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How to avoid sync issues with a large Address Book Apps
In the past, I had trouble syncing the Apple Address Book on four computers using .Mac, although syncing iCal worked fine. I was using a 7,000-entry address book for my wife's shop merged with a smaller number of our home contacts. My problems were hour-long sync sessions and many nonsensical error messages. Every session was different and none worked well or reliably. At the same time, simple tests using a few entries in a made-up address database always worked fine.

The nice folks at the Genius Bar recommended getting all the 7,000 addresses on one computer and then taking an exact copy to the other computers before trying to sync. I did this, but had the same results.

Finally I had the idea of putting all the addresses on one computer and cleaning it up using the Address Book's ability to weed out duplicate entries. Doh! This capability is found in Address Book under Card -> Look for duplicate entries. This worked.

Since then, I have had no problems with sync using .Mac. It has been working over a month. Syncing now takes only a couple of minutes. I am syncing on Automatic, which seems to sync about once a day and works just fine. I recommend that cleaning up a large database by merging duplicate entries be done by everyone before trying to sync using Address Book. It saves a lot of grief.
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How to avoid sync issues with a large Address Book | 2 comments | Create New Account
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How to avoid sync issues with a large Address Book
Authored by: giaguara on Sep 19, '06 02:44:05PM

How many duplicate entries did you have??

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Giaguara



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How to weed out duplicates without doing damage
Authored by: alec kinnear on Nov 18, '06 05:51:12AM

Great hint.

But if you're like me, you've got several Martinas, Annas, Johannas and Karins in your address book.

Make sure to add a last name for each of them or you will end up making a very big mistake, calling the wrong friend at the wrong time.

Seriously though - if one combs through manually ahead of time adding last names or other identifiers to distinguish the non-duplicate entries which appear to Address Book to be duplicates, this works a treat.



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