All contacts disappeared from Address Bo

B

Beerad

Registered
All of my contacts disappeared from my Address Book and I am totally stuck in the water. How do I get them back?

My details:
-OS: most current version of OSX on iMac
-email provider: Gmail, but Mac contacts NOT shared w/ Google, but Gmail somehow lifted the contacts and are now online (not happy about this)
-email client: Outlook for Mac 2011 (contacts still good here, but export will require massive reformatting effort)
-TimeMachine active: Yes
-Smart phone: Android with direct-wired contacts from iMac. Smart phone contacts are intact and can be transferred as long as they aren't at risk of loss.

The only thing I can imagine that might have happened is that a few days ago, I corrected a Gmail syncing error on my smart phone, which involved resetting IMAP settings, and redoing my iCal subscriptions. These efforts were successful in getting incoming emails to land in the Inbox on my Android and to get iCal and the Android to show the same calendar entries.
 
If as you say, your TM is active and up to date then try the following...

From Finder top menu select "Go" then "Go to folder", now enter "~/Library/Application Support/" (less the quotes) and hit "return".
Your Address book folder should be up near the beginning, select it and now you want to enter the Time Machine.
From here go back in time to a point you think will be safe and then click Restore.
 
jbarley, thank you for the reply.

Oh wow, this opens a whole new can of worms: After following the steps you recommend, but stopping prior to "Restore," at the "safe" date (I chose 9/15/11), I drilled down into the applications to the Address Book, and found that the last backup was made on 3/29/11 -- WTF???? Next, I clicked on the Address Book application in order to see if there is some sort of trigger for me to pull in order to get the Address Book to be backed up on my command, and found nothing! How do I protect myself in the future?

Here's the problem: I know for certain that I have made changes to my contacts in my Address Book several times between that lonely 3/29 backup and 9/15, so what do I need to do to get TM to backup that very volatile data every day?

As for getting my missing contacts back onto my iMac, prior to receiving your response, I opted to export a .vcf (Vcard) file of the contacts residing on my Android, and these imported perfectly back into my Address Book.
 
After losing once every contact that had a US phone number somewhere back when 10.2 was the latest system out there, I've kept doing an address book backup every time before I do a sync with something that interferes with it.
You can do it manually from Address Book, and it only takes a moment.
Or if you don't sync it regularly, once a month could suffice.
 
Giaguara, thank you for the suggestion -- I just created an archive! Such is life in the land of automated tech....
 
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