All Contacts disappeared after iCloud setup

I don't know if there is a cache, but the contact cards are stored in the MetaData folder. However, they are xml and not vCard format anymore, so restoring from those may not be as simple as it was before.

twistedman wrote:

Apple tech told me the contacts are "corrupted" from an update. Can this be fixed? Is there a filter? How do you get contact groups back from the MetaData folder? Thank you for your help.

As I alluded to before, I don't know how to restore from the xml files that are there, now. They were once vCards and could be double-clicked to restore. Now, someone would have to write a utility that would extract the information from the xml files and turn them into vCards.

If you have an old backup from a previous OS, they might be vCards and you could just select all and open them. That would import them into your Contacts.

Make a Contacts backup by choosing Export>Contacts Archive from the File menu.

Close Contacts.

Go to this folder in her home folder:

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

You can triple-click that path and copy it. Then, open Finder and type cmd-shift-g. That will bring up the Go To Folder dialog. Paste in that path and click Go.

In that folder you will see these three index files. Delete them:

Open Contacts and see if the contacts are restored?

If not, that folder, AddressBook, is what you need to restore from the backup. It will be converted when you open Contacts again.

A HUGE Thank-you to Barney! But I have no clue as to what caused the corruption in my case, just that it seems to have happened only after I got an iPhone 6 with iOS8 and synced my contacts. Remains to be seen if the problem returns.

I have also switched off my WebDAV on Contacts - but that used to work without problems so I shall first try switching that back on again.

But I have no clue as to what caused the corruption in my case

Yep, me neither.

I've never experienced the problem myself, but the symptoms sounded like a problem with the database. I tested and saw that it rebuilt everything without issue, so I suggested the fix long ago. It still works, and I don't remember anyone returning to any thread to say the problem returned.

I am experiencing the same problem.

However, I am not seeing ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook on my system.

I see ~/Library/Application Support, but the AddressBook folder doesn't exist.

I have done a spotlight search to see if it is somewhere else, but it is not.

I also looked for files with address book in the name but see none that look similar to the highlighted ones in the earlier post.

Any ideas?

OK... fixed.

For some reason, instead of the AddressBook folder, I had a single file called AddressBook in the ApplicationSupport folder.

Strange, but I deleted this file and opened Contacts, and the Proper folder and files where created.

lipvault wrote:

OK... fixed.

For some reason, instead of the AddressBook folder, I had a single file called AddressBook in the ApplicationSupport folder.

Strange, but I deleted this file and opened Contacts, and the Proper folder and files where created.

That is strange.Thanks for posting back with that info. I can see how it would cause problems. If there was a file there the OS couldn't write the contents into the folder and nothing would work.

I have. Even though I had nothing marked to sync after a fresh install, it did it anyway in the background. I was not aware of it until I tried to send an email and it could not find the address - I checked Contacts and there were none.

I had a bootable backup, so I turned off iCloud, copied over my Contacts, and then went to iCloud to delete all of the contacts as I did not want them there (I don't use iCloud; just have an unaffiliated account set up for testing).

I had the same situation and I have tried to restore the addressbook.db file as you suggested and this did not work. Is there any possibility that there could be a cache set up for the contacts?

Apple tech told me the contacts are "corrupted" from an update. Can this be fixed? Is there a filter? How do you get contact groups back from the MetaData folder? Thank you for your help.