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Address book dropped contacts :(

C

chainprayer

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 10, 2008
638
2
I'm not sure if this is mac or iPhone related...

Yesterday I noticed that my iPhone had only about 25% of my usual contacts in it. I thought I would sync it today and make sure everything copied over well. Before syncing I checked address book on my mac to find that it was completely empty.

Any idea why these would be missing? I have a backup but it is from before I got my iPhone 2 weeks ago and had my contacts carried over from my old phone :( I can recover the contacts, but it would be a slow and long process and I don't want to have them go missing again.

halp!
 
I would go ahead and use the backup, im thinking that the contacts from your old phone screwed everything up. You shouldve synced them from the mac in the beginning
 
i actually wanted to avoid conflicts and problems and manually entered the contacts (i transferred myself)

another odd thing... i had other things in my address book (mostly email addresses) that are all missing. i have time machine backups back to november which don't show that i know were there a few days ago.
 
also not sure if this is relative but as i was posting i got this crash report (truncated for forum, kept whole log)

Code: 
Process:         Address Book [50952]
Path:            /Applications/Address Book.app/Contents/MacOS/Address Book
Identifier:      com.apple.AddressBook
Version:         5.0.1 (864)
Build Info:      AddressBook-8640000~4
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [119]

Date/Time:       2010-02-13 14:49:14.814 -0700
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.6.2 (10C540)
Report Version:  6

Interval Since Last Report:          67584 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           2
Per-App Interval Since Last Report:  19499 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   1
Anonymous UUID:                      79DD7ED5-8DF9-4187-9A4D-94F5632D718C

Exception Type:  EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread:  3

Application Specific Information:
<ABTimeMachineSource 0x1166682d0 'On My Mac'>: deallocated but not unloaded
abort() called
 
After entering several contacts again I found that everything was dumped again. Any contacts that are entered on my phone are removed every time I sync. This is very annoying! I've had my phone for a month now and still have a bare address book!
 
chainprayer said:
After entering several contacts again I found that everything was dumped again. Any contacts that are entered on my phone are removed every time I sync. This is very annoying! I've had my phone for a month now and still have a bare address book!
Click to expand...

One reason for your problems may be due to you not having any contacts in Address Book. Contacts syncing is a two-way sync. So, for example, if the last thing you did was delete all contacts in Address Book on your Mac, then when you synced there would be none on the iPhone (and vice versa).

Another issue may be that when asked to merge, you are saying no. Click yes. Also, make sure you have at least one contact in either the Mac or iPhone.

Finally, don't uncheck the box for syncing contacts, which some mistakenly do, since they think they're synced and can uncheck. Once it is checked again when you want to sync contacts, it'll wipe the contacts on the phone.

One final point, backup. Had you had a backup you would've been fine. Backup often. Backup.

Oh, and you can sync your contacts online to Funambol (the best and free) or other programs. That way you have another option if all hell breaks loose and everything that can go wrong does.
 
Hmm this is where it gets interesting...

1. All contacts on my mac were lost somehow
2. Time machine shows address book as empty for ther past 6 months when I know content was there. I do back up daily.
3. Since my contacts are lost upon sync I have no valid iTunes backup.
4. I am familiar with the sync process and have never had any merge/conflicts notifications.
5. I am choosing to sync contacts.
 
chainprayer said:
Hmm this is where it gets interesting...

1. All contacts on my mac were lost somehow
2. Time machine shows address book as empty for ther past 6 months when I know content was there. I do back up daily.
3. Since my contacts are lost upon sync I have no valid iTunes backup.
4. I am familiar with the sync process and have never had any merge/conflicts notifications.
5. I am choosing to sync contacts.
Click to expand...

I wasn't saying you didn't do those things. I was just listing ways you could be losing your contacts.

So, I'll just go over the process to see if maybe you did something different. You have contacts on your phone. When you attach the phone to iTunes, the first thing you'd do is backup. That doesn't do any syncing. It backs up all the things that can be backed up (contacts, calendar, etc., but not music, movies, pictures, etc....stuff that is synced). So, you should have a backup that has all that, sans music, etc. Then you do the sync after selecting all the places to sync to (Address Book, iCal, etc.) and then leaving everthing checked that you synced, you can then sync the music, photos, etc. FROM your Mac).

If you did it that way, I don't understand why you're losing contacts.
 
Earlier today I could see my contacts just fine on my iPhone. Later in the day I noticed I was getting a call from a contact and the number displayed and not their name? I looked and suddenly I did not have any contacts listed at all. :eek:

So, I tried to restore from a backup and I the only backup I can find is from today? I do see other iTunes libraries but I only see the backup from today. Any idea on getting my contacts back is appreciated.

I have an iPhone 3G and I am on Windows Vista.
 
ineedamac said:
Earlier today I could see my contacts just fine on my iPhone. Later in the day I noticed I was getting a call from a contact and the number displayed and not their name? I looked and suddenly I did not have any contacts listed at all. :eek:

So, I tried to restore from a backup and I the only backup I can find is from today? I do see other iTunes libraries but I only see the backup from today. Any idea on getting my contacts back is appreciated.

I have an iPhone 3G and I am on Windows Vista.
Click to expand...

Aren't you syncing your contacts? If not, start doing so from now on (for you that would be Outlook or Windows Contacts...whatever the selection it gives you in iTunes under the Info tab). The problem with backups, is that Apple seems to have stopped the process where you could have backups from different days. What you would have had to do is copy your backup folder sometime ago, so you could replace it with what is there now to go back to older stuff. I know, it's stupid. You also should think about syncing your contacts to an online program (I use Funambol). The more places you have the contacts, the better chance of not losing them. On the Mac, I even copied my Address Book file to make sure I could get them back, if everything else failed, and I have that file on another hard drive.

So, you've probably lost your contacts, unless you synced them.
 
I got a call from a friend today and her number came up instead of her name so I checked to see what was up with my contacts. I had NOT A SINGLE ONE! My contact list was totally empty. They were there yesterday and today they were gone after my sync last night. Luckily I still had all my texts with the numbers attached so I had all the most important people.

BUT when I got home and looked on my Macbook there they were. Now they're back on my phone, but I still don't know why they all disappeared. That's never happened to me and I've been an iPhone user since Day 1 in 2007.

Yet another reason to back up your stuff.
 
-aggie- I see that you are a MR regular and post often so let me ask your opinion of how to best manage contacts. (Anyone else can chime in as well)

First - I'm fine that my contacts are gone. None of the information was crucial and this may be an opportunity to better manage my contacts and then back them up regularly.

To help I have an iPhone 3G and I am on Vista. I sync with Exchange for my work email and I have a personal yahoo email on the iPhone as well. My question is where would you save your contacts if you were me? I believe my options are Outlook, yahoo or Windows contacts. I'd like the ability to update a contact on either my iPhone or laptop and have the information synced between the two. I do not currently use yahoo contacts but I'm not opposed to it. Thanks for your opinion.
 
ineedamac said:
-aggie- I see that you are a MR regular and post often so let me ask your opinion of how to best manage contacts. (Anyone else can chime in as well)

First - I'm fine that my contacts are gone. None of the information was crucial and this may be an opportunity to better manage my contacts and then back them up regularly.

To help I have an iPhone 3G and I am on Vista. I sync with Exchange for my work email and I have a personal yahoo email on the iPhone as well. My question is where would you save your contacts if you were me? I believe my options are Outlook, yahoo or Windows contacts. I'd like the ability to update a contact on either my iPhone or laptop and have the information synced between the two. I do not currently use yahoo contacts but I'm not opposed to it. Thanks for your opinion.
Click to expand...

Well, I only know what I've read, so consider the source, since I don't personally do this, but GMail and MobileMe are what people use for this purpose. I looked for a thread that might give you some detail on the pluses and minuses of each:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/928585/
 
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