So I woke up my computer from getting home from class and all my contacts are gone. I don't know if the files have been deleted or if they were just moved out of address book. All I know is that I plugged in my iPhone thinking the contacts on it will sync back into the computer. Nope. Deleted the contacts from the phone. So now I have a record on my 5G iPod, but I don't want to have to put them all back in manually. Does anyone know where these files are stored in the computer?
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Address Book Contacts Gone
- Thread starter CyberEv88
- Start date
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There's nothing in the Application Support folder?... Could your data have been moved accidentally? You're looking for a file named AddressBook.data, which is usually right where wise ol' LizKat said. 
Did you guys ever work out what happened? Because I have had the same thing happen to me and can't find that file either.
JUles
JUles
julesbunny, can you think of any reason why that file may have been removed? Are you using any maintenance apps? Have you used any system hack apps that may remove some files? Do you have .Mac syncing?
hello Mad Jew... I don't think so. Will check with a chap in my office his is a bit more it savvy than me... i did look in the file string that you mentioned and there are a number of files with the same/similar names. Do you think this could be causing the problem?
Library/Application Support/AddressBook etc and found these files...
ABPerson.skIndexInverted
ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted
AddressBook.data
AddressBook.data.
AddressBook.data.previous
Images
My problem is that I do not know which ones should be there and how to rehook up the correct one. The file names AddressBook.data.previous seems to have the right date at the night I lost everything. Any suggestions?
J
Library/Application Support/AddressBook etc and found these files...
ABPerson.skIndexInverted
ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted
AddressBook.data
AddressBook.data.
AddressBook.data.previous
Images
My problem is that I do not know which ones should be there and how to rehook up the correct one. The file names AddressBook.data.previous seems to have the right date at the night I lost everything. Any suggestions?
J
Okay, close Address Book, move AddressBook.data and AddressBook.data. to the Desktop and then rename AddressBook.data.previous to AddressBook.data before reopening Address Book. Did that get your entries back?
Long time, I know..
Yes I know the thread is sort of stale, however I had the same issue just now. I replaced the address book file with the 'previous' one, as mentioned above, and changed the name. Everything is now fine (except for some minor changes made since the save date of the 'previous' file - but that was minor and easy to fix).
So I would recommend this step. I also think you should make a backup right now!! Especially if your address book is working just fine. I had made a back up, but the data was 6 months old. Still it would have been better than nothing!
Thanks Mad jew!
Yes I know the thread is sort of stale, however I had the same issue just now. I replaced the address book file with the 'previous' one, as mentioned above, and changed the name. Everything is now fine (except for some minor changes made since the save date of the 'previous' file - but that was minor and easy to fix).
So I would recommend this step. I also think you should make a backup right now!! Especially if your address book is working just fine. I had made a back up, but the data was 6 months old. Still it would have been better than nothing!
Thanks Mad jew!
Another long time....but same problem
This same thing just happened to me and I came upon this thread. I wasn't syncing anything at the time of the incident. First, a couple entries changed to "No Name" then all of them did. So I shut AB and opened it again to find everything was gone!! Luckily, I had the AddressBook.data.previous file in place, so I just removed the ".previous" extension and it worked. It was last modified yesterday, so I didn't loose any info. Then I quickly made a back up of everything! This is scary!!
This same thing just happened to me and I came upon this thread. I wasn't syncing anything at the time of the incident. First, a couple entries changed to "No Name" then all of them did. So I shut AB and opened it again to find everything was gone!! Luckily, I had the AddressBook.data.previous file in place, so I just removed the ".previous" extension and it worked. It was last modified yesterday, so I didn't loose any info. Then I quickly made a back up of everything! This is scary!!