Hi there. Recently discovered all my contacts missing from my Nexus 5.

[AC Question]

So I:
-Checked visible contacts from within contacts menu and contacts is displaying all of them.
-I am automatically backing up contacts to my google account, so I just signed in online however those same handful are the only remaining contacts there as well.
-I went to restore contacts, but even going back 30 days and restoring it the same handful of contacts appear, even though they were all there and being used a few days ago.
The names are still appearing in the hangouts section of my phone but none are entered in to my contacts. I suppose I could individually add each one but that would only get me part way back, and be a pain in the neck. Probably missing a minimum of a hundred contacts. Like I said the restore contacts function accessed through gmail isnt working either. I haven't installed any new apps and am auto updating all my current apps.
A)Is there any way to retrieve my contacts from here and
B)What can I do to prevent this from happening again?
Thanks for your help

 

[dpham00]

Are they missing when you check your Google account on the desktop site?

 

[steelertide]

Yes. Sorry should have been more clear.
There are a handful of contacts remaining from the originals. When I log on to desktop google account through gmail these ones are there. So i went to restore contacts from the gmail page and went as far back as 30 days but they still restored only these 5 or so contacts, even though I was using a hundred or so yesterday.

 

[Crashdamage]

Somehow you deleted all but those few contacts from Google sometime over 30 days ago or you weren't saving them there life by thought.

There's nothing you can do if they aren't on the phone, a tablet, PC or somewhere.

To keep it from happening again be sure you save all contacts to Google and now and then, either online or on the phone export all contacts as a .vcf file and put a copy or two in safe places for backup.

 

[steelertide]

To the best of my knowledge all of my data is automatically backed up to google servers. In fact I just grabbed the remaining contacts I could get from my phone's hangouts screen and saved them into contacts, then when I logged into gmail and checked the contacts they had all automatically backed up there. And I haven't changed any of the settings, so they are automatically backing up. And like I said they were all there yesterday. Unless I'm missing something that should really be enough, but in the future I will just export contacts once a quarter as you suggest.

 

[Crashdamage]

Check your sync settings just to be sure. I've used Gmail almost from the beginning and in all that time I've never lost one contact nor have I seen anyone lose contacts for no explainable reason.