Not a problem – I had backed up my hard drive en toto, so recovering my addresses and calendars wasn’t difficult… but since a quick google search didn’t return any suggestions, I thought I’d share what I did in case you find yourself with the same need.

note:

~/ = /Users/soychicka/ = my user home directory, just like ~/ = /Users/yourHomeDir/ = your home directory.

Sadly, it appears that although they now have much nicer names, all of my screenshots in Snow Leopard are no more than black boxes of appropriate dimensions…. so that means you’ll actually have to *gasp* read directions (just for the time being).

To recover your Address Book contacts:

Open up two finder windows, one for your backup drive and one for your regular old hard drive that you’ll be using on a daily basis… and go to ~/yourHomeDir/Library, then find

~/Library/Application Support

in both windows.

You should see a folder called

AddressBook

in both windows. Drag the copy of AddressBook on the backup drive into

~/Library/Application Support.

If you dragged the folder into the right location, you’ll see a dialog that asks if you want to Keep the original, Keep Both, or Replace. Go ahead and click Keep both – it’ll keep a backup copy of the original for you in case something goes dreadfully wrong.

Then launch Address Book: you should see all of your contacts happily coexisting once again…well, at least as happily as they co-existed before, as sadly, Snow Leopard was not shipped with the power to resolve family quarrels or workplace personality conflicts.

To recover your iCal calendars:

Open up two finder windows, one for your backup drive and one for your regular old hard drive that you’ll be using on a daily basis… and go to ~/yourHomeDir/Library.

You should see a folder called

Calendars

in both windows. Drag the copy of Calendars from the backup drive into

~/Library/

on your regular hard drive.  If you dragged the folder into the right location, you’ll see a dialog that asks if you want to Keep the original, Keep Both, or Replace. Go ahead and click Keep both – it’ll keep a backup copy of the original for you in case something goes dreadfully wrong.

Then launch iCal : you should see all of your calendars happily coexisting once again…again, at least as happily as work and your personal life existed before, as Snow Leopard was not shipped with the power to add hours to the day and give you a raise.

Unless there was some new setting I forgot to enable…..

Random fact: One of Snow leopard’s new spots is pretty nice: if you are attempting to copy a file that has the same name as an existing one, instead of offering the option of replacing or canceling, it gives you the option of keeping both, and renames the original

Filename (original).
 Although it still doesn't allow you to merge the contents of two directories (hint hint), it's a step in the right direction.   Thanks, friendly apple UX team!

No related posts.