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      How to Recover from Contacts Freezing when Printing Lists in Sonoma

   Adam Engst

   Many people don't realize that Apple's Contacts app on the Mac can
   print, but it's not terrible at making mailing labels, envelopes, and
   lists. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't paid much attention to Contacts in
   years, and the result is a [1]particularly egregious printing-related
   freeze in macOS 14 Sonoma's version of Contacts. Thanks to John Hepburn
   for bringing this to my attention on TidBITS Talk.

   You can reproduce the freeze by selecting one or more contacts that
   have a decent amount of information associated with them, choosing File
   > Print, choosing Lists from the Styles pop-up menu, and waiting
   briefly'you don't even need to click Print. Unless your Mac is
   different from mine, you'll quickly see the dreaded spinning pizza of
   death cursor, and your only escape is to click and hold the Contacts
   icon in the Dock and choose Force Quit. The problem does not rear its
   ugly head if you attempt to print mailing labels or envelopes.

   I strongly suspect the bug lives in the code that draws the preview on
   the left side of the Print dialog. If you select only a single contact
   whose information does not include the selected attributes that can be
   printed in a list, Contacts won't freeze, and you can even print the
   list. Of course, printing a list of a single contact is pointless, and
   selecting multiple contacts, even those that wouldn't trigger the bug
   on their own, does trigger the freeze.

   A more problematic situation arises if Lists somehow becomes selected
   such that the Print dialog would open with it showing in the Styles
   pop-up menu. When that's the case, merely choosing File > Print will
   result in the spinning pizza of death, preventing you from printing at
   all.

   Although I've found no way around the bug'I have reported it to Apple,
   for whatever that's worth'there is a way to recover from being
   prevented from opening the Print dialog. Kudos to Jeff Fischer on
   TidBITS Talk for [2]the solution:
     * Navigate to ~/Library/Preferences.
     * Drag the file com.apple.AddressBook.plist to a text editor like
       BBEdit.
     * Search for ABSelectedPrintStyle and change the number in the
       <integer>#</integer>line underneath to either 1 (Envelopes) or 0
       (Mailing Labels).

   Alternatively, copy and paste this defaults write command into
   Terminal, giving Terminal permission to access Contacts when prompted:

   defaults write com.apple.AddressBook ABSelectedPrintStyle 0

   Personally, I prefer to work with contacts in [3]Cardhop from
   Flexibits, which can print contact lists in Sonoma. Printing isn't one
   of Cardhop's marquee features, but all you have to do is open Cardhop's
   menu, select the desired contacts (easiest after displaying its sidebar
   of groups), and press Command-P to print the same mailing labels,
   envelopes, and lists.

References

   Visible links
   1. https://talk.tidbits.com/t/contacts-wont-print-with-sonoma/25802?u=ace
   2. https://talk.tidbits.com/t/contacts-wont-print-with-sonoma/25802/6?u=ace
   3. https://flexibits.com/cardhop

   Hidden links:
   4. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2023/12/Contact-Print-freeze.png
   5. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2023/12/Contacts-Lists-attributes.png

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