What Is going on with my contacts?

[AC Question]

So yesterday I was in the storage section of my phone (Samsung galaxy J3) and I was deleting unimportant things to make more space on my phone, I deleted something called "contacts" not really thinking much of it however now when i click on my text's my contacts are just +44 numbers and when i click on these text's to "add to contacts" it's not working, when i click on my actual contacts app it says there are none to be found and they don't seem to exist, and when i click to button to add one it won't let me, however it is still letting me text, even though i don't know who I am texting as there names have disappeared and it won't let me rename the numbers. I've been looking on loads of forums now and I can't find anyone with the same issue. Does anyone know how to fix this problem?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Did you only have your contacts saved locally to the Phone account? I highly recommend saving your contacts to your Google account, because they automatically sync with your Google Contacts in the cloud, and are therefore much more protected from accidental loss. If your contacts were only saved to the local Phone account, then they are most likely all lost. You Messaging app still has a log of all of the phone numbers you've texted to, but since your deleted your contact info, it can't associate those numbers with a name.

I'm sure you've learned this now, but in the future, don't delete anything without being sure of what it's used for.