Today MacFixIt carries one of those gut-wrenching horror stories 
from a reader that you read about from time to time:
Tonight, while cleaning up my address book to sync to the blackberry, I got the spinning ball of death, which resulted in having to restart the computer. When I did, address book was empty the next time I opened it. Database gone. Backup database gone.
Not long ago, a Hawk Wings reader experienced something similar after syncing his PowerBook with a Nokia 6682. Although he enjoyed the added bonus of a very puzzling exchange with Apple Tech Support following his wipe-out.
Of course, prevention is the best cure. That is to say, you can’t really lose what you have backed up. Back up your ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder often.
However, if you find yourself in a jam and the backup is not as up-to-date as it might be, there is still hope.
Address Book is smart. It keeps a little backup of its own in a AddressBook.data.previous file inside the directory mentioned above:
To restore it, all you need to do is quit Address Book, delete the dead AddressBook.data file and rename the backup to AddressBook.data. Whew!
Having just gone through this myself recently, I’m going to add one other thing:
If you notice your address book gone on one machine, and you’re using .mac to sync, IMMEDIATELY stop your syncing from that machine. Stop syncing from as many as you can.
Presumably, one of the machines will still have a good .previousdata file – restore that machine from that one.
Then, from whichever machine has the good data: in the Advanced panel in the .Mac prefpane, there’s this “Reset Sync Data” button – click it, and then pick “Address Book”, then click the arrow so it’s from the computer up to .Mac.
On each blanked machine, re-enable the sync, then go to the same Reset Sync Data button, and sync it the other way.
It’s a pain to do it manually, but at least the controls are there. (And this also works with any other sync data .Mac supports, even third party stuff like Transmit favorites.)
It’s worth noting that in the File menu of Address Book (and iCal as well) is a Backup database option which will save a time-stamped version of the database to a folder or your choice. You can revert to these Backups at any time.
I have had the same experience when I synced my Palm Treo 680. All appeared Okay but the process seemed to be taking longer than usual. I thought this was because I had added a number of new addresses into my Palm, so I left the sync running and went to bed. When I checked the following morning the spinning beachball was on the screen, the palm looked as if it had synced successfully, but the addresses were all missing leaving only those in the sim intact, and the Mac AddressBook had only two entries of the original 180 or so.
I cannot open AddressBook Data or AddressBook Data Previous to check their contents in the AddressBook folder. Please help, I have limited knowledge of troubleshooting and am becoming desperate!
i wish i had seen this like two days ago. treo ate my contact. i had backed it up in august so it wasn’t totally gone but a lot of new stuff is missing.
alot. i found the previous file, but it’s not dated, so i don’t know if it’s just better to stay with what I have?
what do you think
tricia@triciaromanoc.com
This fix saved me a pile of time, and actually is an answer to prayer. I synced to my Motorola RAZR V3c, and lo and behold my address book lost almost all phone numbers and email addresses!
Everything in my address book is now back to normal, and I’ve created multiple backups, even for iCal.
Thank you for caring enough to provide this solution!!
Dave
I tried that and did not work!!! to bad for me!
I’ll add my voice to the chorus for data backup—BOOTABLE, if you can (I’m going to lose 3 days to this mess, but I’ve learned my lesson.)
Thanks for this. My data got scrambled in a hard drive failure and all those neatly named backups vanished. But miraculously, the library backups were there! Woohoo!
Now, on to calendar…
Help
I lost my enitre Address Book
And this did not work ?
Am I doing something wrong ?
Rich
I’m frustrated. I think I tried syncing it twice, thinking that it was a problem with my phone and not realising that the problem was that all my contacts in my Address Book was wiped out except for three. So my .previous file is exactly the same as the wiped out database.
I’m doing no syncing or anything else but using address book with apple mail under Tiger. To heck with backup. I do it, but I’m always behind a few hours. How many times a day do you expect me to backup? What I want to see is a fix for this bug! Unpredictable vaporization of the address book is unacceptable. I’ve seen this bug complained about on various forums since 2004 with zero response from Apple. We need a revision of Address Book that fixes the problem not the same old advice on how to recover. Oh, for the good old days of Apple bug-free products.
Same thing happened to me. I was not synching, just using the address book, when suddenly all contacts (over 4000, several groups, a lot of labor) just disappeared. While I was looking around on .mac (I synch there), and sadly pondering my almost one month old backup on disk (mid-May), all the addresses suddenly re-appeared! So, I backed them up and synched them! Then, just as suddenly, they all disappeared again!
OK, so I haven’t lost anything (except time, on a Sunday morning, because I am in a deadline situation) but … what’s up with this? Terrible product.
Hello
I want to add my experience to this forum. If you are like me and have tried to do the above mentioned trick and it didn’t work, you may see as I did the big file (mine was 21 mbtes) AddressBook.data
If it is too corrupt to work again. Mine was. Don’t throw it away since it is possible to drag it onto the TextEdit application and to make a Find for certain info which you may remember part of like someone’s email address for example. It’s a good idea to drag this file out and keep it just in case there is something you need to find.
Luckily (since I back up my files) I had only to go back 1 month to get a backup of my address book. It’s times like these that you know why you do it.
To suffer a complete corruption of an address book on a PowerMac is just not acceptable. I am on 10.4.11
If anyone from Apple read this.. Take it from me, it was a BAD thing to have happen. Could have been much worse though if I hadn’t got a backup.
all good stuff as usual Hawkwings. I have a slight oddity to add to this scenario. My Address Book shows all my contacts but when I backup from the file menu or manually copying the Address Book folder in Library/App Support I only get a portion of my contacts backed up. I don’t understand why about 12 contacts simply aren’t included – has me baffled!
If anyone can shed light on this I’d be hugely grateful.
This seems like a great option but I have one dilemma. I wake up every morning and re-sync my iPhone for podcasts, not realizing that my roommates phone had tried to sync to my computer the night before. This forced my address book to delete and now the .previous file is empty too. Is there any way to solve this?
The File: AddressBook.data.previous opens up as an unreadable text file. Would appreciate help in knowing how to retrieve this data!
Can find my names & address book of names & addressess 2007-2w008
If your address book is still empty after trying the above, repeat the process except with AddressBook.data.beforesave. That worked for me fortunately. And I backed up my address book immediately upon reopening and finding my contacts there.
I can’t retrieve my address book anymore at my apple .. can you show how to restore it on the desktop.
You guys are freaking Awesome! Much Thanks! ..
I just recovered all of my contacts!
I am using snow leopard and so it seams the files names a little different but in essence the steps are the same, you can recognized which is the backup file by the date it was created on.
Thanks!
Thank you so much! I got it all back just in time for Christmas cards. FHEW!
Thanks for letting me know. It always nice to feel a post is useful!