Contacts (Address Book) Data Store Explained....

How about I just summarize it for you (as I won't be explaining every single file you listed).

All contacts are stored as vCards in the metadata folder.

The contact pictures you assign to contacts are stored in the Images folder.

Those cards and images are indexed into a database with the extension abcddb.

The database has some helper files with -wal, and -shm additions.

The On My Mac contacts are in the files/folders at the root of AddressBook.

For online contact repositories like iCloud, each one is stored in a folder inside of Sources with a unique id as the name. Same structure applies to those.

The migration files were used to migrate from a previous OS.

MailRecents is the Previous Recipients database that Mail uses to auto-fill email addresses you have previously sent email to.

The other stuff appears to be crap generated with your multiple attempst to sign out and back in.

From your description, it sounds like every time you signed out of iCloud, you told it to keep the contacts on your Mac. They were then copied into the ON MY MAC files/folders.

Then, when you signed back in, you selected the option to merge the contacts. That duplicated the contacts each time you did it.

Robert Broussard wrote:

Hi Barney,

What files or folders appear to be crap?

The ones I didn't describe.

This is a fairly clean AddressBook folder:

ABAssistantChangelog.aclcddb

ABAssistantChangelog.aclcddb-shm

ABAssistantChangelog.aclcddb-wal

AddressBook-v22.abcddb

AddressBook-v22.abcddb-shm

AddressBook-v22.abcddb-wal

Configuration.plist

Images/

MailRecents-v4.abcdmr

MailRecents-v4.abcdmr-shm

MailRecents-v4.abcdmr-wal

Metadata/

Migration 20131215130906-14822.abbu.tbz

Migration 20131216200826-549.abbu.tbz

Sources/

Is it not okay to keep cobtacts local when signing out of iCloud? Isn't it suppose to merge (and not duplicate) when reconnecting?

Not in my experience. If you keep the contacts, it just creates new ones when you re-connect with iCloud. It might be that it is supposed to work that way, but not very well.

It seems that there are some irregularities with the way pictures are being handled now. I used to be able to click edit and I could recrop a photo, apparently it would reference the original pic.... yet now, I'm not able to do that. Also, the size of one original photo is shown as 80k in my data from a few days ago. Yet, my current image data shows the original pic as about 40k. BTW: I'm assuming that for each image there are two pics maintained the one with a .jpg extension is larger (typically) and it seems that there is another pic in a different format that is much smaller, maybe half size and I assume that this is a the cropped photo or the thumbnail..... Thoughts about the pictures?

Not sure. I haven't poked into them to even know there are two. I have very few, and have never had a need to investigate.

Also, my original addressbook folder is 58.8MB and the newly downloaded one is about 34.9MB.... what could make such a huge difference? BTW: I have 2,627 contact cards. Also, I now have 368 images (13.5mb) on iCloud and I had 385 (15.4mb) before....

I don't know. The database could have "swelled" with multiple additions and deletions. Databases don't normally recover free space unless directed.

What's in the containers folder (com.apple.AddressBook)?

That is the sandbox. It is an isolated environment for Contact to play within. As I understand it, if rogue code takes over Contacts app, it can't get out of the sandbox to do any damage beyond the app itself. There are preferences, primarily.

While not signed into iCloud, if I delete all of the contacts locally, which I was using for testing, shouldn't the images folder (file:///Users/robert/Library/Application%20Support/AddressBook/Images/) be cleared? I currently have 22 files in that folder where 4 are JPEGS.

For the attached images, I would think so, but again, I haven't investigated. The index database, addressbook-v22.abcddb, can get corrupted which results in the inability to edit or create contacts. I would assume that might also affect the deletion of the associated images.

Message was edited by: Robert Broussard Oops, apparently Cmd-S posts the message immediately..... I was just trying to save a draft... Should there be only one metadata entry (in the metadata folder) for each contact card? I'm just looking for some basic checks and balances. Nothing seems to really ad up. I now have 2,629 contact cards via the Contacts App while there are 2,663 items in the metadata folder. Thoughts? Thanks, Robert

Yes, only one per contact. But, there are also cards for each group. 34 groups seems high.

.abcdp are People and .abcdg are groups.