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iPad2 and Contacts

HoraceBlake

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Hello all - thanks in advance for any assistance offered. Also, I looked around a bit and believe that this is the best place to put this thread. I apologize if I posted it in the wrong place.

My wife purchased an iPad 2 last year. She is a real estate agent, and is very good at it, but suffers a bit from the technical angle. I am more of a PC guy, but I am learning fast. We are both iPhone 4 users and are the proud new owners of a desktop Mac.

She uses her Contacts app to keep track of her - yes, you guessed it - contacts. Her issue os that she had a lot of duplicates and incompletes and other defective contacts. Her entire contact list is some 2400+.

A friend she visited sat with her for several hours and helped her comb through it and get it squared away. All good so far. Her friend saved the contacts separately for her - wise friend.

I believe the trouble started for her when she set up her new iCloud account. I believe (but I am not certain) that when she synched to the Cloud, that she overwrote her hard work with the contacts that were already there. She has asked for my help. It seems to me that what I need to do is delete ALL of her contacts on her iPhone 4, her iPad 2, the Mac desktop and her iCloud. Then it seems I would import the files that her friend saved for her (and kindly forwarded to me just now). It also seems logical that these files would be imported to the desktop, then synched to the iPhone/iPad and then with the Cloud.

Obviously, I am deathly afraid of zeefing all of her contacts, forever to be lost.

In the folder sent by her friend are several items: a file labelled AddressBook-v22.abcddb (about 2 MB in size), a file labelled Configuration.plist (about 1 KB in size), a folder titled Images and a folder titled Metadata. Neither the Images nor the Metadata folders will open.

I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could offer a next step - or several next steps to me. It seems like once I delete the existing contacts that I could just drop those files/folders into a specific folder within my desktop, synch and move along.

Again, thanks in advance for any assistance.

Cheers,

Horace
 

yellowhorse

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How does she keep her personal contacts separate from the huge data bases? I agree it's like flies in the radiator vent after a sync. Apple surely has no team on the subject.
 

twerppoet

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Go to the iCloud.com site on a computer and see what the contacts look like there. If they are good, you'll be able to straighten out things with a minimum of fuss.

Otherwise; I'm not sure. I don't recognize the format of the backup file. It may only be possible to restore it to the program or site that created it. I certainly would not delete your current contacts until I'd proven the ability to restore file somewhere. Once you prove that the contacts can be restored, then it's time to work on a procedure to replace the old database with the restored one.
 

yellowhorse

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True that. So if apple wants us to keep all our business contacts in one data base, and my son syncs his iPhone to my iTunes I check the sync box stating that he only gets one addy group where I've preened through the population to ensure he only gets his friends. However, if I sync my iPad he gets all my apps.
 

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