Problems with Contact-"Groups"

[unclebenz]

Hello, Adium is great, thanks! But I have one problem with my contacts.

I can't edit, in which Contact-Group my contacts are. Some contacts are in "Buddies", some in "General", many are in no Group. Since many weeks I can do no more changes in my groups. I drag a contact from one group into another group. Sometimes Adium says: "Could not add buddy ######## for an unknown reason" Sometimes Adium didn't say anything and the Contact-Group-change seems to be succesful, but if I restart Adium, I can't see any of my changes.

What should I do?

[willbrideau]

Yeah, I love Adium too, but it's pissing me off so badly.


I've been having that exact same problem...and I'm totally stumped. Every time I connect, all of my contacts are re-arranged and I have to spend twenty minutes re-organizing everything just to get it the way I want it.

Help! Or I might be forced to using AIM again...

[evands]

Version, folks?

[yarvis]

hi,

got the same problem..

just downloaded 0.77. whenever I reorganise my contacts.. quit and restart.. all groups are again, as they were before..

furthermore I can only add 5 people to 1 group ????

seems to be hard to get a workin copy of adium ?!

[Kadin2048]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one. It's doing this to me, also. I'm using v0.77 -- I used it a few versions ago and had this SAME problem, so I went back to iChat. Thought I'd see if it was fixed in the new version, but sadly, no dice.

Basically I can move people into different groups, for a few times. Generally I can move 1-3 people (or maybe it's how quickly I do it, I'm not sure) and eventually I'll get an error saying:

Unable to Add
Could not add the buddy xyz for an unknown reason. The most common reason for this is that you have the maximum number of allowed buddies in your buddy list.

I don't know what it's talking about the maximum number of allowed buddies. I wasn't aware there was a maximum, and in any case, I've had a lot more people on my list at different times than I do right now, so I can't be near the maximum. This is a real deal-breaker for me. I really like Adium, but until something as simple as sorting the list into groups gets worked out, I can't use it.

[yarvis]

can someone pls fix that...

[christyG]

I have the exact same problem in v.77. I know it also occured in v.75, and that I was able to move my contacts in and out of groups in December, whichever version I was using then.

I've tried tricking it and using AIM to reorganize my contacts, but when I log on through Adium, it doesn't recognize changes.

Please fix ASAP!!! =D

[nvance]

This appears to be a problem with other AIM clients in general. I tried re-aranging my groups in iChat 3.0 and it would do the same thing (forgeting the settings as soon as I logged out). So it's probably not Adium's fault, that doesn't get us closer to a fix.

[jasian]

i'm getting the same problem.

[gibbz]

I have the same issue, but I am not using an AIM account... I'm using MSN.

[mee2]

I have the same problem with ICQ, so it's an AdiumX bug, and not one of the IM providers

[michael]

Version, folks?

I'm getting this on rc1 (downgraded due to the crash on rc2), but specifically it only happens with a contact I added since I started using the betas (about beta 11 I think I added them). They appear in the group "friends" when I sign on, so I drag them to another group it acts fine and he stays there, but it'll jump back to the first group when I next start Adium.

[yarvis]

version 0.77 ... any bugfixes for this problem ?

[Elynsynos]

Am having this problem since the very beginning of v0.77. It's not just anooying but it's a waste of time arranging all the contacts back to where it should be everytime I restart Adium.

[ofey]

Just wanted to mention that I'm having the same problems as well on Adium X 0.77 running on Tiger.

[djbsquared]

try upgrading to .80.

[indomitable]

still happens in .80

[Orphu]

check http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?t=2736 - I read this issue prior to registering and couldn't find the thread...the link is a post of mine relating to this issue (a bit)

Cheers

[bailey_ca]

check http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?t=2736 - I read this issue prior to registering and couldn't find the thread...the link is a post of mine relating to this issue (a bit)

Wow... Okay, so this thread gave me a starting point to work with. Only problem is, I don't know which combination of adding, deleting, organizing and dumb luck solved my problem. Oh, and sorry about how long and rambling this is; it's early/late and I haven't slept yet.

I have been trying to get my group names to be the same across ALL my MSN accounts: Friends, Acquaintances, etc. For some reason, everything just stopped working after a while.

I was able to organize my contacts into their proper groups on one account; this completely threw my second one out of whack. No matter what I did, I could not move people from "friends" to "Friends". (Yes, same name, but they were on separate accounts, and it was really irritating having two groups with the same name.)

I started by deleting ByFolder and Contact List.plist. This seemed like a good thing™, since "Show Offline Contacts" showed no groups!. However, every time I signed in, the phantom "local list" would pop up, and I'd get all the mis-matched groups back. I have NO idea where it was getting this information from.

My attempts to clean things up using the actual MSN client just made things worse. I renamed "Friends" to "Oogabooga". Deleted ByFolder and Contact List.plist again. (For future reference, I'm just going to call that "trashed groups".) Signed in. Whoops.

Now every contact was apparently experiencing a syncronization error. Even though I had renamed Friends to Oogabooga, Oogabooga was empty. Everyone was still in Friends.

Quit Adium. Trash groups. Decide to delete the offending account from Adium, as well as the 3.plist associated with it in Users/Default/Accounts. Restart. Still no joy.

Since Oogabooga is empty, I decide to delete it using Adium. "The 11 contacts are not signed in. The group has not been deleted." Wha? This is new. The group count shows 0/0, but Adium is adamant there's 11 people in it.

This gets me thinking... Maybe the problem is actually a combination of the way Adium handles groups with the way Messenger expects them to work. For example, Messenger always shows that damn "Individuals" group, yet Adium never does. Though I'm not sure, I get the idea that "Individuals" is just Messenger's catch-all group if you don't add a contact to a specific one. This alone makes me think something's screwy.

So this time, I log in using the MSN client, rename Oogabooga to Wurd. Trash groups. Start Adium and sign in. All groups reappear, including Oogabooga. Synchronization problems, of course. To test, I click "Yes" to the first three boxes, then no to the rest. It's like magic. All of my contacts suddenly arrange themselves where I've been trying to put them for the better part of 5 hours. Except for Oogabooga.

The people who I specifically answered "Yes" to adding them to Oogabooga are not there. They're where I originally had them, in Friends. (By originally, I mean when I had them all organized nicely on MSN and Adium wasn't working.) Oogabooga isn't even showing up as a group.

Since I sometimes get stuck using the actual Messenger client, I figured I'd sign in and see if everything was okay. Turns out, no, it wasn't. For some reason, Oogabooga now exists as a group in the Messenger client, but not in Adium. Easy fix, I think, I'll just drag them into Friends. Well this is a no-go. I can drag them to any group except Friends.

Now I'm really getting confused. What's the deal with the Friends group? And then it hits me. Friends and Oogabooga are actually the same group. The MSN server is just completely confused, because three contacts are in the same group as the rest, but the group itself has a different name.

I picked the safest group-- Individuals-- and dragged the contacts there. Signed out of MSN. Trashed groups, and started Adium. Signed in. All the contacts are in their proper groups. Quit Adium and sign into the MS client. No one's in Individuals. They're back in their proper group.

What does this mean? I really have no idea. As far as I can tell, at some point, either Adium or the MSN server started getting really confused as to what I was trying to accomplish. At any rate, here's what worked for me. I take no responsibility for any damage this may cause you:

1. Try and organize your contacts where you want them using Adium.
2. Quit Adium.
3. Zip your ByFolder and Contact List.plist files in an archive just in case.
4. Trash your ByFolder and Contact List.plist files. Empty the Trash. OS X is pretty clever at finding files you've moved.
5. Sign in to MSN using the actual client.
6. Organize your contacts how you actually want them.
7. Quit Messenger.
8. Sign back in using Adium. Answer "Yes" to synchronizing your buddies.
9. Quit Adium
10. Back in the Messenger client, move the offending buddies into "Individuals". Quit MSN.
11. Sign back in using Adium. See if it worked.

BTW, trashing your ByFolder etc. will cause you to lose aliases, meta, etc. However, if you've set Adium up to grab contact names from the Address Book and consolidate contacts, they'll be recreated automatically for you.

C