MacOS – Ghost contacts in spotlight

contactsmacosspotlight

I have a strange situation, where I see multiple versions of a single contact. When I search for a name I see

  • current version (from iCloud)
  • old version (don't know from where)
  • an even older version (don't know from where)

When I try to open the new one, contacts.app start and I see the correct contact. When I try the old one, the app starts but no contact is shown.

I tried clearing spotlight data (block my drive and then unblock it). The contacts first were absent, but soon they reappeared. I guess somewhere on my drive there is a data file which stores the old contacts, but the contacts.app can't access it.

How can I find this file and remove it? It especially annoying in photos which (as it turns out) allow me to tag a photos with three faces and when I search for a name also all three show in the list.

Best Answer

Michal, Thanks for answering your own question; that really helped me.

Spotlight searches on my two Macs were littered with phantom duplicate contacts. I was hesitant to go this approach until I read of your success.

For future visitors, my steps were:

  1. You may want to backup Contacts (File - Export - Contacts Archive)
  2. Quit Contacts.app
  3. Turn off all contact sync services (System Prefs: Internet Accts: iCloud/Google: Contacts)

  4. Move contents of ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/sources to Trash.

  5. Re-enable iCloud, Google, etc Contact sync.

  6. Check address book in Contacts.
  7. Test Spotlight Search: success.
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