Help! Urgent question regarding a client's iPhone and my Mac

Question

I have an office support business, and I use a Max OS X.
One of my clients has an iphone, and he wanted me to download his address book from his iphone onto my Mac so I could then edit his address book.
This morning, I plugged my client's iphone into my laptop to download his address book onto my computer.
The system said it had to download a new version iTunes (took over an hour).
After the download, I received a window message on my computer: *"iTunes has detected an iphone in recovery mode. You must restore this phone before it can be used with iTunes.*
I don't want to use the phone in conjunction with iTunes. However, the only option I have is to restore. No "cancel" nor any other option.
*_My questions_:*
(1) By "restoring" my client's phone, am I going to wipe out his address book on it and everything else that he has put on his iphone?
(2) IS there a way for me to download his address book onto my computer so I can then edit his entries for him. And if so, how?
Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

You're welcome.
I believe (with about a 99% certainty) that my client originally downloaded his contacts from his Mac Airbook onto his iphone. However (and again, with that same certainty), I don't think he used "address book" - I think he purchased and used a different "contacts" software program (although, at the moment, I don't remember the name of it).
The only other application on a Mac that is supported for syncing contact info with an iPhone is Entourage 2004 or 2008 - part of Microsoft Office 2004 or 2008 for the Mac), which is synced with the Address Book.
1) You mentioned "after the firmware is re-installed" . . . is this something that is done automatically during the restore?
When restoring an iPhone with iTunes, the iPhone is completely erased first. This is followed by the current firmware version being re-installed. After the firmware is re-installed, you are prompted to restore the iPhone from the iPhone's most recent backup - which is created and maintained by iTunes during the sync process. The iPhone's backup is updated if needed when syncing the iPhone with iTunes - if any of the data included with the iPhone's backup has changed since the last sync, which is usually 100% of the time when syncing. The other option available is restoring the iPhone as a new iPhone or not from the iPhone's backup. This must be followed by a sync with iTunes to re-transfer all iTunes content, and any photos transferred from your computer to your iPhone.
You don't have a backup on your Mac for your client's iPhone, and you don't have your client's iTunes library available, nor any photos transferred from your client's computer to the iPhone.
Currently, on his iphone, the screen shows an iTunes icon on top, and on bottom, it shows a USB port icon . . . and in between the two is an up arrow (from the USB port icon, up to the iTunes icon). I am not able to get anything else to appear on the iphone's screen.
Because something was seriously wrong with this iPhone for this iPhone to go into recovery mode. When in recovery mode, the only thing you can do is restore the iPhone with iTunes.
(2) Will that ^^^ be corrected during the restore? And if so, will he have access to his iphone as it was before he gave it to me?
Restoring the iPhone with iTunes should fix the problem since the iPhone will be completely erased followed by the current firmware version being re-installed, but you don't have a backup for this iPhone to restore the iPhone from the backup, so this iPhone will be restored as a new iPhone only if your restore the iPhone with iTunes on your computer.
You need to restore the iPhone with your client's computer.
(3) Does this mean, that if I do what I have quoted, then no data will be lost?
Depending on how often your client syncs the iPhone with iTunes on his/her computer. If a number of contacts were manually added to this iPhone by your client since syncing the iPhone with iTunes on his/her computer, these contacts will be lost when restoring the iPhone with iTunes from the iPhone's backup, and if the iPhone has not been synced with a supported application on your client's computer since any contacts were manually added to the iPhone, the newly added contacts on the iPhone will not be available with the supported application on your client's computer either.
4) Also, how do I perform a sync?
After the iPhone is restored with iTunes on your client's computer from the iPhone's backup, you select Sync at the bottom right of the iTunes window with the iPhone selected in the iTunes source list.
Check this link - under the Getting Started section - setting up syncing.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/tips/