How to recover missing Address Book data
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!
Similar Posts:
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Tags: Address Book, Apple Mail Tips, backup, data loss, deleted contacts, not apple mail, Productivity, recovery
January 20th, 2007 at 1:59 am
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.)
January 20th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
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.
January 22nd, 2007 at 9:07 am
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!
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:55 am
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
February 6th, 2007 at 3:53 am
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
March 24th, 2007 at 6:11 am
I tried that and did not work!!! to bad for me!
April 30th, 2007 at 8:39 am
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…
May 16th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Help
I lost my enitre Address Book
And this did not work ?
Am I doing something wrong ?
Rich
May 26th, 2007 at 1:05 am
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.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
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.
June 15th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
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.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:48 am
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.
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:23 am
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.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
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?
October 15th, 2008 at 7:24 am
The File: AddressBook.data.previous opens up as an unreadable text file. Would appreciate help in knowing how to retrieve this data!
November 19th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Can find my names & address book of names & addressess 2007-2w008
June 28th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
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.
October 16th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I can’t retrieve my address book anymore at my apple .. can you show how to restore it on the desktop.
November 25th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
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!
December 10th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Thank you so much! I got it all back just in time for Christmas cards. FHEW!
December 10th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Thanks for letting me know. It always nice to feel a post is useful!
February 23rd, 2010 at 5:08 pm
The problem with this solution is that you have to notice the missing data prior to the automatic backup. My ‘AddressBook.data.previous’ is just as empty as the original data file. I note that it indicates that it was modified at noon today. That was after my original data file was already empty. So in my case, no solution. What’s really wierd is that my back up on my external hard drive is just as blank and I haven’t backed up to that disk, nor was it connected to my computer, for more than a month, way before this problem started. All I can think is that it’s a virus (??!!)
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:45 am
Huge thanks.
Didn’t work replacing AddressBook.data w/ AddressBook.data.previous
BUT then tried replacing AddressBook.data w/ AddressBook.data.beforesave
and as you said, WHEW!!!
Also tnx to replier who suggested Address Book>File>Back up Address Book -
April 7th, 2010 at 2:34 am
I back up my “trusted” Sony Cie regularly. However yesterday all my addresses disappeared. I have managed to locate them and import them back to my Palm but I am left with the majority of my “addresses” appearing empty- there are address files but no data within!
Any ideas why this has happened and how can I remedy the situation?
D Coffman dercof@ntlworld.com
May 13th, 2010 at 2:29 am
doesn´t work with “.data.previous”, now I´ll try with “.data.beforesave”
I loose my entire data after upgrade from 10.4 to 10.6, be aware with this
July 13th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Yesterday my wife upgraded her iPod Touch to iOS4. Then she tried syncing her iPod Touch to her MacBook (OS10.4.11). Wiped out all of the info in her iPod calendar and put nothing into iCal on her MacBook. Searched all over the internet. Nothing definitive. This morning, turned on the iPod Touch. All of her calendar info was back. So what happened? We don’t know. This afternoon, however, she made another discovery. The address book on both her iPod Touch and her MacBook had also disappeared. We managed to retrieve most of the data for her MacBook address book using Retrospect Express and an old February backup. Nothing for the iPod Touch. (Not ideal, but better than nothing. Of course, she’ll be creating backups of her MacBook address book regularly now.) Conclusions: 1) As so many are finding out, upgrading an iPod Touch to iOS4 is a bad idea, and 2) Apple needs to get its act together. These kind of syncing problems have been going on for years. My wife is losing confidence in Apple products. She is afraid to try syncing again, lest she lose valuable data for her business. So right now, her iPod Touch is a stand-alone device. That’s not what she paid for…