Help Half of Contacts Lost!?

[T0rched]

Hey all,

New to the forums and all so hoping someone on here can help... Last night I updated my phone to the new firmware version. Followed all steps including backing up all my phone entries (logs/messages/contacts etc...) and went through the update with flying colors. The new update is amazing but for some reason after recovering all of my (previously saved) things, I found out I'm missing more than half of my contacts!?!

Anyone know what's going on? I can find my whole phone book through my text messaging application when searching for a name but if I go into my actual phone book I have like the last 6 entries that I added only... I've tried importing from sim/sd card nothing works...

Do I need to spend a weekend re-entering them all again?!?!

Thanks for the help!

 

[MrWomble]

Hey all,

New to the forums and all so hoping someone on here can help... Last night I updated my phone to the new firmware version. Followed all steps including backing up all my phone entries (logs/messages/contacts etc...) and went through the update with flying colors. The new update is amazing but for some reason after recovering all of my (previously saved) things, I found out I'm missing more than half of my contacts!?!

Anyone know what's going on? I can find my whole phone book through my text messaging application when searching for a name but if I go into my actual phone book I have like the last 6 entries that I added only... I've tried importing from sim/sd card nothing works...

Do I need to spend a weekend re-entering them all again?!?!

Thanks for the help!

If they were backed up using the Backup An dRestore app or the Export to SD Card method before updating the firmware then i would just delete the phonebook and restore again

If this is NOT the case then yes you may have to re-enter them

When i updated i kept losing contacts so just kept restoreing, after 3 or 4 attempts they were all there

 

[T0rched]

Alright so completely delete the phone book and restore it from scratch? I'll try your persistence method lol!

Thanks

btw - it says that I have no contacts on my sim... But I'm positive I have a bunch considering that's what I was using to store contact information from my the BB I was using before... Is there any reason it can't read the sim card information?

 

[Juglistrix]

Hey all,

New to the forums and all so hoping someone on here can help... Last night I updated my phone to the new firmware version. Followed all steps including backing up all my phone entries (logs/messages/contacts etc...) and went through the update with flying colors. The new update is amazing but for some reason after recovering all of my (previously saved) things, I found out I'm missing more than half of my contacts!?!

Anyone know what's going on? I can find my whole phone book through my text messaging application when searching for a name but if I go into my actual phone book I have like the last 6 entries that I added only... I've tried importing from sim/sd card nothing works...

Do I need to spend a weekend re-entering them all again?!?!

Thanks for the help!

hey i dunno if this will solve ur issue .. but alot of ppl are having issues with thier contacts .... i had the same problem .. this is how i solved mine .. let me know if it works for u .. i replied to a similar post on another thread .. check it out .. let me know ... ..

http://androidforums.com/sony-ericsson-xperia-x10/212080-vodafone-2-1-update-any-news.html

 

[MrWomble]

Alright so completely delete the phone book and restore it from scratch? I'll try your persistence method lol!

Thanks

btw - it says that I have no contacts on my sim... But I'm positive I have a bunch considering that's what I was using to store contact information from my the BB I was using before... Is there any reason it can't read the sim card information?

you shouldn't be restoring from the SIM - any backup should have been put to the SD card or used Backup & Restore app to backup to contacts

SIM's aren't able to hold the information from Smartphones correctly

 

[gunny5821]

Just a thought, aren't all of your contacts located in your GMAIL account? I know mine are, heck that is where they are all stored on a permenant fashion and than they get transferred over to my phone via OTA. So if you are missing the contacts on your phone, are they missing off your GMAIL account as well? If not, meaning all of your contacts are on your GMAIL account, than delete all contacts on your phone and than just resync with your GMAIL account.

 

[luke318is]

Any contact that had previously been touched by the "facecebook sync" app was lost for me. Bug during backup i assume. Did you have facebook sync before?

 

[D3sRtH4mmR]

Phone-Contacts-Menu-Import Contacts-Memory Card.

The file is called PIMXXXXX.vcf where XXXX is the backup number, eg PIM00004.vcf.

Search your SD card first for the vcf file. it should be under sd/system/PIM

 

[T0rched]

awesome advice so where to start!

@MrWoble
-> I've used my blackberry for years and always relied on my sim card... It's a bad habit of mine and I've learned from it... I've also learned not to trust the onboard backup and restore utility because this is what messed everything up in the first place

@gunny
-> Unforutnately I don't have my contacts with gmail... I only have a gmail account for certain activations I needed for the phone but I hardly ever use that account. So, I've never synced to it either...

@luke
-> This is the weird part... If I add a contact that I have on facebook I automatically get all their numbers/emails/everything to my phone... It's annoying because it puts it in as a double entry so now all I have to do is add a name that I have on facebook into the phone book, sync with facebook, and BOOM all the information is there

@D3sRth4mmR
-> I've looked through my phone for that file and there is only file under that extension. This file is the assosicated with the ONLY numbers/contacts/logs that the restore had saved... 30 of em... So the backup utility only saved 30 contacts which is my pet peeve from the begnning of this software update...

 

[T0rched]

Just a thought, aren't all of your contacts located in your GMAIL account? I know mine are, heck that is where they are all stored on a permenant fashion and than they get transferred over to my phone via OTA. So if you are missing the contacts on your phone, are they missing off your GMAIL account as well? If not, meaning all of your contacts are on your GMAIL account, than delete all contacts on your phone and than just resync with your GMAIL account.

Hey,

So I've tried everything that everyone suggested and SOME HOW my contacts actually got synced to gmail like you suggested! I should be able to save it as a vcard ext ontop my computer, upload that to my phone, and import the contacts that way! I'm at work but if this works you've saved me a HUGE hassle and appreciate it a lot!!

Thanks to everyone for the help.

 

[rosered]

Can't you just sync with google again and they will come back on to your phone? You can untick sync straight after if you don't want to keep it on there, but it's handy to have a back up. (I am a sad-o cos I have mine on SE sync but then disables, run it with google sync all the time and have a copy on my SD card.... not that I have got the update yet!)

 

[T0rched]

I tried to sync it back with google and nothing happened... Now I'm wondering if I'm syncing wrong...

- Blackberries are so much easier to use... cause of less functionality lol + my battery lasted 3 weeks instead of 1 day...

 

[T0rched]

So final update:

It worked - I sync'd it with gmail and all my contacts came back. But for some reason I have a message popping up looking like this:

"Delete limit exceeded"
There are 115 deleted items for Contacts. What would you like to do?
Delete Items
Undo Deletes
Do Nothing

What does this mean?

 

[Schism]

I noticed that when I upgraded to 2.1, I had all my contact 'Favourites' still, but my master list was gone.
Well if you go to your phonebook and click the icon at the very top left (showing multiple heads) and select the first option "Contacts with phone number".
Poof.
All my contacts came back.

Dunno this is relevant to your issues, but worth mentioning.

 

[alexdiver]

I noticed that when I upgraded to 2.1, I had all my contact 'Favourites' still, but my master list was gone.
Well if you go to your phonebook and click the icon at the very top left (showing multiple heads) and select the first option "Contacts with phone number".
Poof.
All my contacts came back.

Dunno this is relevant to your issues, but worth mentioning.

This is exactly what solved it for me. I've also upgraded to 2.1 on the Xperia X10 and found that certain contacts that were 'lost' would appear if I dialled the phone number directly of if I received a text message from that contact. Searching for the same contact would not appear. Then I realized that the contact it was being filtered by some pre-determined view which I now realized can be controlled using the above instructions.

I actually realized this myself before seeing Schism's comment. But thanks anyway for posting it!

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

 

[gunny5821]

Well I'm glad it worked out for you. I was wondering how you were using your phone and F&T and not using gmail for all of your sync'ing. So I'm glad at least this time I gotta it right. Congrats!

 

[alexdiver]

Well I'm glad it worked out for you. I was wondering how you were using your phone and F&T and not using gmail for all of your sync'ing. So I'm glad at least this time I gotta it right. Congrats!

Actually my phone synchs with Sony Ericsson, Gmail and Skype so some of my contacts have been neatly mashed up or consolidated into one with duplicate phone numbers, email addresses, etc. If this is too much you can always select a filter to display only contacts with phone numbers in them.

 

[T0rched]

yeah the biggest hassle I had after was that I had to "join" all my contacts with facebook to get everyone's emails and such all together in 1 contact instead of duplicate entries... This -from the prior hell I've been through- was the least of my concerns...

The syncing though was purely luck as I never have my background sync data on ever (to conserve battery life for Angry Birds LOL). Anyways, the new update is absolutely aweeesome!