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contacts disappeared in Sierra upgrade

Spent the last three days going through the rigorous job of upgrading from OS X 10.6.8 all the way to Sierra today. My CONTACTS seem to have disappeared. When opened, there is NOTHING there. I tried two things:

1. to import the .abbu file that I had saved on my desktop and to iCloud

2. tried to export the whole (unseeable) address book to the desktop

When I compared the data from yesterday's file to the file I exported today the size is exactly the same.

If all the data is there . . . somewhere on the computer . . . why isn't it showing?

I only did this massive upgrade so I could sync a new iPad to the version of iTunes required. Wish I had stayed at 10.6.8 as it seems as if Apple has dumbed down the whole OS by hiding all the functions needed to have control of your system.

Help is most appreciated.

Hello and welcome to Apple Support Communities, Pam T.

If I’m understanding your post right, you upgraded from OS X 10.6.8 to macOS Sierra and now all of your contacts have disappeared. I know how important it is to have access to your contacts on your Mac, so I’m happy to help you get this sorted out.

You've made a big leap going from 10.6 to macOS Sierra, and a lot of things have changed since Snow Leopard was the most recent OS X available. With that being said, the way contacts are stored on your Mac is a little different now. In OS X 10.6, contacts were stored as an ABBU file in the Address Book application. In macOS Sierra, contacts are stored as a CSV file in the Contacts application. To get everything moved to Contacts, you will have to import the ABBU file. Follow the steps in Contacts for Mac: Import contacts, specifically this section:

Import from an archive file (.abbu)
Important: Importing an archive file replaces your current contact information.

Choose File > Import.

Select the archive file, then click Open.

Another option, as well as something you may want to use going forward, is to sync your contacts with iCloud. iCloud is built right into System Preferences in your Mac now. If your contacts are already synced to iCloud already, signing into iCloud on your Mac and enabling iCloud Contacts should sync them to your Mac. Even if you don't have contacts synced to iCloud already, enabling this feature will make sure that contacts stay up to date across your Mac, iPad, and any other iCloud compatible devices you have signed in with the same Apple ID. Take a look at Set up iCloud on all your devices. The rest is automatic. for detailed steps on setting this up.

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Take care.

Did you install Sierra over your Snow Leopard install? If yes, I recommend you move to a new User. There is a lot of "old baggage" in your User's Library. Starting with a clean new User would give you a better experience.

How to bring back hidden features:

Select a Finder window.

Under View in the Menu bar select:

Show Path Bar
Show Status Bar
Show Sidebar

My image shows "hide" not "show" because I have these options selected.

"Show View Options" Will allow you to customize the Finder item that is selected (window, desktop, folder)

Under Finder in the Menu bar, select Preferences > Sidebar

Check Home folder and any other folder you want. You can also deselect items like All My Files, AirDrop and iCloud Drive if you do not use these folders.

Show User's Library

Select your House in the sidebar.

Under View in the Menu bar, select Show View Options

Select Show Library Folder

Now that you have the Sidebar added you can drag items to the Sidebar. You should see a blue line to show location.

Removing items from Sidebar, Menu bar and Dock now require you to select "remove from..." or drag the item a longer distance. This is to keep you from accidentally removing an item.

This is big problem- It is serious enough for me to destroy this machine and never go back to a Mac. If I cannot find and restore these contacts then this is useless. Please help!

this failed too! Not there none available-- I now have tried every "trick"posted but all have failed! Apple gooned this terribly!

Lost time now exceeds cost of new unit- This unit will cease to exist in 48 hours!

You will hear an explosion that will cease the existence of this machine. APPLE will be gone forever!

On the Last Upgrade from Apple, my contacts on my iMac went missing. I DO NOT use the iCloud, as I do not trust it at all. I DO always sync my iPhone with my iMac. All of my Contacts were fine on both my iPhone and iMac, before the recent update. After the update, my contacts stayed okay on my iPhone, but they disappeared from my iMac. In an attempt to solve my problem, I synced my iPhone with my iMac, but that did not fix my problem. iMac Contacts were still gone. I prepared to sync again, via iTunes. In iTunes, on my entry-Library screen, I clicked on the iPhone icon, in the upper left of the screen. "Summary" was now highlighted. I clicked on "Info". At this location my Contacts and Calendars were now Turned Off. So I selected Sync Contacts and Sync Calendars. I then clicked on "Sync" to sync my iPhone with my iMac. It moved all of my Contacts back to my iMac. PROBLEM SOLVED !! For some reason, the iMac update or an iPhone update changed these settings and made my iMac Contacts disappear. They are now back and doing fine.

Has anyone found a solution to this? All of my 3500+contacts disappeared immediately after the upgrade. I guess it wasn't much of an upgrade!ha! Anywho-I was able to retrieve half by downloading them from the cloud-however the cloud contacts are very old because I had not backed them up to there in quite a while. So-I would be extatic to hear if someone, anyone has a solution. Like the original poster-all of my contacts are for work, they all are just completely gone-and before anyone asks. Yes I did back up my system however my back up drive is no longer compatible-because it is not compatible with Sierra! Haha how's THAT for helpful! Something which I found out after I upgraded. Sigh. I hate upgrading. I always lose data-Always. Thanks! G

Ummm, stupid question? Where might I find the ABBU file? I look in the user's Library folder, under Application Support and AddressBook, but don't see any such thing.

Are you trying to import from Snow Leopard Contacts? Did you make a backup of your Snow Leopard files before upgrading to Sierra?

If you can still open the Address Book.app in Snow Leopard, use File > Export > Address Book Archive... to save your data as .abbu file.

This saves your data as .abbu file. You can import this fine into Contact.app in Sierra.

If you cannot open the Address Book.app in Snow Leopard, but you have your Snow Leopard Library files, you can copy over the folder "AddressBook" from the User's Library > Application Support folders that contains the data. Place this on your Desktop. We will discuss how to import into Contacts in Sierra.

An article : If you accidentally deleted your calendars, reminders, bookmarks, or contacts from iCloud - Apple Support

I didn't back up my files before upgrading, and wouldn't have thought to export the contacts even if I had. I did find an ancient contacts file with abbu as part of its name that had been bzip-ed, but it was not helpful. I use Time Machine, So in principle everything should be there.

The problem seems to be that stuff got moved to iCloud without my understanding that's where it was. I try very hard not to use iCloud because I like to know where my data live, but occasionally one or another of my devices somehow connects. My solution was to turn on iCloud, restore my contacts, archive them locally and turn iCloud back off. Hope I didn't lose something else in the process.

To the person who edited my "rant", know I have been a proponent and owner of many Apple products since 1984, and am a stockholder. When Apple aggravates me so much I want to return to my 800k Mac Plus, I think you would want to know that.

Always backup your drive BEFORE upgrading the operating system (OS X is now called macOS)

Big jumps like Snow Leopard to Sierra is huge but even going from El Capitan 10.11.6 to Sierra 10.12.x you need a clone backup. With a clone you can boot back into the old system in cases like this, where the upgrade failed and you need to go back and export your data.

If you don't have a clone backup it's time to start. Just like a seat belt and an air bag protect you in different ways when driving, you need both Time Machine and a clone for full protection.

Create a Clone backup:

A clone is an exact bootable copy of your internal drive. Unlike standard copying of all files to another drive, the clone software copies hidden files along with other in-use files that are not available when you copy over files to another drive.

Time Machine is not bootable. You could only restore from Time Machine

Software used to Clone:

SuperDuper! https://www.shirt-pocket.com/

CCC https://www.bombich.com/download.html

Well, I thought Time Machine backups were the smart choice but thanks to your post I am going to add a bootable "clone" backup to my routine. Yeah, I want that. Thanks for the software links. Thanks.

Over the past 20 years I've always been able to resolve any Mac issues I have had by reading comments & reviews from the online forums. Until now, I have never had to reach out in complete "I don't know what to try next" mode. Maybe you can help Diane. You seem to know what up. I can't locate a solution after spending hours and hours searching. Like the original poster, I just upgraded my operating system... 10.8 (Mountain Lion) to 10.12 (Sierra)... and I lost all my contacts. I didn't know to export an AddressBook ABBU file before upgrading or to make a bootable "clone" backup. I did create a Time Machine backup just before upgrading but cannot locate a folder named AddressBook in the location you specified above. Furthermore, and this is crazy, using the Search Filename option on the backup drive yields no files or folders containing the work "Address"... which is simply not true because I located a folder with the name "Address Book Plug-Ins" on the backup drive. I then tried searching for other filenames I know exist on the Time Machine backup drive... searching does not work on the backup drive... not even when I follow the directions on clicking the Time Machine icon in the menu bar > then click Enter Time Machine. Search Filename works fine on my harddrive... just not on the Time Machine backup drive. :-( And I'm no closer to a solution to retrieve my Address Book contacts. Any ideas?

Hey Diane... I found a post from another user saying to open the Contacts app on my Sierra HD and then click the Time Machine icon... it automatically opened my missing contacts on the backup drive! I hit the Restore button and wa-la, I have my contacts back. So easy... unfortunate it was so hard to locate a user prescribing this method but all is well that ends well.

最後更新：2017-08-28 09:17:32

contacts disappeared in Sierra upgrade

Import from an archive file (.abbu)

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