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User profile for user: DougWW
DougWW Author
User level: Level 1
25 points

Imported Contacts Disappear

I have been trying to coordinate contacts between my wife's computer and mine.

I have been working in contacts and did a test:

  1. Export my contacts to an ABBU file.
  2. delete all contacts in my contacts program.
  3. Restart
  4. Open contacts and import the ABBU file.


When I do this I get my contacts loaded. Then about 15 seconds later the contacts all disappear.

This happens multiple times, including cold boots in-between.

I am running a 2019 27-in iMac with the latest MacOS updates installed.


Any thoughts on why the ABBU file will not load... or more accurately loads only for a few minutes?


Thanks ....Doug


iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Sep 2, 2021 9:09 PM

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User profile for user: Barney-15E
Barney-15E
User level: Level 10
116,566 points

Posted on Sep 3, 2021 6:56 AM

You may be able to get them to stay if you disable Contacts in iCloud before importing. I've never tried that. I would not save the contacts, either as re-enabling iCloud will then duplicate all of them.

The address book backup doesn't work very well for much of anything anymore.

Exporting as vCards may work better.


The .abbu folder is a copy of the ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder. Restoring it just replaces what is in your AddressBook folder. When iCloud begins a sync, it replaces everything with what it has on the server.

Also, the storage format for the raw contact files is XML and cannot be imported into Contacts. What may be happening is it initially indexes the XML files it found, then when it finishes "importing" the full cards it finds that they cannot be imported because they are XML and Apple has failed to make Contacts capable if importing the XML data.

It is still capable of importing a vCard (or multiple vCards in one file).

If you don't have Contacts enabled in iCloud, then I go back to my previous statement that the AddressBook backup isn't particularly useful anymore.

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User profile for user: Barney-15E
Barney-15E
User level: Level 10
116,566 points

Sep 3, 2021 6:56 AM in response to DougWW

You may be able to get them to stay if you disable Contacts in iCloud before importing. I've never tried that. I would not save the contacts, either as re-enabling iCloud will then duplicate all of them.

The address book backup doesn't work very well for much of anything anymore.

Exporting as vCards may work better.


The .abbu folder is a copy of the ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder. Restoring it just replaces what is in your AddressBook folder. When iCloud begins a sync, it replaces everything with what it has on the server.

Also, the storage format for the raw contact files is XML and cannot be imported into Contacts. What may be happening is it initially indexes the XML files it found, then when it finishes "importing" the full cards it finds that they cannot be imported because they are XML and Apple has failed to make Contacts capable if importing the XML data.

It is still capable of importing a vCard (or multiple vCards in one file).

If you don't have Contacts enabled in iCloud, then I go back to my previous statement that the AddressBook backup isn't particularly useful anymore.

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Imported Contacts Disappear

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