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10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash Apps
I was fooling around with a vCard importer application when I somehow damaged my Address Book database. All of my contacts were gone, and even importing the backup that I created minutes ago didn't work. Address Book just sat there and did nothing, displaying an empty screen for minutes, so I was sure that I couldn't import the backup that I created before. Somewhere I found a hint stating that it would, however, rebuild its database if you deleted it. The database is the file named AddressBook-v22.abcddb, located in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.

So I closed Address Book, deleted everything from that directory, and copied, from the package contents of my last Address Book backup, only the folders Images and Metadata, plus the file MailRecents-v4.abcdmr. Then I started Address Book and, voila!, all contacts were back where they belong.

[robg adds: I would suggest moving, rather than deleting, the files -- just in case. Once you're sure things are working again, then trash the files.]
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10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash | 9 comments | Create New Account
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10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash
Authored by: windrag on Dec 04, '07 08:35:55AM

Here's another possibility: I have a client who has "lost" her Address Book several times. I discovered that deleting (you can just drag them to the desktop) the following preferences would bring it back:

~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.###a###b###c.plist (last string is a combination of numbers and letters)
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist

The preferences must be deleted before any changes are made to Address Book–in other words before any attempts are made to add contacts or import contacts. This has worked for me in 10.4. Haven't tried it in Leopard yet.

---
windrag | 2.4GHz MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo | 160GB HD | 2GB RAM | OS X 10.5.1



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10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash
Authored by: Fred E. Webber on Dec 04, '07 12:23:20PM
Having had this exact problem one too many times when syncing various gadgets, I wrote this AppleScript to back up the Address Book data:

set theDate to find text "(.+)/(.+)/(.+)" in (short date string of (current date)) using {"\\3_\\2_\\1"} with regexp and string result
tell application "System Events" to set strHome_path to the home directory of current user
set strWorkingDir to strHome_path & "/Library/Application\\ Support/"
set strTheOrigin to strWorkingDir & "AddressBook"
set strTheDest to strWorkingDir & "AddressBook_BU" & theDate & ".tgz"

with timeout of 3600 seconds
	do shell script "tar -zcf " & (POSIX path of strTheDest) & " " & (POSIX path of strTheOrigin) & ""
end timeout
Paste it into a "Script Editor" document and save it as an application to where ever it's convenient.

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Save the entiry addressbook content as vcf
Authored by: tice on Dec 04, '07 12:51:55PM

I backup my addressbook the simple way:

I just select all entries on the left column and drag them to the desktop.
That way I got that vcf file which I just have to drop into addressbook the next time.



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10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash
Authored by: ecapstick on Mar 01, '09 10:21:30AM

Hey,

Thanks a lot for that posting. It worked like a charm!



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10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash
Authored by: nbidgood on Jun 30, '09 11:57:11AM

i've been having similar problems since setting up MobileMe... it definitely does not "just work". anyway, I deleted all these

turned off mobile me syncing, reset sync history, deleted all address book application support and preference files (as mentioned above) and also deleted the ~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices folder before finally getting things working again.



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10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash
Authored by: mtb4me on Jun 15, '10 06:47:28PM

Lord, that was an awesome Fix....! Thanks you very much!



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10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash
Authored by: PalmerWoodrow on Aug 25, '11 11:36:51AM

Sadly, deleting those ~/Library files doesn't work in Lion.



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10.5: One way to recover from an Address Book crash
Authored by: mattt on Dec 18, '11 10:56:26AM

I can't recover my deleted contacts in address book. I've moved above mentioned files... to my desktop. But address book won't bring back my contacts. Please HELP me here to bring back my contacts, PLEASE.



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WHY DO YOU NEED A TITLE FOR A REPLY?
Authored by: PalmerWoodrow on Dec 20, '11 10:01:29PM

Did you try the steps mentioned above? Make sure you back up the Address Book folder from ~/Library/Application Support before doing any experiments. Take a look at AddressBook-v22.abcddb in a text editor and see if it contains any of the data you've added lately (search for a name, for example).

Beyond the steps mentioned here, I don't have any magical solution. Do you use some other application that syncs with Address Book (like Outlook)? If I remember correctly, I had to export everything from Outlook (which had caused the corruption in the first place) and re-import it into Address Book. I then deactivated Outlook's ability to sync and stopped using that POS.



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