THANK YOU - I did this and got the same result. Not totally up to date, but good enough. I had been in iCal doing invites to a meeting when everything had froze up - safari, address book, ical. Had to force quit them and when I re-opened address book it was empty, everything was ok tho...
well another victim here, i just had the luck that i had made a back up just previously. since the first time it seems to happen at shorter intervals especially if i change or add more than a couple adresses or have it search for double entries, it said that i had 10 double cards and 450.000 or so double entries ( i have about 900 adresses) than it went blank again. anybodyknow if apple is aware of this problem?? cos if this goes on like this i´ll go back to fmp.
well if anybody has a clue what is the cause??
I've been backing up my Address Book everying time I make an edit (which is silly, really) ... but indeed my Address Book re-sets itself (frequently, versus the prefered not ever) to just having "Apple" and my card.
I notice this happens particularly when:
1) I'm editing an address (usually adding an address or two, and maybe editing someone),
2) have Mail running at the same time,
3) the AddressBook seems to freeze for a bit (spinning beach ball)
4) the Mail hangs, too...
5) then AddressBook & Mail are both officially "Application Not Responding"
If I let it run, they stay frozen ... so I inevitably have to Force Quit. After re-launching the programs, the AddressBook tends to pause for a bit before opening, and then opens reset without any of my contacts, except me and Apple.
Also installed are Plaxo and SpamSieve. SpamSieve also goes "Application Not Responding"... but Plaxo is set to sync manually only, so it doesn't run, and doesn't seem to be involved.
Does anyone even know where there's a log for AddressBook crashes? Or what to look at? I've muddled through the Console logs looking for something...but can't find a clue.
Absolutely unacceptable.
Right after my health, my address book is my most valued possesion. Losing all data while making a routine entry is so uncool.
Entire address book lost with exception of my V card and Apple Computer's.
Thanks Apple.
Tried to restore from my .mac using Sync - but guess what? - it now tells me "never been synched."
I sync every week.
Thanks again...this is the kind of stuff that makes people go postal.
Exactly the same thing just happened to me. The spinning pinwheel was happening a lot, so I repaired my permissions. Came back to an empty Addressbook. 4 meg data file replaced with 24k. Searched the disk to find nothing. Looked in the trash, same thing. The AddressBook.data.previous file was from 2005 and was 1.5 meg. Called Apple and went through the standard remove cache, check in App Support, boot from install disk etc etc. They told me my data was gone and that was it. Had a month old back up, which wasn't that much of a problem to bring up to speed, but this is not good. What's up with this?
I've just experienced an AddressBook hang then subsequent loss of all my 2555 contacts. I'm on a brand new MacPro tower and this happened while I was editing contacts in AB.
Here's what happend leading up to the problem, first Safari started to hang. I had to do a foce quit of Safari, then Mail, then AddressBook then Camino. Itunes was running but didn't require a restart. When I re-opened AB everything was gone. I restarted the computer but the data was still gone.
I tried the procedure to rename the files with the Library but that didn't work. Fortunately I have multiple backups. I pulled a local AddressBook backup from 4 days ago and restored. I then went to .Mac and updated the local data with the .Mac data which had been synced 10 minutes before the crash. I also could have restored from my daily backup using the Backup App bundled with .Mac.
First I tried and failed to sync the backup from my Treo using iSync. I think that when I restored using the local backup the iSync determined that the data on the phone was the older data, even though it was current, and overwrote the phone data with the four day old backup.
All told I lost three contacts that I was editing. No big deal but this is not a "horray for me" message.
I'm an experienced user and I currently have six operational OSX Macs. I'm not an expert by any means but I know a bit more than the average user. I just want to point out that this event just "happened" without any user (my) influence. I suspect it has something to do with the .Mac sync operation, which ironically is what prevented this from being a disaster for me.
This issue needs to be addressed immediately by Apple. It's obviously a problem because if you search this forum you will discover far too many people that have experienced this gut wrenching problem. Again, it's not caused by operator error or by doing anything contrary to common sense.
MacPro Mac OS X (10.4.7) Operating normally then kaboom! All contacts gone.
I too am having similar problems, was editing in iCal and had Safari and mail open with the pinwheel of death spinning gleely. Shut the computer last night and upon opening it this morning I have only one contact. Checking my .mac account, I have only 400 the 1500 odd contacts on there (no idea why, this is regularly synched) but when i tried to iSynch .mac to the computer, everything has updated except for the Address Book.
My question is, I have a BlackBerry for which I use PocketMac to synch it up. This has the most recent version of my Address Book on it, yet I am scared to synch it as even though I have checked all the settings, I don't want it to be wiped and for my what is on my machine to replace all the contacts in there.
Has anyone had a similar problem and successfully updated their address book from PocketMac BlackBerry synching before? Do I need to "repair" my Address Book settings before I do so, and what should I go about doing?
I would try to make a backup copy of the data from the Blackberry before syncing back to the Mac.
Once I discovered the loss of my Address Book data I immediately went to my .Mac account and suspended automatic syncing. I wanted to avoid having the .Mac account sync with the crashed address book showing only two contacts.
This took place after I tried to sync with my Treo 650 using iSync. The sync "worked" but only to the degree that the new post-crash list of 2 contacts was moved to my Treo. This was not my intention but because the data in the Address Book was newer than the data on the Treo the newer data prevailed.
Once you have the extracted data to a safe place then you could safely try to sync back to the Address Book.
The same type of crash happened again today when working with Address Book preparing a draft in Mail. This time when I restored from .Mac all of my Address Book smart groups were gone.
I restored from a two day old local address book backup and now I'm syncing with .Mac to see if the smart groups will stay.
Recently opened my Address Book and all data was gone including my profile.
To solve this problem I first copied the Address Book Folder in the User Library Application Support Folder to another hard drive for safe keeping if this didn't work. Then I opened the Address Book folder in the User Library Appl Support Folder and moved the AddressBook.data file to the trash. Then I changed the name of the AddressBook.data.beforesa file using Get Info window to AddressBook.data. Then I restarted the computer. This time when I opened the Address Book application my data was restored. Hope this works for some one else. And be warned: Do ever change anything without backing up.
thanks for the tip. I'll have to try this next time this happens (I've had this happen at least 4 times since about January).
Good tip about the backups, but the disconcerting thing is that this seems to happen without any major changes to anything...just through the normal course of work/use. I usually have this and I'll notice from Mail.app not auto-completing a field or all my iChat names disappearing. This is a serious data-loss issue and would be a serious deterrent for new windows users switching.
Today, after I got Mail, Safari, iChat and Address Book all simultaneously freezing (applications not responding), I had to force quit all of them. When relaunching Address Book I had the really annoying surprise to get an empty address book, all my contacts are lost.
This already happened in the past, and digging the discussions I'm not alone. There is a bug somewhere and it's annoying. I'm trying to understand where it comes from.
Same thing just happened to me ---- 2,500 entries and in process of editing/deleting duplicate entries. NOT connected to the web at the time, (nor performing scheduled backup) so not a sync issue But I also can't close address app. except via <Quit mail> or <force quit>, nor can I use address book at all ---- can't open <new entry> etc. Think I may just go back to my Palm app. Any thoughts on this? No response from Apple? anyone?
