Address Book Contacts are Gone

Question

Level 1

34 points

Address Book Contacts are Gone

This is a really odd problem that has been going on for sometime now. It first started when I was running Tiger and the problem continues now even with Leopard. The problem is that periodically without warning, all of the contacts in my address book mysteriously disappear - I mean they are gone - deleted. At first, I thought this was an issue with .Mac syncing as I had it set to sync automatically every hour. I have disabled .Mac sync and now only sync manually so I know that it is not an issue with .Mac sync.

Earlier today I checked on my computer and everything was good, all of the contacts were in place. I put in my iPhone and hit sync and left the room. I know for a fact that my iPhone had all my contacts and I know that Address Book had all my contacts. When I came back to the computer a few hours later, Address Book is completely empty - the iPhone has lost all of it's contacts. I logged into .Mac on the internet and all of my contacts are still there. My last sync to .Mac was last night at 7:30. Back when I had .Mac sync set to automatic syncing, it was not uncommon for me to come in and find that all of my contacts would be gone in Address Book and on .Mac as well. I've tried contacting Apple about it and I never received any kind of a response.

Of course I can easily recover everything with my Time Machine backups, but this is perplexing me greatly. How in the heck can this be happening? Is anyone else experiencing anything like this? This is starting to drive me crazy as I cannot figure out how the Address Book is mysteriously losing contacts unless it is happening during the sync process with the iPhone. I would certainly love to hear any suggestions on how to remedy this issue as this is extremely annoying. Thank you.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Jan 24, 2008 8:47 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 20, 2008 11:02 PM in response to David Ivey

Hello td3k - I'm experiencing exactly the same since I am on 10.5 - out of a blue (maybe when I add a new contact, but not sure) either the address book is totally empty, or some groups gone, or not. Still searching for an answer. Also concur that the .Mac sync on or off does not trigger it, hmmm - let me know if you found a lead!

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Answer 2

Feb 29, 2008 4:19 PM in response to David Ivey

I am having a related problem where Address Book is randomly losing data that I know it should have in it. That same data will appear in my iPod touch after a recent synch. The data had previously been on both my iPod Touch and my MacBook Pro. At some point, however, it disappears from my MacBook Pro. Sometimes its just someone's email address, sometimes its the data in someone's comments field and sometimes its an entire contact record but, so far, no large amount of data goes missing. Its random and mysterious. Any idea what might be causing this? I did try trashing the file named com.apple.AddressBook.plist in the library preferences. I cannot tell yet if that has fixed this reoccurring problem.

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Answer 3

ZionGM

Level 1

0 points

Mar 4, 2008 1:58 PM in response to John Madere

My biz partner just had this happen to him today. The machine he works off of doesnt have 10.5 so theres no Time Machine, and he is not a subscriber to .mac Is there any news on this problem that could help him recover the data? Is there a file saved somewhere he can revert back to?

Im pretty sure he never exported out a "safe" file. This is a pretty serious problem, 10 years of contacts in the phone..hopefully not down the drain.

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Answer 4

Mar 6, 2008 3:13 PM in response to ZionGM

Same problem here. Looking for an answer.

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Answer 5

Mar 6, 2008 8:06 PM in response to David Ivey

Glad I found this discussion. Wish I had an answer, but I am here because this just happened to my iMac tonight! All contacts gone suddenly after I rebooted from getting an endless spinning beach ball and I had to force quit safari. THis happened to me once before, but of course I wrote my notes from apple care IN MY ADDRESS BOOK! SO, my notes of what I did a year ago are gone now too! I am not worried.... yet, cause I figure it is something I can get fixed with apple support. I have a new iMac under warranty, but I have yet to switch everything over and really start using the new machine. So, this is also driving me a bit crazy too... like where did my contacts go to?! I am not sure what is going on ... but I suspect its with .mac syncing. I would like to make sure that is done manually too.... but not sure yet where or how to do that even. I will start reading some instructions! Any ideas?

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Answer 6

Mar 7, 2008 11:00 AM in response to ZionGM

Was your biz partner able to get this fixed? I hope he did and am curious what you found out. I just spent 30 min with apple care about getting my missing address book contacts back, we tried changing the names of a couple of files in my home>library>application Support>address book folder but that was not able to bring back all my contacts. Apple rep will check with engineering and get back to me, but she thinks it could be a corrupt file somewhere and I would be able to reinstall a backup copy that the app "backup" did thruy my .mac services. However, my last backup was 5 days ago, and that would still lose quite a bit of new data that I entered into address book this last week. I will let people here know what happens finally when we try a few other options if any come up.

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Answer 7

Mar 8, 2008 12:09 PM in response to Marcel Decruyenaere

Same here. I read about this problem in other forums, but no answers. I wonder if any one at apple is reading these postings and if any help is coming.

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Answer 8

Mar 8, 2008 1:57 PM in response to David Ivey

ME TOO!

I have had both scenarios discussed here happen to me. Last year my Address Book was suddenly empty from one moment to the next (on Tiger) and for a while now I have contact info just disappear on me.
This evening I updated two contacts and created a new one for some software I just purchased. Guess what? Gone, all three. It's the bloody twilight zone.

For the record I do sync to .mac but only manually so I do have a 'back-up' but only for a melt-down such as in scenario 1, not for these little disappearances.
This is really frustrating me. Please Apple, sort this out. OR gives us some way to backup our Address Book. (not in Timemachine, just the file please.)

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Answer 9

Mar 13, 2008 4:20 PM in response to David Ivey

OMG - add me to the list of frustration! Everything was great with address book and iPhone until this morning I synced my iPhone and then poof - all contacts on my phone and in address book completely wiped out other than the contacts I added on my iPhone yesterday. Those were the only ones that survived, and I cannot figure out why or how those ones survived in both address book and iPhone when the others did not. It synced and kept my new contacts and wiped out all others. I do have most of my contacts on .mac, but I am very upset by this. PLEASE someone post a solution.

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Answer 10

Mar 18, 2008 5:25 AM in response to David Ivey

I've had this happen a couple time as well. I just went to check a friend's email address and found his entry gone along with his wife, my sister. These entries were in my "Family" Group. All other entries appear to be there. That said, I have another Group in which all entries have vaporized but the Group still exists.

What's going on Apple?

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Answer 11

gthing

Level 1

10 points

Mar 22, 2008 1:07 AM in response to David Ivey

Same problem here. I've been having MAJOR issues with the last couple updates Apple has put out. I just installed the most recent and now I have an empty address book. Probably one of the more important collections of data on my computer.

If time machine ever worked reliably (ha! That would be the day!), then I might have had a backup. Alas...

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Answer 12

Mar 29, 2008 8:14 PM in response to David Ivey

why is NO ONE from APPLE reading this...its a MAJOR MAJOR bug in mac os address book and its unresolved..

Wake up Apple and help us!

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Answer 13

Mar 30, 2008 2:37 AM in response to David Ivey

OK, now I am worried and ticked off! I still dont have my contacts back in place...after spending now over 3 hours with three different apple experts. Where my address book contacts went to no one knows. No "experts" at Apple Care or at the local retail store "Genius Bar" seem to have any answers that are working! Even my .mac backup is not working when I try to "restore" my data from several backup dates before when my contacts vanished suddenly.

I have written several emails today to the .Mac support (Unfortunately only available via e-mail.... I had an apple care rep tell me that .Mac is not really Apple, but an outside firm that runs .Mac).

Here is my last email to .Mac support that I just sent out:

<<Apple and .Mac engineers out there: PLEASE help us. There is a bad bug going around where our contacts are being vaporized and making many of us go crazy. Help us get out of this twilight zone of losing all our contact data!!!!

Read all about it from many upset users at:
<a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://">http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6939388#69393 88

Then call me at (my phone number) so I can tell you whats going on with my case and HELP me get my info back! I have sent several other emails to you here today.

Thanks!

Marcel Howard D.>>

I hope this gets us all some help from the Apple Engineers and customer service.

1. What are the common details, including any error messages, related to our problems that we are discussing on this thread?

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Answer 14

Mar 31, 2008 9:06 AM in response to David Ivey

Throwing my name into the hat on this one.
Everything fine with Address Book this morning. I added a new contact. Toggled over to Mail for something and noticed that the automatic "fill in" feature of the "To" line wasn't filling in a familiar email address as I typed it. I came back to Address Book and EVERYTHING is gone.

I don't sync with .Mac. I don't have a phone I sync with Address Book either.

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook... in it you'll find "addressbook.data.previous" There's some talk at other sites about manipulating this file. But in my case, this file was last updated at what I assume to be the time all the contacts went away - and does not have any of my previous contacts in it.

It's almost like you start over with a blank Address Book for no reason.

Does anyone know how to get this info back?

Thanks,
x

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Answer 15

Monty1945

Level 3

694 points

Mar 31, 2008 9:24 AM in response to jason alders

Greetings,

This is a User to User forum - Apple Engineers and support folks don't respond to comments. You can send info to "Feedback" and it will get to them.

For what it's worth, this issue has never come up with me or with anyone in our Users Group. I use my address book for thousands of contacts and it's never failed me yet.

Good Luck.

Cheers,
M.
*************

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