Iphone deleted all phone numbers when synced with Exchange, Please Help!!

Question

We recently received new Iphones for the Administrative staff and thought that like other Smartphones we've used in the past that syncing with Exchange would be a breeze. After doing a bit of research everything pointed towards it being a very simple process, this is the process I followed:
Open up Itunes with Iphone connected
Click your iPhone in the "Devices" section on the left
Click the "Info" tab
In the Contacts section, check "Sync contacts with" and select "Outlook"
Click "All Contacts"
Click the "Sync" button in iTunes lower-right corner
Click "Merge", so that your contacts on your iPhone are preserved
This seemed to work but there is one major problem, all of the contacts on the Iphone and the ones imported into Outlook no longer have any phone numbers associated to them. The contacts were all synced into Outlook/Exchange no problem with their respective emails but with no phone numbers at all. Unfortunately the computer which had the backup of this Iphone was recently decommissioned so I have no backup of the phone in its previous state.
Is there any way to recover the old phone numbers/contacts on the phone without having a backup of it in its previous state? I have tried the "Import Sim Contacts" button in the settings on the phone but it doesn't seem to actually do anything. There are over 100 contacts on this particular phone, some of which the phone numbers will be very difficult to retrieve again.
I have to say that I'm not very impressed that the most popular smartphone out there can't even sync with the largest email platform in the enterprise world properly. If anybody can help me retrieve those numbers some how I would be extremely appreciative.

Answer 1

tbradley wrote:
So is this not a common issue?
This is the first I have heard of it... but I'm only one person.
tbradley wrote:
Does the Iphone actually support 2-way sync with Outlook properly or will it erase all of the numbers on the phone every time?
If you are syncing directly with Outlook, there are options in iTunes to determine which set of contacts takes priority when duplicates are found.  Personally I do not use this.  I have my device set up to sync directly with the exchange server so all changes are made directly on the server.
Personally I would recommend against using Outlook as the intermediary.  You will get much more consistent and reliable results if the iPhone syncs directly with the exchange server and no worries if the end user has not synced the device in days/weeks/months.