Contacts Issue

[RalphTomaccio]

I recently upgraded the OS to High Sierra 10.13.3 on my mid-2010 iMac and, for the most part, all seems to be working relatively well considering the computer's age. The one real issue I have is that when I open Contacts. The Contacts menu bar appears but the window with the contacts does not. I get the dreaded spinning beach ball and the app has to be force quit.

I have tried running Disk Utility First Aid but that didn't help.

I tried running in Safe Mode and that didn't help either.

I tried not including it in iCloud to no avail.

Not sure what else I can try to get Contacts to appear. Can anyone help me? Thanks!

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

-Do you have an iCloud account?
-Do the contacts appear on any iOS devices you may have?
-Do you have any form of Time Machine or other backup?

C

 

[RalphTomaccio]

Hi Cory, Thanks for your reply. Yes, I do have an iCloud account, but it hasn't populated the contacts in my iMac, although the contacts still appear in the iPad. I'm guessing it hasn't simply because the app on the Mac isn't working properly to begin with and unable to do anything. Every time I start it, the window that should be showing the contacts doesn't appear and every time I try to go to the Contacts menu, it's frozen, getting the spinning beach ball and has to be force quit.

I tried using Time Machine as well and that didn't work either. Do you know if there is any way to manually export contacts in iPad Contacts at least as a back-up?

Someone suggested I try the steps in this link: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-10581

I tried those instructions. I located the three files; addressbook-v22.abcddb, addressbook-v22.abcddb-wal and addressbook-v22.abcddb-shm and discovered there were SEVEN of each. I deleted all of them and restarted Contacts. The Contacts window did open this time, but all my groups were missing. And, the contacts that showed up on the rebuild had nothing to do with my actual contacts that were in the app originally. They appear to be AOL contacts. I have no idea what happened to those originally in the app. I did a search for "vCard" and they didn't appear, but the contacts that showed in Contacts (AOL?) did show up as vCards. Is there a separate folder or database with the actual contacts that I am missing?

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks.

If your contacts show on your iPad, logged in with the same Apple ID, I would login to icloud.com via a browser and verify they are there as well. If so, you could try disabling Contacts in  > System Preferences... > iCloud with the Contacts app closed. Once it completes that, open the Contacts app and it should be blank. You can then quit the Contacts app, re-enable it in Sys Prefs, and then open it again to see if the issue persists.

C

 

[RalphTomaccio]

I've tried that as well. I don't think anything will work because of the way the Contacts app is behaving. As soon as it opens, it freezes. Can't do anything when that happens. The only thing I can think of that may help is to reload the OS and hope it fixes itself in the process.

What are your thoughts about that?

 

[honestone]

Sometimes when one upgrades "in place", ie, basically allows the new OS to overwrite the old one, issues can arise (and especially if one has not done a clean, fresh, "virgin" Mac OS installation in quite a while). It thus might be best if you do a clean, fresh, "virgin" installation of High Sierra, then "migrate"/copy all your needed "stuff" from your Time Machine backup. However, the "culprit" could be on the backup. (This same "possible risk" would exist even if you just "re-install" High Sierra, ie, re-installing "in place").

Given that Time Machine backups are not bootable, after you make one more Time Machine backup (just to insure you have all your current information), you'll need to boot to the (hidden) Recovery HD partition. This link describes how to do that, and what one can do with it:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

The first thing you should do is let Disk Utility "check out" your internal drive. Just select the last option to first let Disk Utility Verify and Repair your disk. If everything is OK, then let Disk Utility Erase and Format your internal drive. If it's an SSD, if you format it as MacOS Extended (Journaled), when you install High Sierra, it will re-format the SSD as APFS.

Once Disk Utility is done, choose the second option "Reinstall macOS". That will take some time, as 1) the "Install macOS High Sierra" file will need to be downloaded from Apple's servers, and 2) the installation will proceed.

Once that is done, you'll be offered the opportunity to"migrate"/copy needed "stuff" from your Time Machine backup. Once that's done, you can restart your Mac, and hopefully everything will be OK.