Problems adding a new contact since upgrading to high Sierra?

Somehow the developers of CardHop (a pretty good contact manager, actually) seem to have solved this intractable problem without a hitch. Doubtless it is a problem right up there with squaring the circle and developing a perpetual motion machine, which is why Apple's finest software engineers have been baffled. No doubt they have spent thousands of hours trying to address the issue. They are just so busy they have not had time to tell anyone.

Same problem here. Everytime you try to create a card, Contacts create an empty card.

I found the solution. Make sure you have a backup.

First quit Contacts.

Then, go to the AddressBook folder in Application Support :

Users/your user/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

Delete theses three files :

AddressBook-v22.abcddb

AddressBook-v22.abcddb-shm

AddressBook-v22.abcddb-wal

Open Contacts.

Everything should be back to normal.

No no no.. some of us are still reading what you wrote after we wrote. But theres not much "new" so you might not get replies from earlier commentators here. But yes the problem still exists. And we are simply forced to continue to use temporary workarounds. Until it gets solved by Apple, Google or them both in a teamwork? I use wifi offline mode, its not very effective or the best, but what to do? And Im one of those who need both Icloud and Gmail for some reasons.. lets hope it gets solved asap or (not preferable sooner or later.

Seems like Apple does not fully test desktop apps to be seamlessly compatible with their mobile devices/apps. I guess sitting down and concentrating on one task has gone out of fashion. The best we could hope for would be a patch in one of their monthly updates. Second best, would be to contact Apple and they won't admit to the problem but will have some sort of work around - perhaps more kludgy than the one suggested (works, by the way). Third would be to have the problem resolved in yet another silly named OS upgrade; I'm suggesting "San Andreas" . I'm just sayin'

Thank-you!! This most definitely does help! Not even knowing where all the failed contact cards disappeared to, I discovered a whole string of "no names" to delete. (after successfully using one of them to make into the most recent contact I've been attempting to add.)

I appreciate your sharing.

Yes, that's the central issue. Contacts works only with Apple's iCloud server, and Apple has not done a ****** thing about it. There are a great many users of Google Apps, or other mail/contacts services, for whom migrating to iCloud is neither desirable nor feasible. Contacts *used* to work seamlessly with these other platforms, but since High Sierra was rolled out many months ago, it does not. Many other contacts managers running on High Sierra seem to have found a solution to this gargantuan challenge. Perhaps Apple should just throw in the towel and ask these geniuses how they managed to conquer this issue. Look at how long, and long-running, this thread is!

I was fortunate to briefly meet face-to-face with an Apple Systems Engineer here in Southern CA last Wednesday, 3/21/2018 at 1 PM PST.

He was aware of this issue, and he asserted that a fix was to be issued by Apple "next week". (He was not clear whether this is to be a new mac OS numbered release.)

I am also very frustrated by Apple's non-acknowledgement of this problem, and appreciate your concern and your posts. It seems obvious that Apple has no responsible individual actually monitoring this "discussion" forum. Perhaps this matter needs to be re-identified in a separate "problem" or "issue" forum. Is there such a thing? Apologies for my ignorance, but I remember when "it just works"!

Best, Bob.

Cannot (yet) verify this. A 2.58 GB upgrade, it contains comprehensive text describing Apple's privacy matters and has also added a notification feature which indicates when one's info is being shared. Good to see! Contacts and numerous other apps are obviously affected.

Tried again, still works okay! Once, when I clicked "new contact" the field were pre-filled with a mix of very different contact details, later this did not happen.

By the way, when replying here, sometimes today since the upgrade I get the message that it is impossible "because no secure connection to idmsa.apple.com could be established" -- when I tried the same URL in Firefox it did work.

I've seen the same type of issue and have figured out how to reproduce at-will (and also how to now avoid). If you enter something into the "search" field and then attempt to add a new contact.. some short period of time later the edit of that new contact will abort and you will have some other contact already in your database open in edit mode. You can at this point click "done" without changing anything for the existing contact. The partially completed new contact might not show up in your contacts for a short while.. or you can close contacts and re-open to hopefully now find that new partially completed (because interrupted) new contact.. edit and complete the input of the new contact.

The bug has to do with having an active search first and then trying to add a new contact. Very common thing.. have new contact info for Joe Bug.. search first to see if already in contacts.. don't see him in your search results. Start adding new and then *wham* it aborts while in the middle of typing..

If you do not search or if you clear the search first before entering the new contact, it will not do this anymore.

So, there's the bug.. please now Apple - go fix it.

Now.. I've seen another bug.. which I can't replicate at-will yet.. sometimes I begin entering new info (like a name) into a new contact and the name is displayed backwards!! I'm not typing it backwards.. Jane Bug shows up as enaJ guB. Very weird...

Very helpful post! Thank you for your careful and logical research!

Apple needs to add a logic check code step to ascertain if a search is active in Contacts. If so, it needs to add a GUI choice to cancel it, or automatically cancel it, if a new contact vCard is elected to be created. This means either by "command n" or any other means for which new information is attempted to be added by a (human) user.

Maybe that explanation will help Apple fix it; I hope so.

I have not (yet) observed the backwards typing bug - very strange indeed.

You would want to think after 18 years MacOS X, it should not be a problem anymore creating a contact and having it uploaded to iCloud without any problem. But no. Here we are. Creating a contact. And still its impossible to use adressbook without any issues. This is nothing but a basic feature.

You may have a rosy expectation of Apple. Their game is to make as much money as possible, and this requires out-competing the competition in public-facing features. IOW, more bells'n'whistles. Having Contacts work transparently is way down their list of priorities. I'm grateful that so much of my Mac works in the many., many ways that it does, and I take the hours of troubleshooting as part of the costs of having these tools ready-to-hand.

pete

Well, it's Aug 2018, I'm running Mac 11.4 , have iCloud and Google syncing and I am now seeing this happen. Replies from Jeffersons and emmacat are dead-on accurate. The last Apple response was over a year ago. Problem still happens.

Guessing that it won't get resolved. Thanks Obama Apple.

I now stopped the connection to Google's contacts in the preferences: