How do I retrieve my contacts from a TWRP backup?

[ka2012]

Contact Info from TWRP backup

Yesterday, I flashed my phone (galaxy s2) with 4.3 aokp. Previous to doing it, I made a backup of everything with TWRP. The flash went fine, but it completely slipped my mind to backup contacts seperately, so now i'm missing about half of my contacts (ones saved to internal memory instead of my google account or sim card). Does anyone know of a way to get my contact info from the backup file? Any help would be immensely appreciated.

 

[srkmagnus]

Re: Contact Info from TWRP backup

Yesterday, I flashed my phone (galaxy s2) with 4.3 aokp. Previous to doing it, I made a backup of everything with TWRP. The flash went fine, but it completely slipped my mind to backup contacts seperately, so now i'm missing about half of my contacts (ones saved to internal memory instead of my google account or sim card). Does anyone know of a way to get my contact info from the backup file? Any help would be immensely appreciated.

Unfortunately you can't. The best thing is to make another backup of your current setup and restore back to the previous backup. Sync contacts and everything else you want to bring back over then restore the 4.3 AOKP ROM.

It'll take about 5 to 10-minutes if everything goes smooth. Let us know how it goes.

 

[ka2012]

Re: Contact Info from TWRP backup

Ok, thank you for the response. Most of the contacts I lost were older, less important ones, so I may just try to get the numbers again instead of re-flashing, but i'll let you know if I do. Other than that, everything seems to be working fine, except for the fact that it takes 10 minutes for my phone to boot up every time now, which is slightly worrisome, but I really don't restart my phone that often anyways...

Edit: 10 minute boot time thing only happened once. I read somewhere that it was basically checking for errors because I had previously improperly/force shut down the phone. All's back to normal now

 

[Rukbat]

Re: Contact Info from TWRP backup

It can take 10 minutes the first time you boot a new ROM - it has to build the Dalvik cache. It shouldn't happen every restart, though.

 

[ka2012]

Re: Contact Info from TWRP backup

You're right. 10 minute boot time thing only happened once. (Well twice, but I think thats cause I force restarted it after the first) . It just confused me cause it didn't happen the first time I booted the ROM. It was like the 4th restart I did, after it sucessfully booted and loaded everything the first couple of times. It kind of scared me cause I thought I bricked it or something; It just flashed the samsung logo, then stayed almost black for 5-10 minutes before showing the aokp boot animation. All's back to normal now though. Thanks for the help.

 

[srkmagnus]

Re: Contact Info from TWRP backup

Awesome. Good to see that your back up and running.

 

[StefanPutureanu]

Yes you can extract contacts from TWRP ! I just did extract my contacts from a TWRP backup.
I see this post is from 2014, but someone like me will land here for this info.

1. Go to "..\TWRP\BACKUPS\xxxxxx\xxxxxx" folder.
2. Search for "data.ext4.win001" file and "data.ext4.win000" file.
3. Copy both to your computer in a new folder.
4. Change extension of this files to zip.
5. Extract the files with WinRAR or other extraction tool you have.
6. Now go to "..\New folder\data\data\com.android.providers.contacts\databases" folder.
(the name of "com.android.providers.contacts" folder can be different from case to case but will end with "........providers.contacts")
7. Search for "contacts2.db" file.
Hard way:
8. Download and install "DB.Browser.for.SQLite" freeware from the internet.
9. Open "contacts2.db" file with this database tool you have installed.
10. Right click on "data" row and click on "Export as CSV file".
11. Now open this file with Excel and search for your contacts.
Easy way:
8. Convert contacts2.db to vCard
(this site will convert your "contacts2.db" file to a vcf file that you can import to your contacts app on your phone.)

For mod's: I'm not trying to make this site famous nor advertising this. I just find it helpful.

 

[Cosmin Rusu]

Esti un zeu, multumesc!

 

[Anth128]

Yes you can extract contacts from TWRP ! I just did extract my contacts from a TWRP backup.
I see this post is from 2014, but someone like me will land here for this info.

Hello.

I just subscribed here to say a BIG THANK YOU TO YOU. Seriously, you just saved my day, I was desesperate as my phone was bootlooping, and I only could make a TWRP backup, but didn't know how to use it. Thanks to you, I could backup my contacts when I almost lost hope.

As you said, I landed on that post and you did it right to post your fix here, this is the perfect example about how it's important to share what it could work even if the OP is not here anymore.

I hope you will come back here to see that it was at least usefull to somebody.
Thank you again, I wish you the best!