HELP - Adress book is empty!

[Bob Dobbs]

ummm not sure whats going on, but i got back from Turkey Day Vacation and now when I start to type an addy in the mail program is does not auto complete, so i poped open my address book to find.... NOTHING!!!! About 280 contacts gone.

Where? Can i get 'em back? please say yes.

[MoparShaha]

Did you backup the database? Try going to the File menu and clicking "Revert to backup database". Hopefully that will restore things, but if you never clicked the backup button, it probably won't work.

[Bob Dobbs]

Also tried to open my iChat - and it brought me to the Welcome to iChat - as if it was the 1st time. Did iChatAv expire and mess up my address book?

filled with rage... my 20 year old falling apart phone book has never failed me

[MoparShaha]

It sounds like something happened to your Library folder in your Home folder. Over the weekend, my friend accidently renamed my Library to some random letters, and everything went back to the defaults. I had to rename the Library back to "Library", and everything was back. Also, try doing a search for "address book" and see what turns up. It sounds like something got renamed or misplaced, not deleted. I would assume your files are still there, but somehow are not being recognized.

[Bob Dobbs]

thanks for trying to help, the library folder is in the right place, still called library, and in the subfolder called Application Support is another folder called Address Book which has 5 things in it:
ABPerson.index
AddressBook.data
AddressBook.data.beforesave
AddressBook.data.previous
and a folder called Images, which has a few (4) odd files with crazy names like
CBEB106-DC79 and so on for another 30 characters.

I tried to open the AddressBook.data.previous it asks "What Application" so I guide it to AddressBook and get this error
Opperation Could Not Be Completed
Unexpected error... code -10814

Hope that gives you enough to chew on.
Oh by the way OSX 10.2.6 Dual 1 gig mirror door

Thanks again - I'll be checking back 1st thing tomorrow.

[MoparShaha]

Hmm, its not looking too good then. What is the file size of your "AddressBook.data" file? I've got about 100 contacts, and mine is 616k. If yours is less than that, then I'd say all your contacts are gone. If its more, which it should be if you have more contacts, then something is corrupted. I've got a feeling that you've lost everything though.

[Bob Dobbs]

Bummer, mine is 20K LOL.
BUT, the AddressBook.data.previous is 1MB... but thats the one that crashes when I try to open it.

Well I wonder what happened? Was is the iChat - (Still have to fix that now too) expire? Something else.

Thanks for your time and help, if you REALLY wanna help come on over and start typing all my contacts into the machine... oh wait, thats what my boss pays me to do.

cya
thanks again

[MoparShaha]

One last thing you could try is to rename the "AddressBook.data.previous" to "AddressBook.data", maybe that'll work. Good luck.

[Bob Dobbs]

OMG
YOU ROCK
Thanks that did it -well almost - 236 out of 280.

Wish I thought of that.

Now.... if only I could get my Handspring Visor to sync....

...but thats another post

[MoparShaha]

Cool. Glad to hear you got most of your contacts back. Just remember to backup often! ;)

[Macette]

threads like this give me a warm, fuzzy, Macrumors Rocks feeling.

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