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Snow Leopard mixes up contact information in mail and address book

Since installing Snow Leopard, I have had several incidents where apple mail app substitutes the name of a contact (on an email I have received) with someone else's contact information. For example, "John Smith" is cc'd in the email that is sent to me, but "Bob Jones"'s name and contact info from my address book appears in mail. The same email on my iphone does not exhibit this problem and shows the proper information. This is particularly troublesome because if I reply all without noticing the problem, the email thread goes to an unintended recipient.
Issue #2: A similar but different issue has also occurred. Address book app has mixed up the contact detail for multiple contacts. So, mutliple contacts show the wrong contact detail. Shortly thereafter, address book crashed and when it re-opened the problem was no longer occuring.
Anyone else experiencing issue #1 or #2? Any help?

24" iMac, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Sep 2, 2009 2:42 PM

35 replies

Sep 15, 2009 6:23 PM in response to David Margolin

I have the same problem. I have several "unknown" in the above mentioned file in the library.

I ran verify disc and got the message that everything is OK.

SD

phripley

Level 1

10 points

Sep 16, 2009 12:08 PM in response to David Margolin

I am having this problem as well.

As follows:

+ In Mail people's names don't match their email addresses. Mostly OK. But sometimes not as expected.

+In address book cannot search.

I too have a .unknown file as described above.

Is this a case for vacuuming the sqlite database? I have seen that operation recommended for other issues related to Mail data... Will research and report back.

phripley

Level 1

10 points

Sep 16, 2009 1:08 PM in response to phripley

I found this thread where the poster was worried about trying a tip he had heard about.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1536148

He was advised against it, and doesn't say if it worked for him... but it is marked solved.

So... I tried it (vacuuming Mail did nothing for Address Book).

Here's what I did:

1. Quit out of Address Book.

2. In the Finder open ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book

3. Moved the following files to the Desktop:

AddressBook-v22.abcddb
AddressBook-v22.abcddb.1.unknown
AddressBook-v22~.abcddb

4. Launch Address Book

5. Watch Finder window as a new file named AddressBook-v22.abcddb appears

6. Panic briefly as Address Book launches and momentarily displays no contacts.

7. Relax as the Address Book contacts again appear and are now searchable.

Everything looks good...

For me this is SOLVED.

Sep 16, 2009 1:21 PM in response to Raj_Singh

Totally the same problem here . . . everything was fine until Snow Leopard. When I receive an email, the name of one of the senders/recipients changes to another name in my contacts. The email address stays correct, even when I reply all, but it still reads the wrong persons names. People I write to are wondering why I am cc'ing totally unrelated people.

Sep 16, 2009 2:51 PM in response to phripley

This worked for me too - just moved those files out to the desktop and reopened Address Book - hopefully it holds the fix and doesn't get 'remixed' again.

Trabbbb

Level 1

9 points

Sep 17, 2009 8:46 AM in response to phripley

having this problem with a client as well. Tried phripley's solution but this did not work. Any other ideas?

Sep 20, 2009 3:51 AM in response to Russell Greenwood

Was only a temporary fix - problem is back again.

Sep 23, 2009 7:53 AM in response to Russell Greenwood

I've been experiencing the same Mail-Address book issues since upgrading to Snow Leopard. I spoke to an Apple help guy yesterday, who suggested I remove the "com.apple.mail.plist" file from my Library (Home>Library>Preferences) and then reconfigure my email accounts (essentially, start and reconfigure Mail from scratch). This seems to have solved the problem. Hope this helps.

Jeran

Level 1

0 points

Sep 30, 2009 11:50 AM in response to Patrick Godon

I don't have that file in my Library Preferences folder. Has anyone figured this out? It's really annoying.

jhiken

Level 1

0 points

Sep 30, 2009 6:55 PM in response to David Margolin

Total and unforgivable disaster. I just sent out confidential company business information to a group whose names were all correct on the "To:" address line but whose underlying (and not displayed) email addresses were frequently someone else's! The email went to a potential competitor. Critical problem, Apple, that must be fixed NOW.

Oct 4, 2009 3:54 PM in response to David Margolin

Bump.

Any news from anyone? I guess we'll be waiting for 10.6.2 for a fix 😟

Oct 5, 2009 12:17 PM in response to Russell Greenwood

I thought I had solved the problem (see my previous post), but no: Mail has once again messed up my contacts. Names appear with incorrect e-mail addresses, and vice versa. The app has now become totally unreliable. I have no choice but to switch back to Entourage (which I find does not handle IMAP mail as well as Apple Mail). Apple, please take note!

Oct 5, 2009 2:38 PM in response to Patrick Godon

Same problem.... please get an update soon!!!!!

Oct 7, 2009 7:04 PM in response to rdas7

I am having the same problem. Also showing the
:
AddressBook-v22.abcddb.1.unknown
AddressBook-v22.abcddb.2.unknown
AddressBook-v22.abcddb.3.unknown
AddressBook-v22.abcddb.4.unknown
AddressBook-v22~.abcddb
Configuration.plist

Hoping someone can help. Thanks!

bezanson

Level 1

27 points

Oct 9, 2009 7:16 PM in response to Russell Greenwood

I went into ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook and removed all of the "bad"/bogus files and just kept:

AddressBook-v22.abcddb

Note, before doing that I backed up my entire AddressBook. After deleting the files and rebooting -- for safe measure, the incident hasn't re-occurred.

Snow Leopard mixes up contact information in mail and address book