Address Book Fails to Search Entries

To be sure, do you have Leopard? Your config info says 10.4.9 but this is the Leopard section of the discussions. My suggestion here only really works on Leopard. Also, please back up your AddressBook folder before you do this in case something goes wrong.

1 - Quit all apps except Finder
2 - Open a Finder window and go to (home folder)/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/
3 - Drag AddressBook-v22.abcddb to the trash
4 - Launch Address Book

These steps will rebuild the address book database from the files that are in the Metadata folder (at the above-mentioned location). Sometimes the address book database doesn't contain the information that it uses when searching, even though all of the contact information is still there.

I can confirm that this appears to work. I was searching for a regularly used address and was surprised that it failed to show in Address Book (within a fresh and clean install of Leopard). A Spotlight search showed the contact present and correct and when clicked, showed within the Address Book correctly. It seemed that Address Book search itself was at fault.

Trashing the file mentioned above does seem to fix this particular problem - thanks!

This works for me, too. Thanks for posting the solution.

Mike