What is AddressBookSourceSync?

i only recently updated from MobileMe to iCloud, and i did it slowly, one computer at a time (i have a MacPro and a MacBookPro) with the desktop first

when i came to switch the laptop onto iCloud i purposely omitted to tick Contacts since i was concerned that it only offered to MERGE the data on the iCloud and my desktop, rather than to allow me to pick the prominent copy of my AddressBook and use that

but last weekend i decided to go for it

what a mistake, for a start the merging was not done logically by iCloud selecting the most recently updaterd AddressBook, but just mergeed without any thought/sense/loogic

the result was that all my Notes (that were over an A4 pages or thereabouts) were repeated, and that if i had amended some of my desktop copys phone numbers (or whatever) that i had not been made the same on my laptop, then i got a mix of both

so i then had to spent 5 hours going thro each entry taking out the extra bits

and today i went to the Apple Store to see a Genius about all my Mail INBOX contents disappearing overnight, for ALL my email accounts (POP, IMAP, ,mac. gmail - it didn't matter) and discovering that bits had disappeared from my HardDrive (which he said was not a hardware problmem but a software one)

and during the meeting, we started up Activity Monitor where i discovered that AddressBookSourceSync was taking over 100% CPU, approx 2Gb real and 2Gb virtual memory

he has not heard of this before so he went to speak to others in the Store (London, Regents Street), and no one had come across this before, so he Googled it and found this forum about it

he said i should go to ExpressLane and ask for help there, whjich i will do

but i just wanted to add my story to this ever-growing conversation

Apple has consistently had problems with it's various cloud incarnations; iCal dropping info moments after it has been added is just another of a LONG list

this is just the latest sorry story of poor cloud management

i am prett sure i will not be the last to posat here by any means

lets hope that Apple see this as a serious problem and actually does something about it

but i will not hold my breath

I have had the exact same problem. I have an imac 24, recently installed lion and moved to icloud from mobile me. Then noticed mail was very slow and hanging. I read your posts and started checking my activity monitor which showed huge RAM usage and CPU of over 100% for AdressBookSourceSync. Deactivating it in the actiity monitor was only a short term fix.Just enough to get me to the end of an email but as soon as I opened address book again up it pops and slows your mail down to a standstill.

I phoned apple support for Lion (eligeable for 90 days) and this is what they said.

Log in and check all your contacts are on icloud. If they are all there then untick contacts on the icloud window and it asks 'do you want to delete all contacts from your compter?' answer yes. Then drag your address book folder from the library (finder/altkey/go/library) to the trash.Empty trash.Return to the icloud pane and tick contacts.Like magic your adress book folder returns and starts downloading all your contacts (Ihad over 10,000).Give it a few minutes to settle before opening up your other apps and your Mac will be back to speed again even with address book running in the background.

It worked perfecty for me so thanks to the support team at apple although it did take them a couple of days. cheers Bay

I haven't moved to iCloud waiting for Apple to sort out all the bugs first. Nevertheless, about 2 weeks ago my MBP starting running out of disk space. After investigating cause I found that AddressBookSourceSync was eating all memory and creating swap memory in HD until it got full and computer came to a stop. Unchecked sync contacts in MobileMe and it solved the problem until today when it started again. It's a real shame this problem has been reported for so long and Apple still hasn't resolved it.

Will try suggested solution on this thread and report back.

I had same issue with Address Book sync using 100% of my CPU Cycles. I did this and it fixed it!

- Export all contacts to a vCard file for safe keeping.

- Delete Library --> Application Support --> Address Book.

- Reboot.

- Open System Preferences --> iCloud. Enable Contact Syncing.

I got the directions from a guy with the same problem at this site:

http://support.macorama.com/entries/20915468-after-lion-upgrade-computer-gets-mo re-and-more-sluggish-during-use

Does anybody has experience with this exact same problem on 10.8 Mountain Lion?

Can I apply the equivalent procedure as described for Lion?

hey techies. I cannot find the AddressBook in my Applications Support folder to delete the files LSDAY recommends deleting. Help!

What do i do next. This AddressSourceSynch is crashing my whole MBP.

Hi all

Does anybody find an issue to fix the AddressBookSourceSync on 10.8 ???

Unable to use my MBP since several days !!!

Thanks for your answer...

Just to add another data point to the conversation, like a lot of people (or so it now turns out), I’ve been having this problem on a recurring basis ever since I first started using Lion, and continuing now on Mountain Lion.

I’d worked out that AddressBookSourceSync was the offending process: it would run until it consumed all possible RAM (my MBP has 8GB and it would happily consume nearly all of that), and grind everything else on the computer to a standstill.

For a while now I’ve been “solving” the problem by removing executable permissions from the program, as follows:

sudo chmod a-x /System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/Versions/A/Resources/AddressBo okSourceSync.app/Contents/MacOS/AddressBookSouthceSync

This “works”, in that AddressBookSourceSync can no longer run and so the problem stops coming back for a while, but any time I run an OSX update or a disk permissions repair, the custom permissions are reverted and the problem comes back.

And, sure enough, after applying the 10.8.2 update last night, the problem indeed came back again — it’s nice to see that even now, there’s no real fix for this from Apple — and was so bad that within ~20 minutes of rebooting, AddressBookSourceSync had consumed all available memory and brought the computer to a grinding halt (clock stopped, couldn’t move the mouse cursor, eventually even the caps lock key stopped responding) and I had to do a hard reboot.

When this happened three times in a row, I finally thought to search for it, and found this discussion. And sure enough, Isday’s procedure resolved it. THANK YOU ISDAY!

For posterity, here’s how I fixed it & proved that it remained fixed:

1. Booted to single-user mode (I’m a Unix dork, this sort of approach appeals to me, modify as you wish).
2. Moved /Users/me/Library/Application Support/AddressBook to /Users/me/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.MOVED
3. Copied the Configuration.plist file from the AddressBook.MOVED folder to the new, empty AddressBook folder.
4. Rebooted, then immediately began monitoring Activity Monitor & top output (cf again, Unix dork).
5. Went to System Preferences → iCloud, saw that Contacts had been deselected, so I checked it off again.
6. Went back to Activity Monitor & Terminal, and noted that AddressBookSourceSync started running again, but never consumed more than about 250MB of RAM.
7. Examined the new AddressBook folder, which fairly quickly grew from empty (plus the Configuration.plist file) to around 30MB, where it stabilized. (The old version of the folder was around 200MB; I haven’t bothered working out the relevant differences.)
8. Went to Contacts, made some random changes (de-duped records), just to force a resync to iCloud. Again, AddressBookSourceSync started back up but the memory consumption never spiked like it was doing before.
9. Went to System Preferences → Mail, Contacts & Calendars, and enabled the new Facebook integration. I used the “Update Profile Photos” option to have it update my contacts from my Facebook friends list. Again, AddressBookSourceSync fired off and the AddressBook folder started growing again (eventually plateauing around 53MB), but the memory consumption hovered between 100MB & 200MB, which is totally reasonable.

It’s so nice to finally have a resolution for this! Thank again, Isday!

I don't have this library option in the "go" menu. I have a screenshot but it does not upload to this forum...(i feel a noob now, but i am not ;-) )

Where can if find the library it is just not there?

I found the library on my mac harddisk, but in that one there is no addresbook folder (only other applications).

another problem: the icloudhelper process also pops up every now and then using 3,5 GB of virtual memory (!!) thus freezing my macbook

brrr it is almost as bad as windows...:-(

Hold "alt" and go to "Go" Menu...

ha thanks! that's it. Great!

Any thoughts on the icloudhelper process?

Was having the same problem- looked in Activity Monitor and AddressBookSourceSync was taking up 100% of my CPU. Went to System Preferences, signed out of MobileMe and now all seems well! Thanks for the advice, everyone.

This fixed my problem too. Prior to the fix, AddressBookSourceSync was continuously using 1.2G of my Macbook's memory. If someone else is trying this, you will notice that as you delete all the files except the one that ends in ,plist, the files and 1 folder you deleted will come back to life. Don't worry, they're supposed to. But look at Activity Monitor and you'll see the problem is fixed.

Thank you nategiles and also Isday! If you make your way to Singapore, you've got a scotch and cigar waiting for you

Thanks. Appears to have fixed the problem.

Well, it doesn't slog the computer anymore, but now only one group of contacts is showing up from iCloud?

Did I just lose 13k contacts?