I have been losing my Address Book data every week for the last month, since I received my MBP. I have not found a real pattern yet. I had Palm with iSync and I uninstalled it. It happened 5 days afterwards.
Has anybody seen any information from Apple about bugs or fixes for AB?
Same here. Lost everything. I lost it after syncing with my phone the first time, and put the computer to sleep before I was finished. I tried to pull the information back from my phone into the address book and somehow that failed and I ended up with less on my phone than I started with. This is most inconvenient.
I have some large files: 4.4mb in the sync services folder in ~/Library/Application\ Support/SyncServices/Local/ that I believe may contain some of my missing data. I want to find out how to get the data out of there so I can restore my data. The fact that this thread is several months old without any word from the great monolith is most disturbing. Basically it tells me that Address Book and iSync are useless applications that should be avoided. I can't imagine the general public will accept this kind of crap after dropping $600 for an iPhone.
is everyone else using iChat? I found it lost everything while I was trying to add a contact and using iChat and I think I was using iChat all the other times it's happened....perhaps that's something?
Today I opened up address book and it was completely blank! Fortunately I have it synced with Entourage and so was able to import all my addresses from Entourage...the only downside was that I lost all my profile photos. However, I'm wondering if somehow the syncing function was the cause of the loss of data in the first place?
I didn't even realize that Address Book had a back up function, but I will definitely be using it regularly from now on. I expect better from Apple.
Another back-up hack for consideration: Stuffit's Archive Assistant.
I work with AB constantly and have several thousand contacts, and I've "lost" them mysteriously as have many here. In addition to the weekly general backup, I back it up daily in case I forget otherwise; created a folder within /user/library/Application Support/AddressBook/backups. I stay away from synching to backup as this thread shows that it's not ready for prime time.
I also back up after every few names or so when doing a lot of work.
I hope this can save someone some grief.. we've certainly had too much already!
I've been having the problem since I bought my IMac in June 06. I back up every night, but it's still irritating (and costly) to continually salvage my data. I turned of Isync and have upgraded to 10.4.9. Same problem...
I am using 10.4.9, and I am having a similar problem. I'm hoping that someone can help me fix it. I'm not sure when my data was lost, or misplaced, but I did sync to an iPod recently.
I tried to edit an address book entry, and it behaved very oddly, and address book then quit. Tonight, I opened address book, and there is nothing there, not even my card, or Apple's. There is no viewer window, and there doesn't appear to be a way to get one.
I checked in Mail, and when I look at the address book in there, all my data is fine.
I looked in users/library/applicationsupport/addressbook and found the following:
I've put in the date modified dates for the more recent files. Could anyone give me a suggestion as to how to get Address Book to display my addresses?
thanks
I have 10.4.9 and yes, I lost all my addresses. Furthermore, I cannot create any new groups. Clicking the + button gets no results. I was going to post a messge about that, but after reading all these posts, I think I'll just search shareware to see if there's a better one out there.
Working in mail and address book at the same time - mail froze and I force quit. When I next looked at address book all 680 entries were gone. Except for 2 - myself and apple. Ouch !
Tried the data.previous swtich as mentioned often above but did not work. Now address book freezes everytime I open it ?!?! *** ?
have been using address book since this March and the same thing happened to me today. reading this discussion today, i realize how lucky i am that it didn't happen sooner.
today, for the 1st time, i clicked on an address to add it to AB and shortly thereafter discovered that was the only address in AB. although i tried a few things suggested in the myriad posts about this common problem nothing worked.
fortunately i previously used eudora and there is an import eudora addresses script so there is minimal damage (other than wasting 4 hours trying to fix this bug.)
now i'll start backing up AB & ical (thanks for the suggestions!) PLUS i'll also make all changes/adds/etc to my eudora AB -- just for good measure.
