Fix corrupted Contacts database

Almost every problem involving Contacts (and its predecessor Address Book) can be fixed by forcing it to rebuild the database it uses to display your contacts. If you are having problems with edits not saving, deletions not deleting, missing contacts, additions not adding, or not being able to change the name of a new group, this procedure will likely restore correct functionality.

This procedure is only useful for "On My Mac" contacts. Other cloud-based contacts can be easily "rebuilt" be removing the account from Contacts and re-adding it.

Background

Contacts stores your contact data individually as vCards. In order to present a quickly accessible list of contacts, it indexes these vCards into a database. When you make changes to an individual contact, the database must be updated and the vCard must be updated. If the database is corrupt for some reason, the changes can't be saved.

Procedure

The process is simple and only involves deleting the index files. Contacts will do the rest.

It is best to always have a backup before attempting something like this, so I would suggest making a Contacts Archive before beginning.

From the File menu in Contacts, choose Export > Contacts Archive and save the file. It is merely an exact copy of the folder you will be editing.

1. Open the AddressBook folder that is in the Application Support sub-folder of your user Library.

The easiest way to get there is to use Go To Folder in Finder (Go menu).

Copy and paste this path into the path field and click Go.

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

2. In that folder you will find three files,

• addressbook-v22.abcddb
• addressbook-v22.abcddb-wal
• addressbook-v22.abcddb-shm

Move all of these files to the trash.

3. Open Contacts and your list of contacts should quickly populate as the index is rebuilt.

If anything goes wrong, restore from your Backup.