I am having trouble with my Address Book application in OS X Lion on a late 2011 iMac 27 inch. I can see my contacts, but the Edit button is gone and I am unable to modify them in any way. I have tried most of the fixes I could think of, restoring from a backup, throwing out the preference files, even reinstalling Lion, but nothing has worked. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.1)
Is CMD + L working as a shortcut?
No, it is not working.
And the contact are on your local hard drive in the local address book? Not on an LDAP server?
Yes, the contacts/address book are on my local hard drive.
Can you post a screenshot from the Address Book window, where you're trying to edit?
This post worked for me:
Correct AnswerRe: After upgrading to Lion, I can no longer edit my address book. Jul 21, 2011 2:08 PM (in response to decafin8)
If you just upgraded to Lion, you get 90 days of complimentary support, so don't be bashful. Call 'em. I called Apple support and they resolved this specific issue. We first verified that a newly created Admin account could create and edit Address Book. When it did, we rightly assumed corruption in the Address Book Library files.
Here are the steps from that point.
Lion has changes that remind me of Windows 2000 where folders are hidden even to Admins. Apple is purposefully hiding files and folders they don't think anyone should be seeing. If you want Admin priviledges you had in Leopard or earlier versions, you need to upgrade to a Root user...highly not recommended.
Worked for me.
After having this problem for a few months I finally got around to fixing it. Your solution worked perfectly, except that instead of exporting my address book vcards, I used export > address book archive. And saved the file on my desktop. Then I followed your instructions, imported the address book archive, and was back up and running in about two minutes. Thank you for the help. Happy New Year!
Let us know what happens in another week. Many of us who used this solution just had the corruption return again and again--until disabling iCloud sync for the Address Book.
The problem actually started prior to my setting up iCloud on my computer. The only way I was able to edit my computer's address book, was to edit my contacts using my iPhone, and let iCloud sync change the address book on my computer.
I'll keep an eye on it and let you know if it gives me problems again.
90 days of support of no use when I do not find the issue for 120 days.
This post worked for me. Address Book wouldn't allow edits or adds but after following above instructions worked again. One thing different I did was to uncheck contacts in iCloud System Preference and did not keep a local copy resulting in all of the addresses being removed from the Address Book. After deleting the Addressbook folder in the Application Support folder I reselected contacts in the iCloud System Preference resulting in all of the addresses being reloaded in to the Address Book. You may still want to make a back-up copy just in case iCloud does not load correctly.
OS X Lion Address book locked and unable to edit.
