Help All contacts and call history mysteriously deleted but 'contacts storage' remains at 4.1Mb

[jsallinson]

Hello everyone,

This is a question I've researched but haven't been able to find an answer for.

I went abroad this week taking my HTC Desire with me. I used the hotel's WiFi a bit, but not that country's mobile network. I kept my Orange UK SIM in all the time I was there. I kept having an error message pop up - com.google.process.gapps had stopped working, or had to be force closed. Annoying, but didn't seem to affect anything at the time.

Once back home, the error messages stopped, but, all my contacts had disappeared along with my call history. However (and this is perhaps a caveat) 4.09MB remains in my 'Contacts Storage' (found by Settings>Applications>Manage applications>All). 'People' however only shows 16kB, and 'Dialer storage' shows 9.81MB (found under the same list).

I've checked my google mail account: no contacts found. And nothing was found on my SD or SIM card using the 'Import contacts' feature in the phonebook. When I check the 'view' options in my phonebook (menu>view) all boxes are ticked showing the following:

SIM (3)
Google (6)
Show auto gmail contacts
Phone (2)
Facebook for HTC sense (0)

If I create a new contact and save it to my gmail account, it still doesn't appear in my phonebook. The majority (but not all) of my original contacts were saved on to my phone. The few saved to my SIM card (3) seem to have survived and remain in my contacts list.

Does anyone know what could have happened here? Is the 4.09Mb of data found in 'Contacts Storage' where I can get my contacts back from?

I'd be grateful for any help.

Jake

 

[theguest13]

Only thing I can think of off the top of my head is to go settings, accounts and sync, google, and sync contacts. Not sure if thisll retrieve your contacts (it should do though) but worth a go,

 

[jsallinson]

I'm afraid I've tried that already but to no avail.

Another twist in the tale is that my Facebook contacts won't 'rejoin' my phonebook. I remember having a quite a few contacts that came automatically over from Facebook, but they have disappeared with everyone else.

It doesn't seem to be a syncing problem, as contacts stored on my phone, my gmail account, and Facebook are not populating my phonebook. Even new contacts I make aren't appearing.

I suspect the data on individuals are on my phone somewhere, but that some software glitch is preventing them from appearing in my phonebook.

Thanks for you suggestion though.

 

[jsallinson]

An interesting twist to this happened when I came across another forum topic on someone loosing their Facebook contacts:

Facebook syncing problem. HTC desire | Facebook

I had a similar problem in that I could not link any contacts in my phonebook to anyone's Facebook profile, or import any contacts from my Facebook friends. The above forum discusses how to fix that (annoyingly simple!).

Although this didn't bring all of my mysteriously vanished contacts back, it did enable me to re-import contacts originally brought over from Facebook.

Sort of a fix, but not quite.

Jake

 

[spile]

Try
Settings > Applications > Manage applications > All > Contacts storage > Clear data

 

[mocking bird]

Hi JSallinson and all

I have a similar problem. I use HTC Desire from T-Mobile - my phone was dropped earlier today and I had to restart it. My Google and Facebook contacts are still available, but all the contacts that I manually created are no longer available. Unfortunately I do not have a backup of this anywhere.

My contacts shows as 14.7 MB (Settings - Applications - Manage Applications - Contacts). People and Dialer storage however is negligible (a few KB).

All my contacts were created to a separate account called 'MyPhonebook' - this is one of the default account types shown whenever I try to create a contact on my Desire. I sense that my contacts are available somewhere on the phone - but I am just unaware where to look.

Would you please provide with any suggestions to find my contacts in the MyPhonebook account again.

Thanks!