Address book no longer linking to Mac Mail

adamania · Oct 26, 2011

Hi There,
I just upgraded to OS X Lion. I wanted to compose an e-mail this morning and noticed the automatic address completion was no longer working, including for addresses I've used hundreds of times (even though auto-completion is turned on).

I then tried to manually add the email address by clicking the Address Book icon within Mac Mail but it's completely blank!

I pulled up my general Mac Address book, however, and it's populated with the 2000 or so addresses I have. So, for some reason, the address book within Mac Mail is no longer communicating with my general address book.

Any tips?

Thanks!

p.s. I'm on a MacBook Pro

Bob_Stan · Oct 26, 2011

Did you enable iCloud contact syncing? If so that may be part of the problem. I find that the way iCloud syncing works is 1) Broken and 2) Not intuitive.

adamania · Oct 26, 2011

Yes, I did turn on contact synching. The weird thing is now, after I restarted Mac Mail, that the Address Book icon at the top of the new message window has disappeared altogether! So now, I can't even add an address if I wanted to!

Bob_Stan · Oct 26, 2011

I think that is the problem. Try this. In preferences uncheck the contact syncing. When it asks about saving a local copy say yes. I am not at my Mac at the moment so I am not sure but I think you may need to set the Address Book preferences to use On MY Mac.
Then I think you will find you have your addresses back.

adamania · Oct 26, 2011

Okay, that seemed to work! I unchecked the Contact Sync then changed to On My Mac. The address field then began auto-completing with the email addresses out of my address book as it used to, but the weird thing is that suddenly the address book button on the new message window had disappeared! I did some more hunting around in the forums about this issue and discovered that the address book button WILL NOT show up on the new message screen when you're in full screen mode (which I had switched to). This is a really stupid bug that makes no sense at all.

In any case, I switched back to normal view and the address button showed up, along with all my addresses. To do another test, I went in and re-enabled the Contact Sync in iCloud and the address book still shows up. So, I think the main solution was to change the association to "On My Mac".

Thanks so much for your help!!!

Bob_Stan · Oct 26, 2011

What I have found though is that if you use Smart Groups in your Address Book and you leave the iCloud Sync turned on, you will be able to see the Smart Groups in Mail, but you will NOT be able to see the individual members of those groups.

Anyway, glad it is working for you.

veehb · Nov 10, 2011

Why are there two contact lists in Address Book?

I've synced my calendar and contacts with iCloud. Now, on my MBP I have an "On My Mac" list of contacts and groups (seems to be older data) and an "iCloud" list of contacts and groups. Those in "iCloud" sync with me.com (my iCloud account) and with my iPhone. There is also an "All Contacts" list, with a combination of these two listings.

Why are there two lists? Can I delete the "On My Mac" list? I tried deleting one of the groups on the "On My Mac" list and it didn't seem to affect anything.

I find this business of syncing with iCloud most confusing. Finally got my iCal to sync with the iPhone, (by unselecting the original calendars and selection the new, iCloud, calendars). Lots of ambiguous steps, not well documented. I'm surprised that Apple doesn't give us more help in this area.

Seems to take a long time for the systems to sync with each other. Mail was using an older group and after working on other areas of the Address Book, mail started using the newer, updated groups. Most puzzling!

I just added a new group to the MBP and then plugged in the iPhone so that it would force a sync (sometimes not necessary). I see that the new group was synced to the iPhone, but only three of the eight entries in the group came across to the iPhone. They are supposed to sync via Wi-Fi and both the MBP and iPhone are three feet from my Wi-Fi router. Shouldn't have to plug it in (that is supposed to enable a backup of the iPhone to iCloud).

I'd appreciate some advice here.

Thanks,
Vee