Address Book is suddenly empty - no contacts displayed

All,

For what it's worth, Applescript can access my AB even though contacts are still not visible to me. This gives me hope that all is not lost.

Is helpful?

Bob

Hacintosh,

Thanks for your response.

I thought the app might have been corrupt and that reinstalling from my DVD would resolve this. It didn't.

I found a discussion from 2008 that suggested restoring the plist might help but doing that from a backup well before when this surfaced didn't help.

These are the ones I restored:

com.apple.Addressbook.adb.plist

com.apple.addressbook.plist

I did not restore any of these - there are four with similar names but differ in the hex characters within:

com.apple.AddressBook.sync.....plist

Perhaps I didn't do this correctly though. Do you have suggestion?

Thanks again,

Bob

Hacintosh,

I tried your suggestion and moved com.apple.addressbook.plist to the desktop but noticed no change.

Unfortunately, I didn't try the script to see if that functionality had been altered.

I decided to move the rest of the Addressbook files to the desktop and noted that 17 contacts were dropped and were no longer accessible via the script.

Moved the files back one at a time and ran the script after each move showed no change each time.

Tried restoring those files from TM using the same backup as i did yesterday but again, no change. Dropped contacts were still gone and AB still appeared empty.

Ditto when the contacts were restored and when the app was restored - both from TM and both from the same date but no change. I also tried an earlier backup but that didn't help.

Then I noticed that AddressBook-v22.abcddb in folder "~:Library:Application Support:AddressBook:" had changed at about the time when I began moving the files you suggested. There was also a version dated yesterday (named AddressBook-v22~.abcddb) when the contact list was complete so I renamed each file so yesterday's version was active. Running the script showed my contact list was back at full strength although AB still appears empty.

This file has now been copied to a folder on the desktop for safekeeping and intend to repeat your suggestion while testing at each step with the script.

I forgot to mention in my original post that I had repaired permissions and had noticed no changes but did that again to see if maybe it might help this time - again, no change this time either. I apologize for the omission.

Thanks again for your help and I'll follow up soon.

Bob

I removed the AB files from the Preferences folder one at a time and ran the script to see if the number of contacts changed and that never happened.

After each script test I quit AB before continuing to insure no remnants of the preceding cycle remained.

But, at the end, there were still a full-list of contacts (at least the count was unchanged) and AB still appears empty.

Sorry I can't provide more definitive results.

Bob

I did as you suggested and booted in Safe Mode, opened Font Book and validated the installed fonts:

• 435 Fonts Passed
• 36 Fonts with minor problems
  Of these, 35 were duplicates and
  one, Bauhaus 93, returned this message: " 'kern' table structure and contents. Proceed with caution"

I felt safe removing the duplicates but must have performed that operation incorrectly. I have six, yep, six fonts in Font Book now - including Bauhaus 93.

Finally, the Address Book is still empty and is still accessible with the script so no harm done there.

I'll figure out how to reinstall the deleted fonts (I moved them into a separate folder) and will be more cautious when I "resolve" the duplicates next time. Live and learn.

Thanks for getting me interested in Font Book. It has been a learning experience and will probably pay off in the future.

Bob

I forgot to mention that I Validated the Fonts in both Safe Mode (no errors reported) and normal mode (the 435 Passed and 36 with errors).

I've come to the conclusion that AB is not the root problem but only a symptom.

The AB on my wife's machine, a Mac mini also running 10.6.8, with essentially the same contact list is working normally. I've compared all the system files, and the contents where possible, against mine and have found no difference that didn't make sense. This leads me to believe that AB is OK but something external to it is interferring with its operation.

Font Book appears to be OK, validating the fonts returns no errors now, so does anyone have some other course of action I could pursue besides restoring my Mac HD to a backup previous to when this occurred? Frankly I'm not sure this would resolve the problem anyway.

Best regards,

Bob

Third party Software:

I have MSOffice 2008 Student & Home edition

This has been on the machine since I bought it more than three years ago with no problems caused. As far as I can remember, it was last updated in December last year so I don't suspect that - yet.

Adobe Photoshop Elements v8 and v10

• v10 hasn't been updated since it was installed in late November 2011.
• v8 was last updated 1/13/2010 (perhaps it was never updated - I don't know)

Mahjong In Poculis - a game

• this has been on my computer since October 2011
• Since I thought this was most likely the problem, I uninstalled it (deleted it actually) and rebooted my machine but AB was still empty and my script worked as before so I reinstalled the game.

I also created a dummy account on this computer with Standard permissions to see if that would affect AB - it didn't change a thing.

Also on the machine is iWork '09 but, again, it's been on the machine for about a year.

Uninstalling PSElements or MS-Office would make me cringe but let me know.

Bob F

Detlef,

Thanks for your response.

I have done this several times to no effect.

Also, AB in Time Machine is not empty, not even the most recent backups are empty, so I know my contacts exist in AB.

Restoring my contact list from TM has no lasting effect. They will appear in Address Book only until I do something in the AB window, such as selecting a group or a contact, and then AB abruptly closes. Immediately reopening AB and it is again "empty".

I haven't mentioned this previously, but the Import menu option in AB is dimmed/disabled as are several other menu items.

Best Regards,

Bob

Hackintosh / Detlef,

I finally gave up and restored my system from a TM BU before all this happened and that seems to have resolved the issue. I did this because Notes (in Mail) began behaving in a similar way in that the content of my notes could not be read and restoring them from TM did not change that.

I'm trying to restore the files I use every day from TM but that it is not going smoothly.

Anyway, thanks for your help - it's time to move forward.

Bob