How to diagnose Address Book quitting unexpectedly?
When opening Address Book, it quits before it opens. The window says:
Address Book quit unexpectedly. Click `Reopen` to open the application again.
Click `Report` to see more detailed information and send a report to Apple.
What's the best solution? How can I diagnose this problem?
Solution 1:
You can click on the Report button and look though all the gibberish to see if there is something informative or suspicious there.
You could run the Console program and search for "Address" in the upper right to check for error messages.
You could try accessing your contacts from within the Mail program and check near the top and bottom of the list for any missing or weird entries.
You could turn on iCloud syncing (if you already have it on, back up) and see if you can access your full contact list from the web interface.
You could check for System Updates and hope there is a new update (Mavericks soon!) of the Contacts app.
** If you ever do get it to open, you should back up your contacts immediately (Export...> Contacts Archive) just in case.
Solution 2:
It's possible that the problem exists with the data in your home directory. Try creating a new account on your system, or log in with the guest account. Then run Address Book on the new account.
If Address Book works normally with another user account on your system, then the Address Book data in your home directory is the the likely cause of the crash. If Address Book fails the same way on another account, then the application or the system is at fault.
Two resources in your home directory affecting Address Book launch are the preferences file and the contacts database. Please note that if you modify either of these resources, the change may be permanent and data loss may result.
You didn't specify which version of OS X you have, so I'm going to provide information relevant to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion which I am currently running.
Preferences file: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist
Contacts database: ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/
If you feel comfortable making such changes, try renaming one or both of these items (the first is a file, the second is a folder). Do so while Address Book is not running, then make the change and launch Address Book to see if the problem is resolved.