backup’ file, and everything was once again intact… for about 20 seconds before iCloud again deleted my group.
          Ignorantly, I deleted everything in my address book (while connected to the internet). I then allowed iCloud to update everything. After it seemed like it was done (it doesn’t tell you what is going on). I went ahead and imported my abbu file. This again resulted in nothing in my address book. I again disconnected from the internet, and imported the abbu file. I then exported all my contacts and each group in the vcf format. I started importing each group into iCloud.com online, and everything was working smoothly. Then, it started getting errors, and not importing all the contacts.
          OBVIOUSLY there is a bug, or problem, or something wrong here. iCloud is being extremely stubborn, and extremely un-friendly to it’s user. I’m kind of at my wits end with this. If anyone has any ideas, I really could use some help I think that iCloud could use some help too. Perhaps some lessons in politeness. Perhaps a lesson in ‘restoration.’ Perhaps a compatibility with Apples own Time Machine??? Please any help would greatly be appreciated!
Shane

I don't know why you moved the app. Move the application back into your "Applications" folder which is where it belongs and should always stay. Then drag the app down to your Dock, if the Dock icon is not there already.
Now, open AddressBook. The click on the TM icon on your Dock. Now do you see the TM screen with AB open? Good. Use the TM time arrow back button until AB appears the way it used to be. Then click restore.
-mj
[email protected]

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

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

I lost my address book when I installed Mountain Lion and have not been able to recover it. WHen I type in a name in an email the address shows up, so I know it is in there. How can I restore my address book?

I don't know how to do this. I typed the question in the bar above, but apparently need to type it again here. I lost my entire address book when I installed Mountain Lion and have been unable to recover it. I know the information is in there as when I type in someone's name in an email the address always shows up right away. How can I find the information for my contacts and restore my address book? Do I need to go to the Apple Store that is 2 hours away and have an expert help me or can I find out how to do it online for free myself?

The auto-complete in Mail addresses comes from two sources: (1) The "Previous Recipients" list, which can be viewed via Mail > Window > Previous Recipients. (2) Your Address Book (now called "Contacts").
If you did in fact lose your Address Book - are you sure you don't have "Contacts" in your Applications Folder? - It sounds like you are getting addresses from source (1). If you did in fact lose your Address Book (now called "Contacts" !!), you will have to restore it from a backup.
charlie

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

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

CUCM 8.6 Personal Address Book entry limitation?

Hi Experts,
Can one of you tell me what is the limitation of Personal Address Book entries?
Done a quick search
https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2153123
according to this on 8.5 is 1000.
- Is this still the case on 8.6,
- is it per phone or this is the system limitation (per ?server?) ? if having two CUCMs, will this be 2x 1000 (if 1000 is still the case for 8.6)?
Thanks in advance!
Kind regards,
Tibor

Nelson:
The URL that is working for us is:
http://10.2.5.234:8080/ccmpd/pdCheckLogin.do?name=#DEVICENAME#&service=pab
then use your own IP address for the Call Manager node.
Our Call Manager configuration is shown below.
To access the feature, we hit the Services Button, are prompted with a Personal Address Book option, select it, then are promoted for a UserID/PIN (shown further below), at which point I enter my LDAP ID and a PIN. The PIN is created in Call Manager under User Management ==> End User ==> PIN.
Good luck with your process.
Dan

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.

Restoring invidual address book entries

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