Contacts app does not print in OS Sonoma

Contacts will not print on either my Intel iMac nor my M2 MacBook. When I hit "print," the print dialog pops up and the boxes of phone number and title are checked. If I do nothing, the beach ball spins for two or three minutes and that is the way the list is printed. If I try to uncheck those boxes and/or check the address box, the app freezes and I have to go to force quit.

Printing contacts from the Contacts has always been problematic. Problems appearing in these community pages go back years, but Apple refuses to acknowledge or really fix the app so the list can be downloaded or printed in any format. To have several hundred business and personal contacts and not be able to print one label, let alone a relatively small Christmas card list is inexcusable. It took years to get iTunes half way right. Out of thousands of employees, maybe Apple can find at least one who can make Contacts right.

I have the same issue on my MacBook Air after installing Sonoma. I tried everything I could think of and even had a long "chat" with Apple help when the Apple tech person said, "Oh, yeah, this is a problem that Apple will correct with a new update." My Quickbooks Desktop also would not work after installing Sonoma; however, after two months, Apple issued an update that corrected it. Try updating two months of accounting entries! Two major snafus with one update is not up to Apple's standards. Very disappointed.

I tried the "Here is a work around. Use file, export to PDF and send it to your desktop. Then you can print that out without issue," however, it will only print a list of contacts with all that contacts info. It does not allow for printing mailing or return address labels. Printing labels is the big time saver.

So, still waiting on Apple to correct; hopefully, before Christmas!!

Try this defaults write command in Terminal to change the style back to Mailing Labels, after which you should be OK. The problem, I believe, is related to the preview when Lists is selected.

defaults write com.apple.AddressBook ABSelectedPrintStyle 0

There's a work around for printing envelopes, use Pages with mail merge but it is frustrating that so many people have the printing from Contacts problem with Intel and M* Macs for several years using many of the latest operating systems and Apple hasn't fixed it.

It's also frustrating that various techniques are offered to reset everything rather than telling us what the specific problem is that is being fixed; i.e., lines of code, cwhy something in cache is causing it, etc.

Here is a solution that is virtually guaranteed to work: sign out of Icloud - that's it.

ICloud is an appallingly buggy feature. The following, apparently unrelated issues all had to do with Icloud and were resolved by (sometimes much later) eventual system updates: Disappearing Calendar entries / removal of email notifications from Calendar / Mail creating duplicate email notifications from Calendar / Textedit requiring as "save as" upon boot / and now printing from Contacts.

I cannot tell you how many hours I have wasted on phone with Apple support on issues that had clueless tech support people having me try all kinds of useless, purely speculative possibilities that turned out to be Icloud related.

Having written code for many years, I could tell on any number of occasions that the support person had a very limited understanding of computers and code - they largely work off of their own, in-house database to answer questions. (on one occasion, I had to explain to the tech supp person how lookup tables work).

Final note/suggestion: threads here often suggest fixes that involve entering Terminal/system commands. Again, as a coder myself, I suggest staying away from this unless you are pretty knowledgeable in Mac system architecture and Unix coding. Small changes can lead to other downstream problems, and even the smallest typo can be catastrophic. And, in any case, you'll have no idea how to undo it.

I also have a problem with contacts app freezing with beach ball logo whenever I try to print. Has always worked in the past. I have recently upgraded to Sonoma.

Contact lists will not print in Sonoma

Here is a work around. Use file, export to PDF and send it to your desktop. Then you can print that out without issue.

Apple - please fix this. With all your geniuses, surely you can!!

Hoorah! This bug is now sorted in Sonoma 14.3. Thank you, Apple.

Christopher

I managed to print one Christmas list and went to do another and got the spinning ball and had to force quit. From then on it did the ball spin entertainment every time. I was hoping to print my envelopes for Christmas cards. Sigh. I can't exist the list to go to envelopes, and as everyone says, it also has certain boxes checked in lists that can't be unticked since it is stuck.

C'mon, dear Apple ...!!

Start with this of M1 or M2 Mac...

On your Mac, choose Apple menu  > Shut Down.

Wait for your Mac to shut down completely. A Mac is completely shut down when the screen is black and any lights (including in the Touch Bar) are off.

Press and hold the power button on your Mac until “Loading startup options” appears.

Select a volume.

Press and hold the Shift key, then click Continue in Safe Mode.

The computer restarts automatically. When the login window appears, you should see “Safe Boot” in the menu bar.

Restart normally.

Start with this if IntelMac...

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes or more.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

The only reason my MacBook is still running Monterey is because Ventura and Sonoma can't be installed. I never thought Apple would resort to protecting users by preventing them from migrating from software that "just worked" to today's software that, if it works at all, only works the way Tim Cook thinks it should. The Mac mini might just be my last Apple computer.

Mine also hangs but printed after about a minute of beach balling