Just in case you happen to open KAddressBook, and see that the new entries display the vcard name where the name should appear, like it has happened here:

then relax. If I had a large and friendly font, I’d probably also write “Don’t panic”, on the back side of this post.

Your data is safe.

The filter works, too, and the bug is in Akonadi, but just in the tree item view, to be precise. This means that you can expect to see it again as soon as akonadi is fixed, and none of your contacts data is harmed.

To be even more specific, the bug where this is tracked is this one: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=252145

Please note that this only affects KAddressBook tree visualization, and in no way it compromises how the other application work (or visualize your contact data).

So, now that you’re more relaxed about this issue, here comes the howto part of the post:

Infact, in case you still badly need your contacts back, today I pushed a commit which (cleanly) workarounds this problem. To get it, you should do a number of things. Please note that while this procedure has worked for me like a charm, it could not work for you for many unknown reasons. Therefore, please proceed with extreme care!

1. Perform a full sync, so that all of your contacts data is backed up on the server.
2. Checkout the 0.2.x branch from git.

   git clone git://gitorious.org/akunambol/akunambol.git

3. Compile the branch as explained here (look at the section “Building Akunambol”)
4. Stop Akonadi, remove (or just backup) the local contacts, and start Akonadi again. (warning: ./local/share/contacts is where all of your contacts are stored! you might want to mv it instead)

   akonadictl stop
   rm -r .local/share/contacts/
   akonadictl start

5. Now, remove all the cache created by Akunambol. This will ensure that Akunambol won’t think that you just deleted all of your contacts (thus deleting them from the server too) but instead will think that it has just started on an empty addressbook (thus filling it with the data you saved during Step 1).

   rm -rf .kde4/share/apps/akunambol

6. Start Akunambol, and start a sync. Once it finishes you should see all of your contacts in KAddressBook again.

To close this post, yes, I know that all this procedure is a bit cumbersome, but again, if you have had this problem, don’t panic: your data is safe. You don’t need to follow these steps. You will not be able to display it correctly for the moment, but it’s only in THAT particular visualization, and all the functionality works nonetheless, including contacts searching, and other views of your contact list. Then, in case KAddressBook is really crucial to you, and you can’t afford to wait for the bugfix, you can simply use the procedure I illustrated above and everything should be fine. But actually, most of the users (me included) won’t even notice the problem…

Anyways… That’s all for now! Happy syncing! :)