Address Book crashes upon opening

R

rosiegirl8

Registered
i've been dealing with this problem for weeks and i can't figure anything out. my address book was working fine for years. then i got the verizon iphone and tried to make smart groups so i could use them on the iphone. once i started doing that, the program got really buggy and cranky. wouldn't allow me to click on anything but i could use the menus to edit smart groups and i could quit without having to force quit.

i tried the whole removing the plist thing and i tried trashing address book and reinstalling from my leopard disk.

now every time i try to open address book, it crashes. i do not care at all about losing my contacts because i have them elsewhere. i just want to be able to use address book (apparently, i need to have my info in there for ical to send me email reminders?) i synced my iphone to my macbook so i really just need address book to open.

any other suggestions? or details about how to uninstall and reinstall? even when i trash address book and restart, a new plist file shows up in my preferences.

as a side note, i was able to open address book as another user on my computer.

help!

(using an intel imac, running 10.5.8, leopard)
 
Do you have a backup of the AddressBook data?

Try deleting the preferences for that app (this should not touch the AddressBook addresses);
[your user's home folder]/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist

When AB is not running, drag that file to desktop (or you can delete it).
If after this AB launches and functions without problems, delete that plist file from the desktop.
 
thanks...i'm not really worried about losing data at this point, i just want to be able to open address book and start from scratch.

i've trying trashing the plist files many many times!
 
Make sure you don't have any Address Plugins added on your Account (/YourHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins).
 
Then go back to /YpurHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ and copy the files AddressBook-v22.abcddb & AddressBook-v22~.abcddb to your desktop. Then delete those files back in the folder. This way you can see if either of these two files caused the crashing. With the back of those files you could delete them (if it fixed the crashing) or put back into their original place.

After this I have no other ideas, sorry. Good Luck.
 
One thing that has always worked for me when I have had similar problems is to reinstall the troublesome App.
To do this you need to get the utility "Pacifist"
And you also will need the 10.5.8 combo update

Run the Pacifist utility and drop (open) the 10.5.8 install package, find the Address book app and select install from the Pacifist menu, follow the prompts to install to original location, replacing the original application.

This is actually easier to do, then to write this how-to.
 
removing the application support files didn't work, sadly.


is there no way to uninstall and then reinstall on my own? or does it just make sense to buy pacifist?
 
I'm sorry, Pacifist works just fine in trial "Free" mode, just have to wait for a ten second timer reminder message.
Pacifist is a good utility to have in ones arsenal, it lets you extract just the file you want from installation packages, including install DVDs.
It makes it easy for instance to downgrade a Safari version if for any reason you're unhappy with the latest update.
 
rosiegirl8 said:
removing the application support files didn't work, sadly.


is there no way to uninstall and then reinstall on my own? or does it just make sense to buy pacifist?
Click to expand...

Don't delete it just yet. As others had said Pacifist will work with some wait. Then use it to find the Address Book application on your OS X DVD and replace the installed version. Then use software Update to get the updates for Address Book. Then hopefully this will work.
 
You should use the latest 10.6 disk (since you already have 10.6)bto try to find the Address Book on the DVD.
 
rosiegirl8 stated in her first post she was using 10.5.8, hence my suggestion that she download the 10.5.8 combo update and extract the mail app from there.
 
thanks. i tried using pacifist with the 10.5.8 update, and also with my leopard disc and my original install discs. it's still crashing as soon as it opens.

so strange...is there a reason that a whole new install also wouldn't work? i just want to start from scratch...i don't even need my contacts!

OR, is there any way to send reminder emails from ical without using address book?
 
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