Cannot Retrieve Address Book details from a Backup

Yossarian · #1 March 8th, 2008, 04:24 AM

Hi.
This is my first post here, so please bear with me? I have searched, unsuccesfully, the forums here for an answer and also lived on Google for the past 2 days, also without success.

I am running Mac OS X Tiger. A friend wants me to retrieve all of the data from an Address Book Backup sent her on a CD from abroad. Nothing I have done works!
The size of the Backup is 5.6MB.
I have created a new account for the purpose. With Address Book (AB) open, File > Revert to address book backup gave only 2 card entries, one being the User and the other the Apple Mac welcome card.
After trying many other things, here is what I finally did before posting here ....

Showed the contents of the Backup file.
Copied the Metadata (size = 2.5MB) folder to User>Library>Caches>com.apple.AddressBook
Copied the following files to User>Library>ApplicationSupport>AddressBook:
AddressBook.data
ABPerson.skIndexInverted
ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted
AddressBook-v22.abcddb
Copied the folder "Images" to the same location.

Those were all the files within the Backup.

Restarted the computer, repaired permissions etc and opened Address Book. Still the same 2 cards as before..

Can anybody please tell me what I am doing wrong and why what I have done doesn't work?

Thanks for your help.

jjamjar · #2 August 22nd, 2008, 07:43 AM

if anyone knows the answer to this it would be of great help - I recently had a similar experience trying to open an AB backup on a usb stick for a friend. Tried many of the things described by Yossarian to no avail.

if you can help with this then many thanks from me too!

linds · #3 March 20th, 2009, 08:48 PM

Aughh! I have been having similar problems and I can't seem to figure it out either.

My situation is that the files are emailed to me from a macbook air. I'm on a mac mini. I am afraid I am new to macs and can't get much more specific.

Like Yossarian all the pertinent files seem to be there, they simply won't open in the address book.

If anyone has any ideas, please help!

dixonbm · #4 March 27th, 2009, 11:15 AM

It could have something to do with the fact that you are working in a different version of Addressbook than what it was exported from. You should try using the same version. This means you may need to be running the same Mac OS 10.x.x version. Goodluck.