I recently updated my iPhone 4s to ios6, and lost 1200 odd contacts. I have a backup from about 4-5 months ago avaiable. Can I add/update contacts from the back up rather than restore which i assume will literally delete any new contacts added...?

Question

I recently updated my iPhone 4s to ios6, and lost 1200 odd contacts. I recently sold my macbook air and also my mac book pro, so have no recent backups avaiable.  I have a backup from about 4-5 months ago available on an external hdd as a time machine backup.  Can I add/update contacts from the back up rather than restore?  The reason i wish to do this is because in the update i didnt lose any messages, so all of the people i have met and networked with since that last update those many months ago, i have in my messages listings.  They are all unidentified numbers at present but over time i will be able to work through the messages and based on the conversation recall who each was with.  Also, yesterday, some two weeks after the update had left my contacts list entirely empty... a vast majority just reappeard, though all of them are without any phone numbers, all just emails or facebook contacts.  This is the work of facebook not mac/ios6 isnt it...?  Any help here would be greatly apprecaited.  I am about 2 days from flying to canada and having those contacts would make life a lot easier.

Answer 1

You should be syncing your contacts with an app on your computer or cloud service (iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo, etc), and not relying on a backup.  If you haven't been doing this, start now and then restore your old backup.  You will then be able to sync the new contacts back into the phone.  However, you will lose all messages, etc newer thant the backup.