How do I restore my contacts to my phone and Outlook?

Hi,
The recent iPhone iOS6 debacle caused many of my contacts to be deleted from my iPhone. When I realized this had occurred I resynched with Outlook on my PC (which I do every day anyway) and it restored some contact information. Some days later I realized that the contacts that were still missing were all from the same folder and wondered if the update had removed that sync. Instead, when I delved into it I learned that the update had completely removed the entire folder and all contacts from that folder in Outlook. The deleted contacts aren't even in the deleted folder, they're gone completely in Outlook.
Outlook 2010 does not have auto-archive turned on by default and I haven't turned it on manually so I am unable to restore the information that way.
If I try and restore the phone to a previous version then the only backup that is listed is the one from today. I'm under the impression that even if there were more backups listed and I were to restore then I'd lose any messages etc that had arrived since the backup anyway, which is not acceptable.
Short of inventing a time machine is there any way I can get my contacts back?
Please note that using the cloud is not an option as I am *not* giving apple any more data than I absolutely have to (plus I don't see how it could help anyway).
As a curiosity - given how many (thousand/million?) people have been affected by this fiasco, is there a published apology from Apple that I can read online?

Given the lack of reply I'd say my data is gone, which was my own surmise but I would like confirmation if that is possible?
Is it true that on my 500+ GB HDD that iTunes only keeps the most recent backup of the OS? I'm not sure if I had older backup that I could use that as it would cause other data (ie new messages etc) to be lost but I am genuinely curious. Also, I'm not aware if there is a selective restore - as in can I restore contacts from a backup without restoring the entire OS + state info?
I can't find the public apology from apple for inconveniencing so many of it's users with an update that was almost entirely political (bye bye Google), partially cosmetic (woot new title bar colour) and serious issues that caused data loss for thousands/millions - if someone could direct me to that it would be appreciated as I would love to provide some feedback to that post.
I wrote a more controvesially titled version of this same enquiry called "If Apple were worth $548 billion instead of $547 bn could they afford a software tester" and that thread actually had some useful replies before the thread was deleted by an over zealous forum admin. If the people that love the product so much that they can't bear negative feedback hadn't jumped my thread to troll with their foolish views it might even have gotten somewhere. So here I'm left with a bland post with no replies and still my data is gone. Would love a solution but fear none exists, thus the negativity.

Similar Messages

I have my contacts synced with icloud and exchange. I want all of them to be synced via icloud, I have tried turning contacts off and then clicking merge but that doesn't copy all of them over. How do I transfer all contacts onto my phone and then icloud?

I have my contacts synced with icloud and exchange. I want all of them to be synced via icloud, I have tried turning contacts off and then clicking merge but that doesn't copy all of them over. How do I transfer all contacts onto my phone and then icloud?

Welcome to the Apple Community.
If you can't do this on a computer, which would be much easier using drag and drop, then you will need to share the contacts with yourself in order to move them to the iCloud account.

How do I sync my contacts from my phone and Mac?

How do I sync my contacts from my iPhone and my Mac?

Mike G. wrote:
As far as I can tell this has been disabled in Mavericks (and possibly slightly earlier). Apple now wants you to get an iCloud account and upload all of your contacts to their server.
The way this works is: 1. create an icloud accout 2. set up your mac to sync its contacts with that icloud account 3. set up your iphone to sync its contacts with that same icloud account. (Be careful when synching the first time that you don't overwrite the device's contacts with the initially blank set of clontacts in icloud). The result is that you have synched the contacts between your iphone and your mac (and Apple gets a copy as well).
-Mike
Now I understand. In step #2 above "set up your mac to sync its contacts with that icloud account" means "select all the 'on my mac' contacts and drag them onto the iCloud account so that they become iCloud contacts". There is no "setting" to sync "on my mac" contacts to iCloud.
As I tried to note on another thread about this where I was, unfortunately, openly mocked for having difficulty with it, this doesn't always go as smoothly as one would like and it can, at times, appear that you can't drag a contact from "on my mac" to iCloud.
I have several hundred google contacts and several hundred "on my mac" contacts, as well as the iCloud acount. (A consequence of being a very long time Apple user and a very reluctant iCloud adopter. Until a serious phone failure yesterday I'd always just had the contacts sync via iTunes and then grandfathered from phone to phone once that feature was removed by building the new phone from the old phone's back up.)
The Contacts app is in constant network communication with the google servers and the iCloud servers. When you're working with this many contacts at one time, network lag in those communications (is my best guess) can cause the application itself to cease to function in a quick and obvious way, often creating the appearance that you can't drag a particular contact (or group of contacts) from one place to another. You try to drag and nothing happens. You don't get an error or a warning, you don't get the situation where you can drag it but you can't get it to select a group (because the contact is already in there) you get nothing at all.
If this happens often enough it can lead one to believe that contacts must be moved individually and manually, but that is not the case. You just have to let your network connection catch up, and try again.
Also note that if you drag a group of contacts and some of them are already in iCloud you'll get a warning about potential duplicates. You'll get a set of choices about which one to keep, or both, or update. You can't actually see the contents of the two duplicates while you make this choice. If you get this warning, I would highly recommend choosing "cancel", confirming that your local copy is correct, complete and up to date, and then do the select and drag again and then pick the "update" option -- either nothing will happen because iCloud was also correct, complete and up to date, or you'll update iCloud, but nothing bad can happen that way.
I'm so glad they took away the direct syncing with the Contacts app via iTunes. This new method is so much easier to use

Nokia Lumia 928 apparently died after an attempted Windows 8.1 update. Replacement phone arrived the next day. How can I restore my contacts, photos, etc.? Backup assistant is no help and I don't know how to access the Cloud.

Nokia Lumia 928 apparently died after an attempted Windows 8.1 update. Replacement phone arrived the next day. How can I restore my contacts, photos, etc.? Backup assistant is no help and I don't know how to access the Cloud.

Did you have the phone set to backup things to the One Drive on Microsoft servers?

How do I restore lost contacts from my macbook pro?

We have a MacBook Pro.
It has all contacts in the address book and then they are broken down into groups for myself, my husband and 2 kids. My husband deleted all of my contacts from his iPhone. When I synced it with the MacBook Pro, it asked me if I wanted to delete 50+ contacts. I said yes assuming it would only delete for him......well it deleted all the contacts he wanted removed from his iPhone, from my iPhone and from the MacBook Pro. So the question is; how do I restore those contacts. We have I phone 4s' and recently updated to OSX Version 10.9.4. Any suggestions?

You restore them from your most recent backup.
Barry

HT1414 How can I restore my CONTACTS from the icloud

How can I restore my CONTACTS from iCloud ??

You re-sync them by setting up your iCloud account under Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and turning on the 'contact sync', assuming that's what you were syncing them with before. If you were not syncing them with iCloud (syncing is NOT the same as backing up), then you will have to re-sync them from whatever you were syncing them with.

How do I restore one contact from my Time Machine?

How do I restore one contact from my Time Machine?

From Time Machine Help:
Restore items backed up with Time Machine
If you use Time Machine to back up your Mac, you can easily bring back lost items or recover older versions of files.
You can use Time Machine within many apps. If the iCloud Documents & Data feature is turned on, you can recover older versions of iCloud documents as well as regular documents.
Open a window for the item you want to restore.For example, if you accidentally deleted a file from your Documents folder, open the Documents folder. To recover an email message, open your inbox in Mail. To recover an iCloud document, open the document’s app, choose File > Open, then click iCloud to view the iCloud documents for that app.
If you’re missing an item from the desktop, you don’t need to open a window.
From the Time Machine menu in the menu bar, choose Enter Time Machine. A message may appear while your Mac connects to the backup disk.
Use the arrows and timeline to browse the snapshots and backups.White tick marks represent snapshots stored on your internal drive (portable computers only). Pink tick marks represent backups stored on your backup disk. If a tick mark appears dimmed or grayed, there’s no backup available or the backup disk is not connected.
For more information about an item, double-click it.The windows in Time Machine behave just like Finder windows, so you can open folders, click items in the sidebar, and use the search field in the upper-right corner of the window.
When you find the item you want to restore, select it, then click Restore. You can restore individual items, multiple items, folders, or your entire hard disk.The restored item is returned to its original location. For example, if the item was found in the Documents folder, it is returned to the Documents folder.
Many apps let you use Time Machine within individual documents so you can examine and read the document’s past versions to find the version you want. For more information, see:
View and restore past versions of documents
RELATED TOPICSRecover items using Time Machine and Spotlight
Recover your entire system
Revert to a previous OS X version
Use multiple backup disks
Time Machine overview
Time Machine problems

I had to perform a master reset on my HTC one, before doing so the phone was backed up using the backup assistant app. Now there is no restore button I can find to get my contacts back. How do I restore my contacts?

I had to perform a Master Reset on my HTC One while trying to work through an issue. This was done with a Verizon rep on the phone and we performed a backup using backup assistant. Now I am not able to restore my contacts because I do not have a "restore" soft button when I open the backup assistant app. How do I restore my contacts?

Have you updated the dreaded Backup Assistant program? I think you need to do this first before you can restore.
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/backup-assistant-plus/37643125-d0d8-4727-8e2d-1a18476d65c6
If you are using a Microsoft Account for HTC restore your stuff and get off the Backup Assistant and use Windows Phone's native backup, Learn about Windows Phone backup | Windows Phone How-to (United States) and you'll never have to go through this again

HT4859 how can i restore only contacts for example from icloud backup of my ipad?

how can i restore only contacts that have been backed up from my ipad to icloud backup?

You cannot... See this discussion...
https://discussions.apple.com/message/17507130#17507130
Also see Contacts here > http://help.apple.com/icloud/?lang=en
And here > http://www.apple.com/support/icloud/contacts/

How do I restore my contacts from an earlier backup?

Lost some but not all contacts when I got a new phone. How can I restore my contacts from a backup I did earlier this week?

When restoring an iPhone from the backup, the current backup being used is selected by default. If a previous backup is avaialble, you can select it from the pop-up where the current backup selected by default is located.
Contacts should be available in a supported address book app on your computer for a number of reasons with this being one of them. If so, the contacts would be transferred from the address book app on your computer without having to restore the iPhone with iTunes and in then event there is a problem with the backup in regards to this data. If the iPhone were lost or stolen or damaged and not usuable, your contacts would be available as well or syncing with another phone in the event the iPhone was not replaced with another, etc.

How can i restore the contacts that were on my iphone before i synched?

I have accidentally deleted my entire contact list/address book from my iphone while synching my iphone to the computer. It has been replaced with all contacts from other users that synch to this computer. How can I restore the contacts I created on my phone?

I pop up in these forums perhaps 3-4 times a year since about 10 years ago. How disappointing. It seems that all the forums here are mainly quite useless. Many have like 900 views and only 3-4 replies; and these replies more often than not, are people sharing the same problem Actual solutions are hard to find. Shouldn't Apple be embarrassed about this and perhaps do something about it. Consider this one as an example. It has
893 Views and only4 Replies. Out of these 4 replies opnly 1 is actually a possible answer/solution, which unfortunately (as in many otgher cases) does not provide the solution needed.

HT4859 I lost my contacts on outlook and now I have contacts only on icloud of iPhone 4 please tell how i can restore my contacts from icloud to my contact list in iPhone and to my outlook

I lost my contacts on outlook and now I have contacts only on icloud of iPhone 4 please tell how i can restore my contacts from icloud to my contact list in iPhone and to my outlook

Welcome to the Apple Community.
Use your back up on your mac/PC and re-add your contacts to Address Book or whatever contact software you use.

HT204053 how do I restore my contacts from icloud to my iphone 4s

how do I restore my contacts from icloud to my iphone 4s

Welcome to the Apple Community.
If you are saying you have deleted them, you can't restore them unless you have a back up and can restore the whole device.

How can I restore the contacts of outlook?

Very stupid happened. Edited all my contacts through outlook. On their phone removed to immediately burn through recent outlook. Connect your phone to WM (I have Vista, and I can't use ActivSync ), and WM synchronizes contacts so that they aren't only
copied on the phone, and remove them from outlook.
Can I do backup outlook?
How can I restore the contacts and is it possible?

You're that to far gone with it, try to restore the backup to your phone.
Rolled back to the last restore point synchronization.
Or using software, Outlook Backup Toolbox
He is able to:
1) Restore accounts Microsoft Outlook (with password)
2) Backup and restore Microsoft Outlook Message
3) To reset Microsoft Outlook
Link: http://www.outlookbackup.recoverytoolbox.com/

How can I restore the Contact shortcut ,please?

How can I restore the Contact shortcut ,please?

There are no "shortcuts" on the iPhone so I'm guessing you mean you've mislaid the Contacts app. By default, it's in the Utilities folder. If it's not there, look in all the other folders and home screens. Once you find it, you can move it anyhere you want by tapping and holding it until it wiggles, that dragging it to your preferred location.
If you want to reset all of your icons back to the default layout, Settings>General>Reset>Reset Home Screen Layout. After you do that, it will be once again in the Utilities folder.
Note: You can also access Contacts through the Phone app.

How do I restore my contacts to my phone and Outlook?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for