my contacts are frozen

First try- Disk Utility>First Aid> Repair Disk Permissions if no luck try instructions below

OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support

1. Boot with ⌘R to enter the Recovery HD.
2. Choose Reinstall OS X.
3. Follow the instructions.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try to launch Contacts. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Are your contacts on iCloud or some other network service?

In the iCloud preference pane, uncheck the box marked Contacts and confirm. The contacts will still be in iCloud. Test Contacts. Then re-check the box and test again.

Please test after taking each of the following steps. Back up all data before you begin.

Step 1

Quit the Contacts or Address Book application if it's running.

Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it:

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.AddressBookSourceSync

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)

from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item selected. Move the selected item to the Trash.

Repeat with this line:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.AddressBook

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Step 2

If you use iCloud, uncheck the box marked Contacts in the iCloud preference pane. Press return to confirm, or click Keep on Mac in the dialog that opens.

If you synchronize contacts with any other network service, disable that synchronization in the Internet Accounts preference pane.

Step 3

This step applies only if you can launch Contacts. From the list of groups on the left side of the Contacts window, select All On My Mac. If that group doesn't exist or is empty, skip this step. Otherwise, from the menu bar, select

File ▹ Export... ▹ Contacts Archive...

Save the exported archive to the Desktop.

Step 4

Quit Contacts if it's running. Reveal the following item in the Finder as you did in Step 1:

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

If you know when the problem started, and you can restore that folder from an earlier backup without losing any contacts, do so and test. Otherwise, move the folder to the Desktop, leaving the window open for now.

Step 5

Launch Contacts. Your contacts and groups will be gone. If you took Step 3, then double-click the file you created in that step and confirm that you want to import from it. Your contacts and groups will reappear.

Step 6

If you took Step 2, reverse it. Test. If the issue is resolved, delete the AddressBook folder and the archive file on the Desktop and close the open folder window.

Otherwise, quit Contacts again and put the AddressBook folder back where it was, overwriting the newer one that will have been created in its place.

Step 7

Go back to Step 3, but this time choose Export vCard... from the Export menu. Continue as in Steps 4-6. All contacts should be preserved, but you may lose some metadata such as group membership.

Linc,

I followed your instructions but Contact still does not open. Could this be because ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.AddressBook is missing?

This problem is on my wife's MacBook Pro running 10.8.5. and started a few years ago. I thought the issue had to do with iCloud so I unchecked Contacts in the iCloud preferences back then. She occasionally connects the Time Machine backup disc but not in the last two weeks so anything added in that period was not backed up. However, I did look inside the Metadata folder and it has all 800 contacts and a few groups. If I can get Contacts to open, I suppose I could quit and then drag the old Metadata folder to replace the newly created one. Is that OK? Is there a way to differentiate between Groups and Smart Groups in the Metadata folder?

Before it crashed, almost any action in Contacts caused a BeachBall but other times it would work OK.

One thing I thought of that could be an issue is I had made a few smart groups that referenced other smart groups. Could this cause the slow down and/or the crash?

For example, let's say I had 4 groups: North, South, East & West. Then I made a Smart Group that combined those 4 groups into a single Consolidated Group. Then I made another Smart Group that included members of the Consolidated Smart Group that included e-mail addresses. I could see a situation where it needed to create the Smart Groups in a particular sequence.

Update:

Oh the wonders of OS X. In spite of moving the AddressBook folder to the desktop, not only did contacts open but all of my contacts and groups were restored. However, the filters in various Smart Groups were modified. Anyway, do you think having interdependent Smart Groups caused the response issues?