Importing Address Book contacts

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Level 1

12 points

Importing Address Book contacts

Here is my problem. I bought a new macbook pro, put in new contacts to the address book app. But then ended up returning the macbook pro, but before I did I had made a backup of the harddrive and contents using Time Machine. Now, on my old macbook using Address Book (4.1.2) I want to get those contacts updated from the macbook pro. Is this possible?

I have looked into the Time Machine back up and have found files that end in .abcddb, but Address Book 4.1.2 can't import it. Please help.

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Mar 17, 2011 7:46 AM

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Answer 1

Montes Author

Level 1

12 points

Mar 17, 2011 6:05 PM in response to Network 23

I found an answer from another post that helped as well. What I did was copied all my addresses from the ~/Library/Application Support/MetaData folder of the backup for the Macbook Pro, brought them over to the ~/Library/Application Support/MetaData folder of the Macbook that I still have. Then I deleted the .abcddb file from the ~/Library/Application Support/ folder. Then, when I started up address book, the application created a new .abcddb file according to the metadata that exists, and it worked. Complete.

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Answer 2

Network 23

Level 6

12,351 points

Mar 17, 2011 9:10 AM in response to Montes

It is possible (I'm not sure) that Address Book can open its databases but not import them. One possible workaround is to copy that backup Address Book database to another user account on your Mac, open Address Book in that account, export it to a file, move the exported file back to your main user account, and try importing that.

I'm not sure which export format would be the best to try, but I might start with Address Book Archive.

The only reason I don't tell you to open it on your main user account is I don't want to risk blowing away any contacts that are currently in your Address Book that you need to keep.

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