Problems with Contacts not responding

[janey]

Hi! I just bought a new 27-inch iMac running 10.10.1, and I'm having a terrible time with Contacts.

I'm exported contacts from Address Book on my Macbook which was running 10.7.5 in a .abbu file, and ever since then the program just freezes up when I boot it. I Force Quit because it is not responding, but then it won't reopen correctly. There is just a pinwheel scrolling.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I've searched online but don't see this issue listed.

Thank you in advance for any help!

 

[chscag]

Welcome to the Mac Forums!

Let's try the export feature again - but this time export your contacts from your MacBook to a vCard format. Then copy the file to your new iMac, open your contacts app and import the vCard file. That will correctly import all your contacts to the iMac contacts app. You may have to go through each one to check the data, but for the most part it should be OK. I have done that very thing for my iMac contacts and it works well. The contacts will then be able to sync to your iPhone and iPad (assuming you own them).

 

[janey]

Hi chscag!

Thank you for your quick response, and for the welcome

I am going to try to export again, but the problem is that I cannot do anything in Contacts. Whenever I open it, it goes immediately to the pinwheel, and it won't respond. As soon as I start it, I need to Force Quit. Do you think that there is an issue with a corrupt database? Is there anyway to reset the whole program and start over? Thank you!!

 

[chscag]

You have a new iMac with Yosemite which surprises me that you're having difficulty with contacts. It's possible your first export and attempted import to the contacts app has caused corruption, but of that I can't be sure. I don't believe you can remove the contacts app (the system won't allow it) without entirely removing Yosemite and reinstalling.

I don't suppose since your iMac is new, that you made a backup prior to trying to move the contacts?

 

[janey]

Okay - well I've fixed the issue. I noticed that the issue was with iCloud. When I launched Contacts, the iCloud contacts kept scrolling and it looked like that was messing things up. I logged into iCloud and unchecked Contacts, and that solved the problem. I don't really know why that was causing issue... I guess that I should troubleshoot iCloud, and my other devices?? I'll dig around the forums a bit to see if I can figure that out.

Thank you again for your help - I really appreciate it. I love these forums