How do I delete my contacts for good ?

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Level 5

4,283 points

How do I delete my contacts for good ?

I have a strange problem: I'm trying to delete my contacts from a MacBook running Leopard because I'm going to give it away.

Well... I'm NOT able to delete them for good, and funny enough this is what happens:

- while the Address Book application is not running, I trash all contents of myHome/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

- I empty the trash and make sure the trash is now empty

- then I open Address Book to check that all contacts went away, but: for 1 second or 2 only my name appears in the list together with the default Apple contact, then suddenly all other contacts appear again !!

- sure enough now the AddressBook folder in Application Support contains the same files again, those I just deleted, even if with a new creation date.

I repeated the above steps a couple times to make sure I didn't miss any important step... all contacts reappear again after their deletion...

To be sure I tried with all networks disconnected, no external drives connected, and by the way I had already deleted basically all other personal data from this Mac.

My question is: why ?

and where are in fact stored my contacts ?

for sure not only in AddressBook in Application Support in my home...

Thanks a lot

Piero

iMac Intel 24, Mac OS X (10.5.8), FCE HD 4 - LaCie d2 Quadra 1.5TB (FW/USB), Canon HF M31 PAL Camc

Posted on May 20, 2011 12:42 PM

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Answer 1

PieroF Author

Level 5

4,283 points

May 20, 2011 1:14 PM in response to PieroF

Let me reply to myself: to delete all contacts simply go to the Address Book and deleted them from there... and they do not reappear again...

Still out of curiosity I'd like to know where my contacts are stored, besides of being in myHome/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.

Does anybody has a hint ?

Thanks

Piero

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Answer 2

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

May 20, 2011 2:48 PM in response to PieroF

There is one other place they are listed.

In Mail, go to Window and click on Previous Recipients. You can delete them there.

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Answer 3

PieroF Author

Level 5

4,283 points

May 20, 2011 11:24 PM in response to Klaus1

Thanks for the help! I didn't think of that!

Still I doubt Address Book digs into the Mail preferences (or wherever they are) to re-build contacts ...

And BTW in my tests I removed a single contacts within Address Book, closed AB, deleted all contents of Application Support/Address Book, opened AB again, and I got all contacts back again, except the one I removed from AB.... you see what I mean?

So deleting the list in Mail/Window helps me a lot in the attempt to clean up my Mac, but still I believe there is some other place (hidden files or folders ?) where contacts are listed just for AB.

Any more hint ?

Thanks

Piero

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Answer 4

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

May 21, 2011 2:07 AM in response to PieroF

In your Home/Library/Preferences, did you delete the two plist files?

com.apple.AddressBook.abd.plist

com.apple.AddressBook.plist

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Answer 5

PieroF Author

Level 5

4,283 points

May 22, 2011 12:50 AM in response to Klaus1

Yes, I tried, no effect...

I got the feeling somewhere in the home directory there is some hidden automatic backup file kept by AddressBook or Leopard itself...

(if you look for hidden files, there are some starting with a dot also in Application Support/AddressBook. But none actually contains contacts)

Thanks anyway for helping

Piero

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