Suddenly this afternoon, the list of my contacts in the Contacts app is empty. It’s still populated on my iPhone, with a few hundred entries.
If I go into Time Machine with Contacts open, I see nothing before today (folders are backed up to some time last year). Clicking the up-arrow brings a window which seems to have all the contacts; I click restore and they appear in the app; but as soon as I click on any of them, they all disappear again.
Any ideas gratefully received. I’ve done nothing on the Mac today other than edit some photos, log out and log in again.
I know how distressing this can be! So I just wanted to offer this possibility since I see no one else has commented yet.
This might be completely off the mark as I don’t use Contacts anymore or much of iCloud, but could this be something like your Contacts app is showing what is stored in iCloud, and your internet connection is not working right or some other glitch is there preventing Contacts connecting with iCloud?
Certainly savvier TBTers will chime in soon. Fingers crossed nothing was permanently lost…
I don’t have Tahoe on any of my Macs currently but a persistent bug I have with macOS Contacts is that an entry will become invisible after an edit is saved. The entry reappears after Contacts is quit and relaunched. So a quick thing to try, if you haven’t already, is to quit Contacts and restart it. If that doesn’t work, the ever-popular “reboot macOS” is another easy step to take.
Some thoughts/questions that may have already occured, but just in case…Are your contacts synced between your Mac and iPhone via iCloud? If so, do you see all your contacts on iCloud.com? On your Mac, do you see AddressBook-v22.abcddb files in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook? If so, how big are they (main file, -shm, and -wal)?
I think we need to know: Do you sync the contacts between the Mac and iPhone, and, if so, how do you keep them synced? iCloud? Google Contacts? Syncing directly with the Mac via the Finder, a la iTunes of old? Or are the contacts supposed to be stored “on your Mac” rather than synced?
On your Mac, go to the “View” menu and see if “Lists” are visible. If not, choose “Show Lists” from the menu. See if your contacts are in any of the lists that appear.
My first guess would also have been something odd left in the search field.
Do you have the sidebar set to hidden? Is it possible that for whatever reason All Contacts is no longer selected? Set the sidebar to show (ctrl-cmd-s) and make sure All Contacts has been selected. Do your entires now re-appear?
Thanks for the suggestions. I’m sure there was nothing in the search field; I could see the lists and there was nothing in any of them; I’d tried quitting contacts, logging out and back in and even restarting, to no avail; all my contacts were still available on iCloud.
As it happened, an update to 26.6.1 became available and I installed it this morning. As if by magic, all my contacts have reappeared.
So, just one of those things, I suppose. It has prompted me to export them all into an archive, so maybe a few hours of hair-tearing has ended up being beneficial.
If this happens again, I might try going into Settings for the Contacts app, Accounts page, and toggling the “Enable Account” checkbox off and, after waiting a bit, toggle it back on and see if that re-populates the contacts.
I believe this happened to me after I performed an update - probably to 26.6 - but I can’t recall. All of my contacts were missing in the Contacts app. After opening Contacts, I realized that the selection on the left side of the window wasn’t set to “All Contacts.” Once I changed it to “All Contacts,” all of my old contacts appeared again.
Please confirm that “export them all into an archive” means you selected File > Export > Contacts Archive…. If not, what did you do? If so, is the current list exported? In other words, to export all Contacts, must one select the All Contacts list before exporting?
Is it true that Time Machine does not back up Contacts or Calendar? If so, this would make it more important to save information from Contacts and Calendar.
What are the relative advantages to exporting to an abbu file (Contacts archive), a vcf file (vCard), or a PDF? Thanks for any enlightenment.
I’ve had individual contact pages go missing (one had about half a dozen numbers associated with it)… one day they are there, the next not. iCloud sync sux (just took a photo on my phone, it took 10 minutes to show up on my desktop).
Just an FYI: There are 2 formats you can export Contacts info (from File→Export): a Contacts Archive file (suffix .abbu) or a vCard format.
For years, I backed up my Contacts info into a Contacts Archive file; it was more convenient (everything dumped into the .abbu file, including Contact groups).
However, I’ve had problems twice now when importing a Contacts Archive file from one macOS version to another: once when going from Sierra to Mojave, and another time when going from Mojave to Sequoia.
In both cases, the import just didn’t work; and in one case, no error message was shown.
Since then, I export Contacts archives in vCard format. It’s a tiny bit more work: I select All Contacts in the left-hand toolbar, and then select one contact, and then Edit→Select All. Then I export to the vCard.
The downside is that it appears Contacts groups aren’t exported when I do this. This isn’t an issue for me, because I only have one group (a local block watch mailing list), so re-creating that isn’t a hassle. But for others, I realize this could be a major red flag. (Perhaps I need to export a vCard for each group?)
To contrast this with Calendar, I’ve exported Calendar as a Calendar Archive (.icbu file) for years, and never had an issue when importing it.
PS I don’t sync either Contacts or Calendar via iCloud.
The most careful method is to export to both formats. If you need to recover Contacts, try to recover from the .abbu file first, and then use vCard if there is a problem with the .abbu file.
If everything works, the .abbu can give you a full, faithful copy of your contacts, whereas the vCard file is a public standard with a primary goal of exchanging contacts between apps. As @bookrats mentioned, concepts like Apple Lists and Groups aren’t captured in vCard format.
There is also a third option, I used it when I stopped using Contacts ages ago but just now checked in Tips app (couldn’t see any way to hyperlink to it) to see if it is still there in Tahoe 26.5.2 and it is (hurrah!). Some may find the option more useful and malleable:
Export contacts using Numbers
You can use Contacts and Numbers together to export Contacts to additional file types, such as CSV or Excel.
Important: If you have contact notes and photos or made your card private, fields you opted not to share will be included when you export your card using Numbers.
Go to the Contacts app on your Mac.
Select one or more contacts.
Go to the Numbers app on your Mac.
Open a new or existing spreadsheet.
Drag the selected contacts into the Numbers spreadsheet.
Choose File > Export To, then select an option.
The contacts can be exported as an Excel, CSV, TSV, or Numbers ‘09 file.
@Will_M yes, expert as contacts archive (abbu). TM seemed to have backed up the contacts, in that they appeared in a browse, but restoring them didn’t help.
on your Mac.
on your Mac.