Address list disappered

I may be haunted! I thought I posted this successfully last evening, but appearently I missed a click somewhere.

Last evening I was moving two names from one mailing list to another in the NS 7.1 address book when I lost the destination list. If I remember correctly, this is all in the "abook.mab" file. I'm hoping that there's a backup copy somewhere, because rebuilding the list could be tedious.

It's for a weekly "WHoly Humor" mailing of PG jokes and has 40-50 names. Any suggestions?

 

Hi Cal,

I've been trying to recreate your Address Book List problem, and find that I cannot!

I have created four Lists and have been dragging and dropping names from list to list with complete success.

I'm not certain what's going on with your Address Book, but any detail would be helpful. Is the destination list still listed in the left pane of the Address Book? If so, in the right pane, scroll all the way down to the end, and see if there is anything listed.

There is no backup of the Address Book unless you make one...

Ramona

 

Hi Ramona,

The destination list is gone.

Perhaps I set up my lists the wrong way. My lists are under my Personal Address Book (like subdirectories). I assume that's the way to store lists.

Personal Address Book
BRSC members
Joke List - Plain (Joke List - HTML used to be next)
Love Circle
Men's Group
Collected addresses

There were 5 lists until last evening. It's like the list was deleted, but all I was doing was drag and dropping, which I've done often before.

Since there is no backup of the address books, I guess I'll have to see if I can take a previous mailing and list the names and then recopy them.

Cal

 

Cal,

Have you opened the Address Book to see if the names are there? Try this:

Find ABOOK.MAB with Windows FIND tool. Right-click on it and be sure that it is not flagged as READ ONLY.

You can also export, from within the address book, in .LDIF format. Then open the .LDIF file in Notepad and look for obvious signs of corruption, such as long lines, blank spaces or binary junk. Fix them, then FILE|SAVE and FILE|IMPORT the repaired file.

Ramona

 

In my profile for NS I see ABOOK.MAB which is not read-only. There are also abook-1 to abook-5.mab files with older dates. There are also impab to impab-7.mab files there with various dates.

Should any of these be removed?

Strangely, when I did a find of ABOOK.MAB a copy of it shows up under c:\Program Files\Support.com\backup\AB but not the ones under my profile.

 

Hi Cal,

I wouldn't delete anything yet. The abook-1 thru 5.mab indicates that perhaps you created separate Address Books rather than Lists? Have you opened these files to see if the missing addresses are there? You can open the files in Notepad.

I'm not certain about the impab files, but again, open them to see what they contain.

A "Find" for abook.mab doesn't find any files in your salted folder (*.slt)?

I still haven't been able to reproduce what has happened to you. I do know that moving things around in the Address Book can be tricky, and losing data is not uncommon. Hopefully you will find you missing addresses in the files you have mentioned.

Let us know...

Ramona

 

Hi Ramona,

Thanks for sticking with me on this, but I took the "long way around" on this which resolved it for me.

I located a previous mailing which I knew went to my entire list. After reentering the list name, I simply, but laboruosly re-enter each name. In the long run it seems to have worked out.

The impab files seem to be pointers. Problably to the corresponding abook files as they have the same dates as the abooks.

I did find the abook.mab in my salted folder. The one I found previously was ABOOK.MAB. While it's in a folder marked backup. I can not make sense of what it's about.

Perhaps, I'll remeber to backup more often.

Thanks again.

Cal