Lost all my contacts

[AC Question]

Hi, I had a samsung galaxy s3 and I saved all my contacts on both my google account and samsung account and then I lost my phone and got a sony xperia but when I tried to sync my phone with my google account only four contacts were found and then I tried to add the e-mail I had on my samsung account which is a hotmail and I didn't find any contacts. Then I started from the beginning saved all my contacts on my hotmail account and now when I try to sync my htc phone with my hotmail account it doesn't find any contacts. How do I find them?

 

[Rukbat]

Only Google contacts will sync. Device and SIM contacts won't. Unfortunately, the default when you enter a new contact in the phone is usually Device. To get it to be syncable, you have to change it when you enter it (that can't be edited, for some reason known only to the Google gods) to a Google contact.

You can export your current contact list (all of them will export), then go to Google Contacts and import the file (in "More").

This is one of those things they don't tell you about and, IMO, chose the wrong default.