address book just erased ALL my contacts:(

[MacsomJRR]

Hi there,

If anyone can help I would be much appreciative...

I started moving people in a new group that I'd created in Address Book when all of a sudden the darn thing started "hanging." I forced quit the app after waiting maybe 10 mins while finishing up a word doc that I'd been working on. I reopened Address Book and the same thing happened (the hanging). THen I restarted and when I tried it again ALL of my contacts were missing and I can't find them anywhere. I checked application support and nothing obvious there... where are they???

Thanks so much for any replies.

 

[mad jew]

Is there a file named AddressBook.data.previous in the Address Book folder within Application Support? Maybe have a look through this hint.

 

[MacsomJRR]

i looked into that but I'm a little worried about messing with the files because I've already added a bunch of old (a couple new) addresses etc.. into my address book again. The Addressbook.data.previous file also has a smaller file size that the current file which makes me think it is a previous save of my address book after it was erased and I added a couple addresses.

This was the strangest thing. I don't remember what I did or what I had installed but whatever happened I lost every single contact I had. Bummer. It is not that big of a deal for me though seen as I'm a grad student and the less contacts I have and the more time I spend with my head in a book the better

Thanks for your help Mad!

 

[mad jew]

Well, maybe make a duplicate of your current data file and keep it on the Desktop as a backup, then try the previous data file technique. Good luck.

 

[Baculo]

Address Book Crash

i looked into that but I'm a little worried about messing with the files because I've already added a bunch of old (a couple new) addresses etc.. into my address book again. The Addressbook.data.previous file also has a smaller file size that the current file which makes me think it is a previous save of my address book after it was erased and I added a couple addresses.

This was the strangest thing. I don't remember what I did or what I had installed but whatever happened I lost every single contact I had. Bummer. It is not that big of a deal for me though seen as I'm a grad student and the less contacts I have and the more time I spend with my head in a book the better

Thanks for your help Mad!

This exact scenario just happened to me. I was trying to set up a New Smart Group, when suddenly, the application stopped responding. When I went to the Force Quit window, Address Book, iCal, Safari, Mail, and maybe others (I can't remember) were ALL not responding. I clicked on Force Quit. It said (as usual) that unsaved changes would be deleted which was fine. However, I was shocked when I reopened Address Book, everything was gone, and as posted above, the libary files were completely overwritten! Yes, I know I should have had a backup. Unfortunately, the most recent one is one year old.
I suspect there is no way to get this information back because the data files were overwritten!
Does anyone know what is in the files: ABPerson.index and ABPerson.skIndex. They do not seem to be updated since their creation date.

Update: sorry I should have said this happened on a 24" iMac (Intel) running 10.4.7 (I have been afraid to run the update 10.4.8)

Update 2: just noticed that my LDAP settings in Mail have been deleted! What else will I discover has been deleted?

 

[mad jew]

Baculo, have you renamed any system folders (namely the Home folder) recently?

 

[Baculo]

Baculo, have you renamed any system folders (namely the Home folder) recently?

No, nothing at all like that. Yesterday, I did an archive and reinstall.

After working for some time with iMovie, Peak and SoundSoap, I experienced another application crash (iMovie). I am losing confidence in the OS on this intel machine!

 

[mad jew]

Well, do you have plenty of free space? If you verify your disk in Disk Utility (not verify permissions, but verify the entire disk), does it come back with any errors? If you create a new user account, do the problems carry over to it?

 

[Baculo]

Well, do you have plenty of free space? If you verify your disk in Disk Utility (not verify permissions, but verify the entire disk), does it come back with any errors? If you create a new user account, do the problems carry over to it?

The iMac has a 500 GB drive, Disk Utility did not find any errors.

Today, ran into a problem with Remote Desktop 2.2. After trying to open it, got an error message that the admin software needed to be updated; use system software update. Of course, this it the latest version and there is no update. After reinstalling Remote Desktop a couple of times, without success, remembered that to install on an Intel Mac, one has to remove a folder as outlined in the article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303128
However, when I followed those instructions, and rebooted, and tried to open the system preference Sharing to turn Remote Desktop back on, I got another error message:
'Preferences Error. You cannot open Sharing Preferences pane on this computer. Contact developer of this software for a newer version'
Found a reference to this issue on-line:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=56878&sharing+pane
Sure enough, my Sharing Preference Pane "Kind" was PowerPC instead of Universal! (Where the heck did that come from?)
Anyway, after calling Apple Tech Support, and working through the Remote Desktop tech, we were able to rescue the Sharing Preference folder from my Archived System folder (See above, I did an archive and install)
Seems to be a lot of issues flowing around my machine, which are taking up my time, in a big way!
I am posting this in case others have similar problems.
Cheers