Lost contacts after apple iphone sync and update

[Zaveri]

Hi,

Yesterday when i finished syncing my iphone I noticed that ALL of my contacts in my address book had dissapeared, both in my phone and in the address book. I recently updated my iphone with new 2.2 firmware. It seems that the number of problems that iPhone users are experiencing with the update is increasing. How do i get all of my contacts back.

Thank you

[kyosang]

To get the all contacts back on your iphone Search for this file AddressBook.data.previous. When you find this file on your pc see if there is another file called AddressBook.data is there or not. drag this one from the folder onto desktop Now reopen AddressBook. Let me know if this helps

[Simond]

If you are unable to find contacts on your iphone then open iTunes and click edit, then preferences, devices and you will then see that you have a back up from an earlier date before your Outlook Express error, select it and close the window. Then right click on devices, which is your iPhone on the left and then select restore from back up, once prompted select the backup date that you have chosen. That should now restore all your contacts to before your error.

[Bon-Z]

If you dont know How to Back up contacts from iPhone Then the following steps may help you to back up contacts. You can backup My Contacts using the Windows Address Book. so to start and then go to Programs and select Accessories and you see Address Book. Export your contacts as a Windows Address Book (WAB) file and a comma separated value file (CSV).this steps make you contact save.

[carly]

If you are unable to find contacts on your iphone then open iTunes and click edit, then preferences, devices and you will then see that you have a back up from an earlier date before your Outlook Express error, select it and close the window. Then right click on devices, which is your iPhone on the left and then select restore from back up, once prompted select the backup date that you have chosen. That should now restore all your contacts to before your error.

hi ive tried this and i it dont seem 2 work please could u help

[Shikhar]

What error are you getting ? Because I tried to restore my contacts the same way mentioned above and it works. Anyways, in case you cover a MobileMe account and have the data already backed-up than you will be able to reset the data on your Mac with those previously saved. Try this and let me know the result.

[grace81617]

Hello. Thanks for all tips. I updated my phone last night and found out this morning my contacts list was gone. I was very careful to read all the dialogs, there was no mention as of my contacts been deleted from my phone, there was no mention of backing up contacts before updating. I didn't think of it, I was only updating my phone as they encourage you to do, because my 3G is so slow, they blame it on me not updating often enough. But guess what today it is still slow and with half my address book gone.

Now i remember why I don't update my phone often. Last time I did it 5 months ago, I lost all text messages. But loosing contacts is worse, & my back up from June was not really what I needed. Is there a way to get my contacts exactly as they were yesterday?

Why in the world would Apple have this huge flaw in their updating process its beyond me. Erasing some things, w/o even letting you know it is doing so.

I am so unhappy with mac and Iphone all together, so disappointed, and if you call them they want money, this phone has been a mess since I bought it in December, and neither ATT nor Apple claim responsibility or help, they both blame each other for the phone being slow, or for other parties receiving empty messages from me (and only me) or long text messages broken in a zillion pieces and out of order.

If any body has another tip about how to get address book back they way it was yesterday not in June, I thank you. But I thank you for your tips already.

By the way, I read in another forum the following. And I did all this. If you go to settings ( on your iphone) then to mail, contacts, calendars then to import SIM contacts, it will restore more of your contacts. Again my address book doesn't look like it did yesterday, but at least it has more contacts. I did follow your instructions in this forum, and I got other contacts back. ut I have not been able to fin WAB, of addressbook.data, this is probably por PC, I have a MAC. (they said I would love it, so far NO)

Thanks again. Sorry for the long post. I am just venting !!!!!

Oh and also how do I back up my address book often without updating, or before updating ? thanks

[Alexcherching]

hi ive tried this and i it dont seem 2 work please could u help

I lost all my contact and I try what you said, I see two back up, however, when right lick on the the iphone device, I didnt shee restore.
Please help.

[offspringlover13]

Yep same happened to me, I came here for some help , but none of these things worked, I cant find those address files, it just comes up file not found. When I do the other address thing, there are folders there, but they are empty. Anyone got any Ideas? When sync-ing it said that I would lose photoes etc, but all of my contacts and messages would remain. My parter is upset too as he wanted me to update because alot of the games he has wouldnt let him play without the update, however now that we have updates its has lost all of his history, to the games he is a new user.......

I am glad I didnt lose any photoes, but now I have no passed text messages and my contacts are gone, I transferred all of the contacts off of my sim, but they have changed since getting my i-phone... can anyone help? I cant find help anywhere.

[hibijibi]

The same thing happened to me. I updated my iPhone two days ago and since then new contacts and phone numbers are missing on both the MacBook AND the iPhone-- as far as I can tell, almost everything I entered in the past year has been deleted. The update deleted my own family's new phone numbers from both the laptop and my phone! I don't see how I could have done that just by syncing, and syncing in the usual way is ALL I did. I didn't even get one of those messages that "syncing will change X number of contacts." No, it just deleted them!

Any help GREATLY appreciated. I do have a backup hard drive but it's 5000 miles away.

[Maq.H]

Thats very weird thing happening while syncing iphone or while updating it to 4.1 iOS. Well, lets give a try to recover those contacts. Usually iPhone backups are saved at this path in your mac os system: Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup. See if you can get something there.

If it wont work than do search for 2 files names as 'AddressBook.data.previous' and 'AddressBook.data'. If you find them, drag this one from the folder onto desktop and try to open with AddressBook. See if it works.

[Bonbedalia]

I JUST UPDATED my iphone with the new files and somehow I lost my contacts. I synched my phone but did not ever store them to outlook because I did not know you had to. I had the camera deleted a few weeks ago which I did not know my 3 year old could even do and honestly should have been protected by apple since this is something that came with the darn phone. Anyway, I knew there was a huge new update so I did this in the following order to try to get my camera back too since I could not take pictures (I only had my photos)

First I synched my phone so everything was as updated as possible.
Then I did a restore of my phone to ad my camera back into my phone (I was scared I would lose apps but NEVER SAID contacts and texts would drop!!)
Then it ran the update automatically.
When the phone came back on I tried to restore it from my last update but my phone would not get past the WIFI issue with the I CLOUD THING so I said it was a new device thinking everything was on ITUNES anyway. When I got into my phone and turned on wifi i realized I lost all texts and contacts. I was afraid to do anything else. All of my apps are there and I did all of the steps above to no avail.

Can anyone help me?? Is it because I started as a new IPHONE?? Should I dump and start over? Is there anyway that I can make sure I even have my contacts somewhere before I do anything else?

I thought everything was saved to my sim??

HELP

[HankH]

This looks really a problem with the phone. It looks that the phone is not properly updated. Do you have a iCloud account. Because before running any kind of update or restoration you must backup your entire phone data. If you run the update or restoration surely phone setting are reset which led to loose contacts. If you have iCloud account then go in settings > iCloud > Backup and Storage.

Second step to backup on Windows with the help of iTunes.

• Connect your phone and Launch iTunes.
• Then Click on info at the top screen before the phone image. It is next to summary.
• Under contacts tick on Sync Contact with Windows Address Book. Choose All contacts. There are number of options. Give ok and then run Sync.

You go in Start > Program > Accessories to check your saved contacts

[2tall73]

I did the update as well and the contacts folder was empty. Fortunately what I did and it worked was I downloaded an app "mycontactskeeper" from itunes and did a contacts backup which uploaded my contacts. Then I did a restore and all my contacts were back in the contact folder. No idea why they were not before but this worked for me. I hope it works for those who also had this issue!

[twinturboturtle]

This happened to me. I went to "settings icon" on my iPhone,
went to "Mail, Contacts, Calendars";
went to "My info" it was displaying "none"
but when I clicked on it, this is where all my contacts were, I chose one and clicked on it. Backed out and went to back to "contacts app" on the main screen and all my contacts were restored.
serendipity strikes again! hope this helps