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User profile for user: Lauren Hutton
Lauren Hutton Author
User level: Level 4
2,305 points

Sync contacts stopped working

Recently, I looked for a new contact on my iPhone and it was not there. I then checked the address book on my MacBook Pro and found it. i then added a "test" contact to the iPhone and found that it did not sync to my address book. I sync daily through iTunes and do not knowingly have sync set up to any other source (Palm, Google, MobileMe, etc.). I have 10 groups in my address book, but only sync one or two with my iPhone. The key group is called "Sync Group."



While trouble shooting with Apple tech support, I noticed this problem:



1. After selecting my iPhone in iTunes and choosing the "info" tab and then checking "sync address book contacts" and then choosing "selected groups," the list of groups does not match the list of groups in the address book on my MacBook. I added a "test group" (not a smart group) and deleted a group but neither change is reflected in the list of groups.



Tech support could not explain this.



I suppose the fix will be to delete all of the contact from my iPhone, but before I do, is there a way to filter those contacts that were added manually to the iPhone? If not, those contacts might be lost.

17" MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jun 17, 2010 7:53 AM

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User profile for user: Lawrence Finch
Lawrence Finch
User level: Level 10
202,688 points

Posted on Jun 17, 2010 7:57 AM

You probably have a corrupt contact record in the Address Book on your Mac that is preventing syncing. You need to try to find it and update something in it. You can also try Reset Sync History in iSync.
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User profile for user: Lawrence Finch
Lawrence Finch
User level: Level 10
202,688 points

Jun 17, 2010 2:24 PM in response to Adrian Issott

It's probably on your Mac, so focus there. Create a new group and move all of your contacts into it, but set the group to not sync with the phone. Add one new record in the original group and try to sync. you should be prompted to merge. If it works the next problem is to find the bad record, unless, of course, you only need the contacts on the phone on your Mac. Then you are done. If there are only a few different drag them to the group that syncs and try again. If it fails you know where the bad record is; in one of the ones you just added.
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User profile for user: Lauren Hutton
Lauren Hutton Author
User level: Level 4
2,305 points

Jun 17, 2010 7:43 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

I agree. I found what I believe is the file that Address Book uses to store its data, and the name appears to be corrupt. In OS 9 and earlier, it was much easier to find things like this because you could do a search to see which files were modified recently and the results would list ALL files including system files. Spotlight doesn't do this but I thought I remembered reading about a way to change Spotlight so it would search system files but I don't remember how to do it.

I suspect the data and problems are located here:

User Name>Library>Application Support> Address Book

There are two similarly named files (called AddressBook-v22~.abcddb and AddressBook-v22.abcddb) that are 5.2 MB in size but only contain:SQLite format 3@
TDq

There is also a folder called Metadata with all of the contacts.

I am hoping that someone here can tell me what to throw away and what to keep before I start experimenting.

BTW, the calendar sync's fine.
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User profile for user: Adrian Issott
Adrian Issott
User level: Level 1
4 points

Jun 18, 2010 1:36 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

I was hoping you'd say there was a tool I could run that'd fine the corrupt record.

Anyhow, I've tried the following and none of them work (i.e. they don't sync):
i) Adding a new group on my mac but it doesn't appear on my iPhone nor in the list of Address Book groups in iTunes
ii) Adding a new contact to all the pre-existing groups that register in iTunes / iPhone but none of them appear on my iPhone
iii) Removing a contact from a pre-existing group that registers in iTunes / iPhone but it doesn't get deleted from my iPhone

One thing that does work is if I restrict the groups to sync in iTunes then I only get those groups of contacts on my iPhone. The groups haven't been properly synced of course :}

That made me try:
iv) Setup syncing of just one group in iTunes; remove all contacts from it, and add a new test contact to that group but it didn't change the iPhone at all.
v) Try syncing each group individually (I have 7 as it happens) but none sync'd properly.

So I can't use the "what syncs" test to detect the corrupt contacts cause nothing syncs properly as far as I can see 😟
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User profile for user: Adrian Issott
Adrian Issott
User level: Level 1
4 points

Jun 18, 2010 1:44 PM in response to Lauren Hutton

+> AddressBook-v22~.abcddb and AddressBook-v22.abcddb+
Yeap I have those too though for me they're around 800KB. Also I see they start with SQLite format 3@ but also more text (when viewed using TextEditor).

+> I am hoping that someone here can tell me what to throw away and what to keep before I start experimenting.+
You could try duplicating the folder and then deleting bits and pieces from the original to see what happens. It's what's suggested (with a few more details) here: http://macosx.com/tech-support/corrupt-address-book/13741.html. Unfortunately it mentions a file called ABPerson.skIndex but I don't have one. Since the post is from 2005 that's not too surprising ...
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User profile for user: Adrian Issott
Adrian Issott
User level: Level 1
4 points

Jun 18, 2010 1:52 PM in response to Adrian Issott

Got it 🙂

I did the following and syncing started working properly again:
1) Quit the AddressBook program if running. Quit Mail & iTunes too and any program which routinely accesses your address book contacts.
2) In Finder, select /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder.
3) Duplicate it (hit Cmd-D), to create a "Copy of AddressBook" folder.
4) Delete /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/AddressBook-v22.abcddb
5) Launch AddressBook and check if it can read your contacts data.
6) Sync with iPhone
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User profile for user: Lauren Hutton
Lauren Hutton Author
User level: Level 4
2,305 points

Jun 21, 2010 12:11 PM in response to Adrian Issott

Adrian

Great job, but a couple of questions:

1. I would guess that you most likely made a step but didn't write it in your instructions. After duplicating the folder, did you drag the original Address Book folder out of the Applications Support folder and then delete "copy of" from the name of the new folder?

2. Did you delete only the v22 file or did you also delete the v22~ file?
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User profile for user: Adrian Issott
Adrian Issott
User level: Level 1
4 points

Jun 21, 2010 12:19 PM in response to Lauren Hutton

+> After duplicating the folder, did you drag the original Address Book folder out of the Applications Support folder and then delete "copy of" from the name of the new folder?+
Nope, the last thing I did was to delete the "copy of" folder since I removed the v22 file from the original Address Book folder and not the copy and didn't experience any problems. That way I always had a copy of the Address Book folder to fall back on if things did go wrong.

+> 2. Did you delete only the v22 file or did you also delete the v22~ file?+
Just the v22 file.

Did the same steps not work for you?
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Sync contacts stopped working

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