Whoa! Just Lost Address Book

My Address Book just vanished! Well, more correctly, all the data inside it vanished.
I was working away, happily, when suddenly my address type automator in mail stopped filling in the rest of the addresses. Then I responded to a request in iChat, and iChat crashed. I tried to open iChat again, and the welcome screen came up, as if I had never set up my iChat before.
So I opened Address Book and whoops, there was absolutely no data/no cards inside it. As if I had just started.
I presume that my Address Book app lost contact with the database, and since mail and iChat work heavily from Address Book, they both were crippled or crashed.
What happened? How do I reconnect the Address Book app with the data? This sounds a little scary to me, and I've been around the block at least a few times.
Thanks!
(I have the data in use on .mac, and on my iPhone, too.)

You're on 10.4.9, right? Wasn't that the unstable one........ I remember a friend of mine also lost his entire Address Book about 6 months ago........... you might want to update too, before you go get your back up.

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I have lost Address book app how do I recover it please. Thank you.

I have lost Address book app how do I recover it please. Thank you.

No kids or pets --- just me!I don't think there is too much mystery about the deletion of Address Book on my laptop. I was trying to get it up-to-date from my desktop computer and as that is Lion and the laptop is sitll Leopard (all these ***** cats!) I must have trashed the laptop Address Book, then tried to install the one from Lion but, of course it couldn't be installed - wrong system! By then I had lost Address Book!! Horrors! I then lifted it from my husband's computer (Panther or something!) et voila! But I had expected to have all HIS names and address in Address Book when I opened it but -- not so, his were not there and mine were! Don't ask!!
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I know this must seem trivial to most of you but I'm trying everything I know to get back the address book icon in my dock. Please let it be simple to fix. Thank you to anyone who can help.
Message was edited by: Lynda Salerno

Glad I can help. You can also drag apps off of the doc where they disappear in a puff of smoke, but not while the app is open. An open app is always in the doc.
If you open an app that didn't have a dock icon beforehand it will show up at the end of the Dock on the right, just to the left of the partition. When you quit that program it will disappear from the Dock. If you want to keep it on the dock drag and drop it to another position and it will stay there after quitting the app.

Lost Address Book, but now growing on its own

I recently lost my address book records overnight. I found my address book cleared of my own records, and filled with multiple entries of "Apple Computer Inc." Now, the address book is growing. Every few minutes another entry of "Apple Computer Inc." shows up in the address book. Has anyone else seen this? Any suggestions on fixing this?

You're not using Address Book correctly; you need to enter both a First and Last Name for each contact; not just a Last Name, or in All Caps. Mail and Address Book communicate, so when you receive an email from someone in Address Book, their name as they associated it with their email address when the account was setup is sent to Address Book and updated immediately.
That's why you will end up with double first names or last names, depending on what you entered. The solution is not to do that and use Address Book correctly.

Once on iCloud how do you recover lost address book data?

After moving to iCloud my wife suddenely lost all her contact info earlier today. When opening Address Book on her iMac & iPad all contact info was gone. We signed on to iCloud.com and it was gone there too. For some reason it was still on her iPhone. I tried to force a merge from her phone by shutting off iCloud Contacts; selecting to keep data on the device; then turned it back on hoping to get the 'merge data' option. I didn't get that message and sure enough in a few seconds the address book on her phone went empty.
So, this raised the question about where do I recover the data from? I looked in finder on her iMac under user/Library/Addplication Support/Address Book - there were some files and directories there, but nothing that looked like it was loaded with contact info. I'm assumming once she moved to iCloud the detail is no longer stored locally in OS X?
I went into System Prefs and shut off iCloud Contacts on the iMac, opened Time Machine, went back a week ago (prior to iCloud) and found contact info in the user/Library/Addplication Support/Address Book directory and restored the entire directory. Opened Address Book and it was populated with data. turned on iCloud Contacts and selected the 'Merge' data option which then populated her other devices.
So, the question is - what if it had been longer than a week - where is this data (and probably calendar data too!) being backed up and where (and how) would you restore it from if it did suddenly turn up missing?

RickTexas wrote:
So this gets back to my original question... not sure if bgbrobru is running Time Machine backups, but even if he is, I don't think the Address Book data is recoverable (unless you go back to a pre-iCloud backup) because it is no longer stored locally.
If I understand correctly the only thing we can do going forward is to run a periodic 'manual' export of iCal and Address Book data to insure we have a backup? In the event I do something stupid and mistakingly delete something or - like what happened to my wife today - the entire address book (or calendar entries) just disapear, we are screwed? I guess this would also apply to email stored in folders on iCloud?
Seems there should be some way to capture the iCloud data in a Time Machine (or some other mechanism) backup?
Sorry Rick but that's incorrect,
Here's a shot of the folder it lives in and the path to it, Time Machine backs it up.

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When I investigated back-up on iTunes I was only offered the back-up which had just been made, ie no contact app or data.
Is there any way that I can reload at least the empty app without doing a re-set?
I don't want to do a re-set because although I will get back the empty app I will lose all my 20+ other 3rd party apps and all the data that some of them contain,
As well as that - since I cannot update the OS - the version of each that I can run (for OS 4) will almost certainly have vanished from iTunes because most apps have been developed now for OS 5 and finding the old version in iTunes is very cumbersome. As far as I can see I have to browse them all in the date order they were released, with no search facility.
I have to have an address book. I have been unable to find a 3rd party one that will run under OS 4, so it looks as if I will have to use NoteMaster, with contacts in A/Z order by surname, with one or more lines for each depending on whether I have phone number, mobile number, email address, postal address etc. It's possible, but a poor substitute for a proper address book.
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Try resetting your home screen layout, go to your setting>general>reset home screen layout.

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My Mac Address Book has 3000+ entries (yes, I use it for all kinds of info) which is fine on the Mac but is unusably slow on the iPhone 3G. It's also too many entries to sync with the Parrot Minikit Slim Bluetooth Car Kit, which has a limit of 2000 entries. So I need to cut my iPhone contacts down to a much smaller size.
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Thank you very much Joe.
Just goes to show how little I know about the iTunes/iPhone sync system
Now I can just create a smaller 'Group' of my key contacts and keep them in sync with the iPhone - the answer to my prayers.

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I tried to delete contacts and I removed the contents from the app. Now I can not get back. How do I get the address book back I don' need my contacts can anyone help.

If you found you have deleted it from the Dock navigate to the Applications folder and drag it back to the Dock. If you somehow removed the whole application from your Applications folder navigate to Trash then locate the app, right click it and choose Put Back. If you somehow managed to totally remove it from your computer all together use your Time Machine Backup to restore it. If you have not been backing up then now you know why that isn't just something to do but why it's critical!

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I have actuallly managed to sort this problem.
First, in your main user directory unhide the Library (Go > Go to folder > Library).
You'll find equivalent folders in there to most of your old Library.
Go into Application Support > AddressBook and delete "AddressBook-v22.abcddb" (or move it somewhere safe).
Next open a second Finder window and locate all of your old address book cards. These should be in Library (the old one if you still have it) > Application Support > AddressBook > Metadata.
Drag all of the cards to the Metadata folder in your new Lion Library.
Start Address Book, and as if by long, drawn out, tedious, pointless and unnecessary magic, all your contacts should be there.
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I lost all Address Book Contacts the first time I tried to sync my iPad2 with my iMac. I have recent Time Machine backups, so I restored this file:
username/Library/AddressBook/AddressBook.data
from a backup, making sure that Address Book was not running during the restore. I quit and restarted the iMac, but Address Book still shows 0 cards.
Any ideas on what I did wrong, or what I can do to get my contacts back?

urlgurl wrote:
username/Library/AddressBook/AddressBook.data
Try username/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

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I lost the entire contents of my Address Book, but have all the contacts on my ipod. Can I download the contacts from my ipod and import them back into my address book? One thing -- I currently have my computer set to automatically update my ipod, so I'm afraid as soon as I plug it in it will "update" my ipod with zero contacts. If I switch my ipod to disk use manually and then plug it in to my macbook, will that prevent this from happening? I checked the Library folder and there isn't even an Address Book folder in there at all. Help me!

I am not sure what you were doing when your AB data was lost. But you can check in Library/Application Support/AddressBook if there is a file called AddressBook.data.previous and if it is dated before you lost the data.
Then in the Address Book Application under the File menu there is a choice to Revert To Address Book Back Up. Might be worth a shot.
Good luck!

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Help. I'm sick about this. Everything has been going fine with my iphone until tonight. After I synced tonight, all 300 of my address book contacts disappeared on my phone AND on my computer. Even my backup hard drive doesn't show any contact information, only an address book icon which has no information when opened. Apple iphone tech support was unable to help me. Please I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight because of this. Can anyone out there help me get my contact information back?
Thank you.
Alden Burlington

Joel,
The Backup application they are referring to is the Backup application that comes with .Mac.
It does incremental backups. It doesn't replace the previous days backup. You can go to your backup location, and choose the day you want to restore from.
There is even a preconfigured plan for personal data and settings daily to iDisk that backs up iCal, Address Book, etc.
I would also recomend going into iSync's preferences and setting it to prompt you if more than 5% of your contacts or data will be changed. This is the default for iSync, but can be changed to not warn, or only warn when 25%, 50%, etc will be changed. If it is on the default you will get a message if information will be lost.
Also in some situations, reseting sync history before another sync, and then syncing again, may bring back some of the contacts.
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Lost address book settings and mail box whilst trying to copy inf

I have been trying to copy my old disc (onto an external hard drive) as i have a new machine and different disc.So i have been copying stuff from old disc to external but it has been interrupted a few times so had to go back and start process again.And because i had to do this I got rid of stuff on original hard disk , such as library , as i did not want it to copy this again.But in doing this I seem to have lost my mail box and emails and info which was in my address book such as email contacts.I have looked onto where copied library too but can not find the address book and mail stuff i need to bring back in order to get my old info back.I have tried importing from new copied library but am not sure where to go ? Does anyone know a way i can get old info back (mail and address book) (which i would then export in some way to get onto new disc ?).I have tried copying new library back onto/onto old disc but get message as it begins that something ? port something is in use so it can not be copied.Basically does any one know what i need to copy and paste back into/onto old disc (library ?) to get my old info back into mail and address book.I can not understand how else i could have lost it ? (apart from deleting
library ?).Any suggestions please.
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rick

Hi Rick, there are actually 3 Library folders...
/System/Library/
/Library/
/Users/YourUserName/Library/
This last one is where your Mail & AB info would be.
On Mail...
First Quit Mail & Address Book.
Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail
Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail Downloads
(Could be a different folder here if you chose such in Mail Prefs)
Only the plist is separate.
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
For Address Book...
Files...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.abd.plist
Folders...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/com.apple.AddressBook/

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

Whoa! Just Lost Address Book

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