I tried to set up iCloud to sync all of our devices. That turned out to be a real nightmare. I disabled it, but found that all of my Contacts data was deleted. I located the vCard data file, but Contacts does not recognize it for import. How do I get my information back?
Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)
Contacts does not store its data in vCard files. It exports data in that format. I don't know where the file you have came from, but it wasn't created automatically by Contacts, and apparently it doesn't contain anything useful.
Bring the Contacts window forward, then enter Time Machine and scroll back to a snapshot that includes the contacts you want to restore. Select the contacts and click the Restore button in the lower right corner of the screen.
If you don't have a Time Machine backup, but your contacts are all on iCloud and haven't been overwritten, then you can recover them by following the instructions on this page. Double-click the downloaded file to import it into Contacts. This procedure won't work if you've synced an empty Contacts database to iCloud.
How was this file created? What backups do you have?
I remembered from past migrations that the address book data is contained in vCards. I located the file in the Library in a backup from my time machine.
That did it! Many thanks!
How do I restore vCard data to Contacts?
