Deleted my "contact storage" by pressing "Clear Data" and lost contacts?

[krishnamurthig]

Hi friends,

I am using a Samsung Galaxy Ace and I accidentally deleted my "contact storage" by pressing "Clear Data" and have lost all my contacts.

Is there a way where these contacts can be retrieved

Thanks in advance

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Were the contacts all from the local Phone account, or were they from a Google account? If the latter, then just re-sync your contacts. If they were all local Phone contacts, then I'm afraid you're out of luck, unless you backed the contacts up recently.

 

[krishnamurthig]

Hi Diddy, Thanks for your lightening fast response. Well all the contacts are from local phone a/c. I am not sure about google a/c as I use to connect to google android for few application download on my cell phone, in this case by any chance all my local contacts were stored on google a/c as well automatically? I never tried these stuff. But worried such critical data deletions is done without double confirmation :-( ... I had close to 300+ contacts with cell no, fixed line, e-mail o etc . Any other way to retrieve? Thaks

 

[B. Diddy]

When you started your phone for the first time, it should have prompted you to link it with your Google account. I'm not sure how easily a person can skip that step, so chances are you did have your phone linked to Google. The main question is which account did you enter all of your contacts on your phone--the Phone Account or the Google Account. If you have a Google account, go to Google Contacts (Redirecting...) and log in. Do you see all of your contacts there? If so, then you should be able to re-sync all of your contacts.

The reason there wasn't a double confirmation when you deleted the contacts is probably because you were in the Settings/Apps menu, looking at the App Info. Although I believe there actually is a caution when you tap "Clear Data" that you may lose important information. In any case, if you're a novice at Android, I strongly caution against deleting anything unless you know for certain it isn't important.

I'm not aware of any easy way to retrieve deleted contacts from the Phone Account, but if you do a web search for "samsung galaxy recover deleted contacts," you'll find a number of possible solutions. These usually involve purchasing a program or app. Publishers of this kind of software tend to spam this and other forums a lot, so I would be cautious proceeding with any of them, since there could always be some risk for malware.

 

[krishnamurthig]

Hi Diddy, I tried connecting google-contacts; But there I could see only name and e-mail ids where I use send a mail, but I am not able to see any contact with cell no, phone no.
Could you help me if I am missing something here. Thanks in advance.

 

[krishnamurthig]

Will google connectivity keeps telephone no as well as part of contacts from cellphone? As I am not able to see any telephone contacts getting stored on google account, instead it is just list of e-mail addresses.

Also I remember few monts back I connected device with "Kies" software, could you tell me the File/location where contacts are stored, I will try exploring the same.

Please reply.

 

[B. Diddy]

It's hard to know if your Google Contacts are the same ones that were on your phone. Phone numbers should have been synced over to the Google cloud, so I suspect the contacts on your phone were different from the ones in your Google Contacts. This increases my suspicion that all of your contacts on the phone were in the Phone account, not Google account.

I don't have a Samsung device, so I don't have experience with Kies. But from my understanding, you can backup your Phone Account contacts using Kies--you probably need to set it up first. Try starting your Kies software on your computer and see if there's an option to recover your contacts.

 

[nikhil_goyal]

use this app to add your Facebook friends into your Contacts address book.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.watto.program.android.sync.facebook

 

[einsteinravi]

Hi Krishnamurthy...Did you find any solution for this problem. Now I too have same problem.Lost all contacts in phone memory and even in SIM also by clicking 'Clear data' in Samsung galaxy Ace -> Settings -> memory Management.
No clue ... PLEAsE help....Thanks

 

[einsteinravi]

Hi DIDDY...Did you find any solution for this problem. Now I too have same problem.Lost all contacts in phone memory and even in SIM also by clicking 'Clear data' in Samsung galaxy Ace -> Settings -> memory Management.
No clue ...

Please help...

 

[shrikant nakka]

Hi Diddy,

Thank you so much. for your guidance on recovery of deleted contacts.
i have found all my contacts at Google Contacts ... could you please guide me how to re-sync or restore these contacts into my mobile?

Many Thanks,
Shrikant

 

[shrikant nakka]

is there anyone who can help me in restoring google contacts into my android mobile phone?

 

[v1v14n]

To sync contacts. Go to settings-google accounts-chose the account- you will get options of syncing google mail/google contacts/app data. Chose sync contacts.

Sent from my GT-P3100

 

[Robert2014]

Some whizz kid justingale dot com has been advising folks to do exactly that: click "clear data" under contact storage and that was supposed to retrieve contacts that had gotten lost while galaxy synced contacts between address books. Lots of commenters claimed it really helped them solve contact syncing problems, so since I lost contacts from my phone due to AT&T syncing contacts with Google (or whatever) I thought it would be safe to try.
Turned out, this one simple click wiped out thousands of business and personal contacts from my phone, most of which are recorded nowhere else. Talking about a bad joke!

So bummed out, because my original address book with names and phone numbers all of a sudden changed to some dumb google list of thousands of folks emails probably taken out of my gmail email account and some, while deleting legit phone book entries. That is what I meant to correct. Now the only contacts I can retrieve are the worthless ones from my gmail email history, that do not even belong in my phone book because they have no numbers.

 

[Catia Oigha]

I need my contacts back

 

[vindicator6]

Depending on your phone, there are 3 options. Below are the options with mine in brackets:

Phone Manufacturer Cloud/backup [HTC]
Carrier Cloud/backup [Verizon]
Google account synch [Google]

hopefully one or 2 of these may have your contacts as long as they were synched at some point. I was able to retrieve all my contacts, minus some recent ones, from Verizon cloud. This usually makes sense as when you turn phone in for a new one. The Tech usually backs up to some device or Verizon Cloud to transfer your contacts from old phone to new one.

please review these options before pulling out your hair

V6

 

[B. Diddy]

As a general rule, it's always a good idea to save your contacts to an account that syncs automatically to the cloud. Your Google account is ideal for this -- but you have to make sure that when you create the contact, you choose that account to save it to, and not the Phone or Device account (which doesn't sync anywhere). Of course, there are those who don't trust anyone with their data, which is fine -- but then it's up to you to manually back up your contacts to your local hard drive on a regular basis. Phones and local phone storage are not immune to failure or loss.