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

Check. Thanks. Makes sense.

However, I can understand why there is some confusion.

drdocument wrote:

Check. Thanks. Makes sense.

However, I can understand why there is some confusion.

🙂

Thanks, James, for your Sept. 2012 post about retrieving lost contact info from Time Machine, and also your advice about using Terminal to make the Library folder visible. Both worked perfectly and helped me retreive thousands of contacts that I accidentally deleted while fumbling around while attempting to sync my MacBook Pro contacts on my iPod Classic.

Now that I've brought my contacts back from oblivion, can you tell me how to make those hidden files and folders go invisible again? I'd prefer to put away the clutter, and I am very nervous every time I use Terminal, particularly as I am out of extended warranty on all my Apple gear.

Thanks for the nice feedback! I think this link explains what you're after:

http://macs.about.com/od/tipstricks/qt/hiddenfolder.htm

specifically:

Hide the Clutter

1. Launch Terminal, located at /Applications/Utilities/.
   
2. Type or copy/paste the following commands into the Terminal window. Press the return key after you enter each line of text. Note: There are only two lines of text below, each in its own gray box. Depending on the size of your browser’s window, the lines could be wrapping and appearing as more than two lines. Be sure to enter them as single lines.
   

   defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

   killall Finder

Perfect! Thanks again, James.

Thanks for the insight here. I was able to restore my Contacts from Time Machine after a misadventure thanks to this thread. But while it restored the contacts it didn't restore the Groups. Any way to accomplish that?

My husband and I somehow deleted our contacts. We are both 77 years old. Our son found your directions online, and by reading them to me over the phone and helping me with each step, we have the contacts again and are everlastingly grateful to you for your help. Thank you!

James Monte -- thank you very much for the good instructions about how to recover the address book from once-upon-a-time.

Like tacit, I was able to recover the people, but the groups are a problem. a very big problem, since what really happened was I deleted and the restored my wife's contacts on her computer. She wants her groups.

When I did the restore, I did get all the groups back. good. I can do that again.

The problem is iCloud, as you predicted, wiped out all the restored groups. It left the people, but the groups disappeared. What I want to do is to over-ride the iCloud data with the data on the computer. How can I do that?

I can try importing the data from the export, but I suspect that will merely duplicate all names, and not add the groups back in. I'll try that, but I am not optimistic. I'll post another message after I try that.

Thanks again for your good and clear ideas.

Phil

I tried importing the data from the export, and the groups came in with it. good. However, as soon as it made contact with iCloud, all the groups disappeared.

Anybody got any ideas how to overwrite the data in iCloud? Can I import the data directly to iCloud? Is there a way with either Apple software or with 3rd party software to overwrite iCloud with the computer's data?

Thanks for your attention,

Phil

Hi,

thank you all for posting. I literally saved hundreds of contacts with this!

Simon

Thanks so much for this- -4 years later- -it's still a helpful post!

James Monte....I think I may love you. That worked perfectly! Your instructions were perfect! Even after almost 4 years.