Lost All Contacts... Any help?

[LatitudeZ]

Hi everyone,

I bought my S6 in early July with Telus (switching from Lumia 920 with Rogers). I had no problem transferring all my contacts over, and they were fine until now. Recently, I unlocked my phone as I traveled to the States. I used Roam Mobility network. During this time, my contacts seemed fine. However, a few days after my return, I realized that some of my favorite contacts were missing. I added them back, but they would then disappear a while later (~15 minutes). I continually added the contacts back after the phone deleted them (did not pay attention to which email account or device I was adding to). It seemed to work fine for a day or two. Soon, I noticed that a lot of important contacts were completely missing from my phone. I tried accessing Gmail contacts and they were nowhere to be found. So I went back to my old Lumia 920, and all the contacts were deleted as well. My text messages and call logs only showed numbers. I looked at the Outlook contacts which were supposed to be backed up, and most of my contacts were gone.

I don't even know where to begin. Is it due to the switch in networks? The switch in operating systems? How can both phones have lost their contacts even though one was backed up to Gmail and the other was backed up to Outlook? These contacts were accumulated over many years and I do not have an original list of them, so it would mean a lot to me if I could restore the contacts.

Thanks guys

 

[Tat2Jr]

I couldn't tell if you were saying you did or not, but If you always used google contacts to enter your contact information it has to still be there. Try to login in on a real computer and check your google contacts there. If you a have secondary google email you to to also check for it's contacts on the computer. I've changed over five phones and three tablets, and my google contacts are also right there. I can't imagine something happened on google's end. Maybe a sync issue?

 

[Tumultus]

Those contacts would only be there if he didn't delete them in the phone (accidentally or manually). If the contacts were synced from Outlook, he may still find them in the recycle bin on Outlook.com. Just go there to PEOPLE and use the RESTORE DELETED CONTACTS option as pictured below. I don't really use my Google account for synching, so, I don't know if there is a similar safeguard in place.

 

[Daniel Ferrara]

I am having a slightly different issue on my AT&T Note 4. Had it for 9 months and everything has been fine, but yesterday, I got a text from my wife, but her name didn't show up, only the phone #. When I tried to click the icon I have for her on the home screen, it said "contact not found". When I went into the contacts app, all my contacts were gone!! I just restarted the phone, and everything came back. However, this has happened two more times since then. Why would this all of a sudden start happening? As far as I know, I haven't changed anything recently that should effect this. At least they come back with a restart, but I'd prefer if it just worked. My contacts are synced through my outlook.com account. Good to see that the option posted above exists in case the phone should decide to wipe the contacts from the cloud too!

Any thoughts?? Thank you!

 

[Tumultus]

Daniel,
Is your Note 4 a provider issued device or an unlocked / unbranded international version? My guess would be that this is a software bug and, probably, your CONTACTS app crashed. As a result, you don't see your contacts until you reboot (and therefore restart the CONTACTS app) but then, I don't know for sure.

 

[Crashdamage]

It's good that you have been saving contacts to your Google (Gmail) account - I always *highly* recommend it - normally you would be able to just resync them to the phone.

Since you have been saving them to Google but now they are gone, this will restore them to any point they were at in the last 30 days:

https://support.Google.com/mail/answer/1069522?hi=en

If somehow you did not save your contacts to Google and did not backup your contacts in Outlook or do manual backups such exporting and saving a .vcf file, then sorry, but the contacts are gone.

Android since v1.0. Linux since 2001