[::maroma::]

For those having trouble syncing their Address Book to .Mac (missing data for contacts). BIG thanks to someone named 'svjaiyen' on the .Mac forums for this one:

1. In a previous post I'd discovered that AB "Other" type data was not being sync'ed to .Mac; it seems to demand or take only "Home" or "Work" types. The fix for that was to manually change the listed type in all of my AB fields, then do another Reset All Devices. This worked for phone numbers, but left many addresses still blank (even though they were listed in the AB as "Home" Addresses, which I'd have expected to go through).

2. Examination showed that all contact data that had been typed in seemed to work, but those that had been imported (mostly from Outlook Express, OS 9) did not. This held true even for imported ones that had had their address fields edited since the time they were imported.

3. Thinking that this might be another of those silly 'flag reset' types of faults, I selected a couple of the non-performing records in the AB, clicked on Edit, changed the 'type' selection from Home to Work then back to Home, then quit editing. Running another Reset All Devices, I found no change ... their addresses were still not present. However, when I returned to the AB I discovered that their address types had now been changed from Home to Other.

4. It developed that in non-performing (present as Home Addresses in the AB but not sync'ed to .Mac), clicking on Edit and then the address type icon would reveal the following menu, where one would normally select or change the type of address:

work
other
home

Custom

Change Address Format =>

with the bottom entry, 'home' checked.

5. Upon completing the edit, if you notice, you'll see the address type change to Other. Now editing again, and once again opening that same address type menu, you see

home
work
other
etc., etc.,

with the third one down, now 'other' checked.

6. In all cases so far, editing a non-performing contact, opening that menu and clicking the top line which, in mine at least, says 'work', and then closing the edit, will yield a 'home' display in the AB and the data will now sync successfully to .Mac on the next try.

7. This appears to be at least partially an Address Book fault, with the Import process slotting things into 'wrong' places. As before, this made no difference whatsoever while using AB as a stand-alone app, but has certainly caused problems here.

8. It's also an iSync fault, I think, in that the design is unnecessarily restrictive. There is no reason to exclude data that does not fit into .Mac's two acceptable, designated categories or types. It is valid data and present in the AB, and should be passed through. If the concern is about what type of icon to put in front of it, one solution would be to put none; alternatively, a "?" could easily be added to signify unknown field type. Much better to have that than a blank.

Note: I've run into one problem (maybe a bug). My .Mac Address Book in 'list mode' now shows duplicate home phone numbers. All the info on each card is correct and fully filled in. But in 'list mode' it is duplicating the home numbers for Phone 1 and Phone 2.

Good luck!