All Contact names disappeared when I tried to Import/ Export contacts and sync to my gmail email

[AC Question]

Hi

I have an Android Samsung Galaxy A8. Tonight, I wanted to back up all my contacts as I had over 400 contacts for a few years so wanted to do that. I went into Contacts Setting, then clicked on Import/ Export Contacts. The first time I did it, it asked me to sync/ back up with my gmail email. I thought this meant all my contact all my contacts would be backed up on Google Drive. However, after doing this, I can no longer see any of the names on my Contact List. Most names have changed to "Unknown name". When I click onto the name, there are no phone number information associated.

Only a handful of names are saved with Contact details and these are the newer ones I saved recently. If I go to "Customised List" in "Contacts to display" view, on my Contact list, I can see their names, photos and telephone numbers - but these are for people I have Skyped with the past and are all associated with a Skype name.

Can you please tell me how I can restore to the original version before I Import/Export and synched with Gmail? Can I unsync this and get back to the original view? This is over seven years of contacts that I was trying to save in the first place, so any help on this would be much appreciated.

Many thanks.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Contacts that aren't associated with your Google account can't be synced or backed up directly to your Google account -- so the sync/backup it was mentioning may have been for contacts associated with your Samsung account. Devices will typically have at least two accounts where you can save contacts -- your Google account (which automatically syncs with your Google Contacts in the cloud) and your local Phone account (which only saves the contact locally, without any automatic backup or syncing). Other phones may have other accounts, like a Samsung account or a Verizon account.

That being said, I'm not sure why a backup attempt would change the existing contacts to that extent. Select one of those contacts and see which account it's associated with -- it should be listed at the top of the contact card. (You might have to Edit it first.)