Address Book won't restore contacts from .abbu

Question

My Address Book won't restore contacts from my address book archive (.abbu). I sync my address book with iCloud.

A couple weeks ago, Address Book told me there were some inconsistancies in my contacts. It said that 12 of my contacts were outdated. The "updated" versions that it presented were actually versions that were older by several weeks or months.

• I told Address Book repeatly to ignore the changes so it kept on asking me.
• I exported my correct contacts as a .abbu file.
• I also back up with Time Machine so I should have a good copy there.
• I deleted a "bad" contact from my Address Book, and then tried to import the .abbu file, the contact I deleted appeared for a second and then disappeared.
• I then deleted my entire Address Book.
• I tried again to import the .abbu file. All the contacts appeared for a second and then disappeared.

This happen when iCloud was added in perferences and syncing and when it wasn't. Deleting the file AddressBook folder in ~/ApplicationSupport/ also didn't help.

Answer 1

It was caused by iCloud. Went offline, opened .abbu file, exported as vCards, went online, cards removed themselves. Deleted iCloud account from Mac, added vCards, readded iCloud to Mac. Fixed.

Answer 2

This works only if you don't have groups. The point of having the ABBU file is to preserve everything, including groups. To solve for that you have to copy all contacts and all groups to "On My Mac" and then delete the iCloud contacts before reconnecting to the internet. Then once connected you have to move everything back to iCloud. What a royal pain!