Lion smoked my MobileMe Contacts!!!

[Tom Sawyer]

So just finished having a bit of a wrestling match after my clean Lion install. Everything went perfectly smooth, apps install, ilife 11, updates etc. Then I set about to turn on MobileMe and get everything synced up. I configured MobileMe as I have many times before, told it what to sync and when it asked told it to REPLACE the information on this computer. Everything (so I thought) came in fine... email account, transmit preferences, bookmarks etc. However, when I went into my address book, blank (except for my account and Apple). I thought hmm... let me check my iPhone... contacts wiped.

No idea what might have happened, but something seriously went bump. Fortunately I air on the side of paranoid (having been bit by data loss) and had not only run a time machine backup to my server but also to a spare sata hard drive. Pulled it up.. and of course found the contacts folder in App Support/Address Book. Problem was, I couldn't find a way to import those files into the new Address book. The import function simply did not see it....

So I ended up getting on my son's 17" iMac still running SL (thankfully), dropped my Address Book folder into my profile on it, turned on mobileme sync and told it to replace the data on MobileMe. Presto... Lion machine pops up data changed, selected replace data on computer and my contacts appeared. Likewise my contacts on my iPhone popped right back up.

No idea if this is an isolated incident or if anyone else has experienced it, but just to be safe, I would EXPORT your address book to an address book archive before doing the clean install!

 

[BoyRacer]

Contacts (Addressbook, MobileMe) lost during Lion Clean Install

I also lost my contacts during a clean install of Lion.

Obviously the Addressbook files under /Library/Application Support/Addressbook were fresh after a clean install. However, whenever I've done clean installs of Snow Leopard, Leopard, etc I've only had to enter my MobileMe credentials in the MobileMe System Preference for my calendars and contacts to populate from my MobileMe account.

Upon installing Lion, my MobileMe contacts were deleted. Oddly, my calendars were fine and appeared as expected in iCal.

I did NOT overwrite any content on the server; I was presented with a dialog box asking how I wished to handle this first sync; as always in this circumstance, I chose for the server to overwrite my local computer.

In addition to my hourly Time Machine backups to my Drobo, I had made a complete and bootable backup of my Snow Leopard install using SuperDuper before attempting the clean Lion install. So, I recovered from the loss of my contacts by booting from the SuperDuper backup, running Addressbook, exporting an Address Book Archive and importing that into Lion's Addressbook app. One quick sync with MobileMe later and all my contacts were restored to MobileMe and then, in turn, appeared on my iPad and iPhone.

During my initial efforts to discover whether this was already a known issue with a simply solution I found this article on Apple's Knowledge Base:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4758

It explains the difference between the MobileMe Preferences Pane and the Mail, Contacts, & Calendars preferences pane. Its confusing - I'm still not clear why Apple introduced the new pane; Apple doesn't appear to know either; just read it. Or perhaps Apple is saying very little so as to obfuscate their need for this interim solution before iCloud debuts in the autumn.

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

I had the exact same problem and the exact same circumstances.

fresh install of Lion and no contacts. My contacts would sync with my iMac (Lion) and they would eliminate all my MobileMe contacts.

Lucky I had everything still on my mini.

Bloody hell apple, get your ***** together when it comes to MobileMe.