Where do you go when no one can answer your question?

Question

Hi
I have posted over 10 times the same question in various ways yet no one can answer in a way that works
"Have asked about an error I keep getting when trying to sync. ("* -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value" )No replies after asking 8 times so I surrender. Is there any way to erase all the entries (I have over 6000) and re upload? Right now .Mac only can delete up to 50 or 1 page at a time. Is there another way to delete the address book?
Thanks"
The advanced tab reset doesn't update the .mac server version so the only way seems to be delete 50 at a time out of 6500 entries. How can I do an old school overwrite without confusing the computers as to which is which machine?
Any place I can go from here?

Answer 1

I looked back at the message Austin cited, and if I understand what you've posted above, you're not correcting the underlying issue.
First, you have seriously corrupted Address Book records on your source computer. If you had replaced those corrupted records with what I assumed would have been the intact records from .Mac, you would likely have resolved the underlying problem. But, as I understand what you've posted above, you did the opposite: you replaced the records on .Mac with the corrupted records on your source computer. It's not clear that the .Mac record set is now corrupted, and it should not be, but—on the other hand—it might be.
For the record, you should not have been able to successfully replace the record set on .Mac with corrupted data: it should have transferred only intact and valid data, or failed in an attempt to transfer corrupted records. The problem here is that there is not a one-to-one correlation between the Address Book schema and the .Mac schema for contact information, so it may have successfully passed the good data common to both environments, and not attempted to pass what incidentally are corrupted components.
You may be able to locate and fix each reported record only by using a utility provided by John Morgan, called ABFinder II. Send a message to the address listed in my Public Profile, and I'll reply with a copy. That application will allow you to identify the person referred to as CE45BC4E-4423-11DB-94EC-00050271EFEF:ABPerson, for example. By looking at both the error message and that specific record, you can correct the data in the referenced filed in that record, or recreate the record and delete the original.
You cannot synchronize successfully via .Mac—particularly across both the Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 mixed environment you have—until you either correct the underlying issue record by record, or do a wholesale replacement of the corrupted Address Book on your source computer from some other uncorrupted source: .Mac, a backup - something that does not contain the records with nil values.
The particular circumstances of your issue are complex, and really not at all clear. I cannot tell you how the initial corruption occurred on a record by record basis, or even how to avoid it in the future. If you hope to fix it, you'll have to be patient and attempt to do so record by record if no intact, uncorrupted copy of your contact record set is available. There is no quick fix to save the existing data.
And, Austin's right: there really is no one to talk to, though you could drag your source computer into an Apple Store and ask an Apple Genius to look at it, or go to an independent authorized dealer and ask someone familiar with such issues to look at it. You can find a service location by using this tool:
http://www.apple.com/buy/locator/service.html