Q: How to recover the address book from Time Machine into contacts of Mountain Lion?

check here

http://pondini.org/TM/28.html

I'm sorry the link didn't help you solve your problem. There are some pretty smart people here. Lets hope one of them reads your post and can offer some help.

This worked for me:

From Time Machine, restore a good backup of the entire  "/Users/james/Library/Application Support/Address Book"  folder to a different location, like to a folder on your desktop.   

(note: the Library folder typically won't show up in Finder. To make it visible, in Terminal, issue this command:

        defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES     

        then restart Finder:  killall Finder  )

Go offline.  Do whatever you need to do to get completely disconnected from the internet (turn off Wireless, unplug the ethernet cable, etc.).  Otherwise, iCloud will immediately overwrite your restore.

Delete the real folder:  /Users/james/Library/Application Support/Address Book

Copy your restore (at the different location), to the real location ( /Users/james/Library/Application Support/Address Book )

Restart Contacts.  Your restored data you want should be there.  Before going online again, Export all these contacts (File - Export - etc...)

Go online again.  iCloud will wipe out your Address Book with what's on iCloud. Re-import contacts as needed from your Export.

This did it.  Many thanks.  (When I decided to sync my contacts with icloud, an individual person's card might wind up with 10 or 20 other email addresses listed in the card as additional email addresses-- what a mess.

I would love to use icloud between my three macs (all with Lion) but I'm afraid to now.)

     What do you think went wrong?

Gee I dunno.  What the software actually does to give the appearance of an all-knowing, wise cloud is anybody's guess.  When HAL didn't want to open the pod bay door, Dave had to er, work around him : )

iCloud sync is working okay for me (Mac Pro, MBP and iPhone) but it takes a bit of patience to deal with some duplicates. It appears Contacts, especially, errs on the side of caution to avoid losing anything, so I end up making sync choices and removing duplicates as the are encountered.

It is important to double-check settings on each device.

Your mileage may vary.

i did try, in a steady voice, to say: " Open my address book correctly, cloud;  Cloud, open my address book correctly",  but I guess the mission was too important to let me jeopardize it.

drdocument wrote:

 

iCloud sync is working okay for me (Mac Pro, MBP and iPhone) but it takes a bit of patience to deal with some duplicates.

 

snip

One of the reasons iCloud seems confusing is that users make the assumption that it is a sync system, but it is not.

In iCloud you subscribe to a remote database that contains your stuff, iCal (Calendar in ML) and Address Book (Contacts) simply display a view of the data.

There is only 1 calendar and only 1 contact set, therefore there is nothing to sync to.

If you want to see what is actually in iCloud the website (www.icloud.com) is the most reliable choice.

Sorry for lax use of the word "sync."

drdocument wrote:

 

Csound1 wrote:

One of the reasons iCloud seems confusing is that users make the assumption that it is a sync system, it is not. In iCloud you subscribe to a remote database that contains your stuff, iCal (Calendar in ML) and Address Book (Contacts) simply display a view of the data.

 

There is only 1 calendar and only 1 contact set, therefore there is nothing to sync to.

 

If you want to see what is actually in iCloud the website (www.icloud.com) is the most reliable choice.

However, this post has not yet appeared in this thread. Sorry for lax use of the word "sync."

I confess that I have done that myself, unfortunately when looking for problems assuming that there is a 'sync' problem when there is no 'sync' wastes a lot of time, and may lead to unwise decisions (especially for those users who think they are so special that they don't require backup)

It would be nice to have a word other than "sync" which more accurately describes what's happening. As I understand, subscribed-to data (such as email) are still stored locally (in User/Library/) and backed up by Time Machine.

drdocument wrote:

 

It would be nice to have a word other than "sync" which more accurately describes what's happening. As I understand, subscribed-to data (such as email) are still stored locally (in User/Library/) and backed up by Time Machine.

I use subscribe rather than sync, but that ends up as more confusion normally, so I agree. You are correct that a local copy is cached (and updated from the iCloud server) for offline access and can be backed up conventionally.

Interesting.

Out of curiosity I tried this experiment:

As a part of monthly routine I move email from the month before last to a folder "On My Mac" so that only relatively current email remains on the server.

I went to Mail, then activated Tme Machine, went back and selected an email from August and clicked Restore, which put that email into a Recovered Messages folder inside a folder named Time Machine in On My Mac (which I saw after exiting TM back to Mail).

I then moved that August message into my iCloud inbox, then went to the iCloud web site, checked Mail, and there it was!

So I suppose one could say that there is indeed some "sync" functionality. But only as to iCloud mail. When it was restored to the iCloud mailbox, the old message also appeared in Mail on my MacBook Pro (also subscribed), but the other mailboxes are not sync'ed between my desktop and laptop.

Interesting.