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Address Book

I opened my address book and it's empty! Nothing. Help!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jun 16, 2006 8:49 PM

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71 replies

Jul 25, 2006 8:25 AM in response to Mihalis Tsoukalos

I have the same problem. It happened after a synchronization with .Mac. I checked the contents in the folder you mentioned. The following is what I have found:
1. ABPerson.skIndexInverted
2. ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted
3. AddressBook.data (8kb)
4. AddressBook.data.previous (12kb)
5. Images (a folder)

Do you see anything strange? Thanks.

Jul 27, 2006 1:53 AM in response to daveyleis1

I had the same problem. I was editing some entries in my address book, and all of a sudden, everything disappeared. Restarting Address Book didn't help, neither did restarting the computer or running iSync.
On .Mac all my contacts were still there.

Although I don't guarantee my sollution to work for anyone else! Please take advise from Apple experts only. This is strictly at your own risk!

I first made a backup copy of the ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder, just to be on the safe side, and so should you. It's probably best to quit AddressBook as well.
In this original folder (~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook), I found 4 files and one folder:

ABPerson.skIndexInverted
ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted
AddressBook.data
AddressBook.data.previous
Images (folder)

The size of "AddressBook.data.previous" (1.7MB) was considerably bigger than the size of "AddressBook.data" (8KB) so this, and the names of the files, made me try the following:
I deleted the file "AddressBook.data" and then renamed the file "AddressBook.data.previous" to "AddressBook.data"

I restarted AddressBook, and there were all my contacts again. I seemed that the last couple of changes I was making to my contacts when they all just disappeared were missing (just the last 3 minutes or so), but everything else was intact. I suppose the file I renamed was some kind of automatic backup AddressBook is making sometimes.

Either way, best is of course to make regular backups of your data!

I hope this helps some of you.

MBP 2.0GHz Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1GB RAM 100MB HD

Jul 27, 2006 7:14 AM in response to Steven Deckers

Thank you for your help.

Unfortunately, that method didn't work for me as my database has already disappeared. What I am trying now is to reset data on my computer by forcing a download of all data from .Mac. It is a function that can be found in .Mac under System Preferences. Unfortunately, at this point, I consistently get an error that claims there has been an error in syncing with .Mac. I shall try a few more times tonight and post my result here.

Aug 9, 2006 5:24 PM in response to John Chen

SyncServices runs on a regular basis to ensure that all of your data is up-to-date between sync-capable programs, and is most likely the culprit of the "missing" addressbook.data file.

One thing you might try to get the data from your .Mac account is to add another user account on your computer, configure the .Mac settings, and specify that you want to reset the local machine and get all of the .Mac data. If it synchronizes successfully, you can select all the cards, and drag them to /Users/Shared/ on your computer so that you have a vCard that contains all of your contacts, in a folder where you can access them with your original user.

Granted, it's not the most complete solution, but it saves the headache of moving the contents of ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/ and copying data from other files, attempting to force the download with your original user, etc.

Best of luck. I continue to search for the cause of the problem, as this kind of thing in an office is NOT acceptable, and I want to find the cause so I can stop it (I've already had 2 people in an office have this problem, with no information available about the cause).

Aug 12, 2006 3:19 AM in response to ItalianMacAddicted

I also had the same problem: all adresses disappeared.
I was working in Safari but address book was open in the background, idle for about 10 minutes, when this happened.
I don't have a .Mac account so it is not related to this.
In Library/Application Support/AddressBook/
the AddressBook.data and AddressBook.data.backup were already empty.
Only a one-year-old AddressBook.data.beforesave was valid, but it contains only about 1800 of my 4200 contacts.
So I used instead a backup (.abbu) from Feb but I'm still missing a thousand contacts.
Also available:
- a recent (May 9) ABPerson.skIndexInverted.1230: Anybody knows how to extract information from there?
- the Images directory has about 2000 photos. This is easy to reuse, but a lot of work and fairly incomplete.

An important point is that I hesitate to start this huge work while knowing that my AddressBook can be destroyed again at any time.
Anybody knows the cause of this strange epidemy?
I don't remember any recent AddressBook (or iSync) software update.
(I don't use iSync, it is deactivated but installed, so I cannot fully exclude it).

Aug 12, 2006 3:33 AM in response to Steve M.

Important: DO NOT follow this advice:

Try a couple of basics like logging out and logging
back in or restarting and see what happens.


AddressBook would then update all his files from your empty AddressBook, i.e. destroy the little you could save.
Instead, you should immediately (before stopping AddressBook!) do a copy of
Library/Application Support/AddressBook/
then look into this precious copy for yet undeleted information, that can be in:
AddressBook.data.beforesave
AddressBook.data.previous
You can restore it e.g. by:
cp AddressBook-copy/AddressBook.data.previous AddressBook/AddressBook.data
the indexes will normally be recomputed by the AddressBook application because the copy will be more recent than the indexes -- if not you should delete the indexes (you have a copy anyway).

Aug 12, 2006 3:41 AM in response to John Chen

I have the same problem. It happened after a
synchronization with .Mac. I checked the contents in
the folder you mentioned. The following is what I
have found:
1. ABPerson.skIndexInverted
2. ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted
3. AddressBook.data (8kb)
4. AddressBook.data.previous (12kb)
5. Images (a folder)


These sizes look like the minimal possible size, corresponding to an empty AddressBook. It means that all your data has already been destroyed.
Consult your backups to find an AddressBook.data with a bigger size.

Aug 12, 2006 4:46 AM in response to Gary Franz

I continue to search for the cause of
the problem, as this kind of thing in an office is
NOT acceptable, and I want to find the cause so I can
stop it (I've already had 2 people in an office have
this problem, with no information available about the
cause).


The first step is to discover the exact version that caused the problem.
I use 4.0.4 (485.1). This version was distributed as part of X.4.7,
on June 26, 2006. This is slightly inconsistent with the first problems that were reported on June 17. Could these persons tell whether they were already using this new version? Also the version of iSync and SyncServices is of interest.

SyncServices runs on a regular basis to ensure that
all of your data is up-to-date between sync-capable
programs, and is most likely the culprit of the
"missing" addressbook.data file.


Since it was disabled on my computer, it is not so sure.

After the crash, my console contained 8 messages like this:

2006-08-11 16:55:48.220 AddressBookSync[21735] exception while performing selector clientWithId:wantsToBeginSyncPlanBeforeDate:entityNames:pushTruthForEntityNames :quietlyPushingTruth:callback:withPlanIdentifier: on server: ISyncClientAlreadySyncingException [NOTE: this exception originated in the server.]
Client com.apple.AddressBook is already participating in a sync

then 8 messages like this:

Couldn't reopen AddressBook database. Home directory may not be ready or is missing.

then 1 like this:

2006-08-11 18:25:35.822 Address Book[29820] -[ABAddressBook save] failed.

then about 40 of the second type, then this one:

lstat failed -[ABAddressBook nts_Save]: No such file or directory

and agains a mix of 1st/2nd type over 3 hours. They were probably also caused by my attempts to restore the data.

Aug 12, 2006 10:19 AM in response to pyschobbens

Welcome to the discussions, psychobbens.

Although you say you are not using syncing, the first part of your console log would appear sync-related. I am always inclined to suspect syncing in this sort of issue, with no hard evidence except that the majority of those reporting Address Book (and iCal) data loss appear to be using it.

One problem of course is that if you think you have a nice safe secure synced copy of your data, you are much less likely to take a routine backup!

I use cron to run a script each night to make a copy of my iCal and Addess Book data. The script retains 5 copies, so if it is several days before I notice that something has gone wrong I still have a fair chance of recovering it. I have posted the script before (in the iCal forum, I think) but I can repost it here if it would be of use to anyone.

The copy of the files is of course to the local hard disk, so it does not protect against complete system or disk failure - you use your routine system clone for that.

User uploaded fileAK

Address Book

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