Smart groups making Address Book freeze

In Address Book, users have the option to create smart groups for their contacts, which dynamically include individual contact vCards based on certain criteria. While these are convenient, they can cause Address Book to crash.

Apple Discussions poster presta writes:

"I made some Smart Groups in Address Book...and one of them has another smart group as a criterion ? Address Book really doesn't like this, and freezes every time I try to click on that group. That's fine, I just want to delete, but you have to actually have a group selected in Address Book to get the contextual delete menu, and of course AB freezes before I can get there."

While the various criterion used for the smart group should function even if one involves another smart group, there may be a bug in the program that prevents this from working for some users. However, for users who've managed to get the program into a state where upon selecting the smart group the program crashes, there is a way to manually clear the smart groups. This involves deleting the Address Book database and removing the individual groups, which are stored as vCards. When the database is deleted, Address Book should rebuild it from the existing cards, so contacts should not be affected during this process.

Fix: Remove the group files and database from the Address Book data folder As a precaution, first be sure to backup the Address Book by choosing "Export" from the "File" menu and selecting "Address Book Archive...". Then save the file to a safe location and continue with the process outlined here.

In the Finder go to the following directory /username/Library/Application Support/Address Book/ and delete the file called AddressBook-v22.abcddb. Then open the folder named Metadata and perform a search in the folder (using the window's toolbar search) for the query "Group". Ensure the search is performed in the "Metadata" folder only, and that the search is for file contents (not name). This should list the groups that have been made. From here, either delete the name of the smart group that is causing the problems, or delete all the groups and remake them.

NOTE: It may be beneficial to list the items in the Finder window in "list" view and then under the "kind" column the group address book cards will be listed as "Address Book Group Card" as opposed to "Address Book Person Card". This may be important to some users who have individual cards with the word "Group" in them, such as a person's company being a Research/Medical "Group" or some other similar name.

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