Which folder stores contacts?

[BrianRoden]

My wife's Captivate has been acting weird. Freezing up, no making calls, powering off on its own. Called AT&T. They told me we needed to do a Factory Data Reset. Per the CSR's instructions, I connected the phone to my PC in USB drive mode and copied all the folders to my PC.

They said to not re-install apps for a few days to see if the phone acts up "naked" without any added software. But all my wife's non-SIM-card contacts are gone too. Which folder that I copied to my PC will have the contact data? It's not obvious from the folder names.

 

[konazxiii]

You can back them all up to your Google account. There's also apps in the market that will back them up to the external SD card.

 

[konazxiii]

Some digging around on Google netted this:
data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts.db

When I look at the root folder on my Cappy (running 2.3.4) I see a folder data/data/com.android.providers.contacts

It's empty on my phone, but I don't store my contacts on the phone so that makes sense.

Keep in mind these files/folders probably weren't moved to your PC unless you have root level access to the main directory where these reside.

 

[fossil54]

Go to Contacts, hit Menu at the bottom capacitive button. Export the Contacts to the SD card, turn off phone. Pull it before resetting the phone. Reset, turn off, put SD card back in. Then go to Contacts, reverse the process by importing from the SD card. Learned the hard way, good luck!
Edit : CSR should have told you all data would be lost, it says that on the "factory reset" instructions. You really didn't even need to do a USB transfer for contacts. Sorry, I don't know file name, bad service on rep's part.

 

[IHATESTUPID]

Can u read? I guess asking that question was kind of ridiculous because it's obvious u can't. Just answer the question, he already wiped the phone moron, and if u don't have an answer then just look at the pictures and quit wasting our time reading ur garbage reply.

 

[killroy321]

So my android fell into the dog water bowl and the screen went black.:'( I can still answer calls but screen is black. Year and half old and it still looks new too.
I never loaded any sync programs.
How can I get the contacts off the phone. Don't recall if I saved them to sim or not. Its and HTC something...a smaller sized one.
A new phone comes tomorrow so I want to manually copy everything over to my pc and put it back.
Really hope I don't loose my contacts.
Without seeing my screen, is there a way to wipe the phone to default to erase my passwords and accounts and stuff? They told me it might be recycled or refurbished they didn't know for sure.

 

[mrsmumbles]

Do you have a gmail address associated with your phone? If so, all your contacts were synced to your account and all you have to do is put that same account in the new phone.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk 2

 

[killroy321]

I have a google account with my Hotmail but no gmail as I accessed my Hotmail on the web not synced to the phone. Lame I know but I don't use the data, just the wifi.
I found a program called my phone explorer that I am downloading, it looks like its really cool and might work. Reviews said it worked on phones that were still operational but had dead screens like mine.

 

[mrsmumbles]

Good luck. I hope it works out for you.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk 2

 

[killroy321]

I just did it. Holly cow is all I can say. Its called myphoneexplorer and it showed me all the texts I missed, my missed calls, makes a back up of the whole phone, the contacts, opens them like in outlook. It also gets into the root firmware and gives you access to all of that. Amazing. The test will be if I can then load them on the new phone when it gets here.

 

[mrsmumbles]

I just did it. Holly cow is all I can say. Its called myphoneexplorer and it showed me all the texts I missed, my missed calls, makes a back up of the whole phone, the contacts, opens them like in outlook. It also gets into the root firmware and gives you access to all of that. Amazing. The test will be if I can then load them on the new phone when it gets here.

That's great. Good luck with your new phone. :thumbup::beer:

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Maroan]

I have spendt a whole evening trying to backup both my contacts and my messages from my old Garmin A50 with no luck at all. I have no SD Card so that possibility was out of question. And at last I found this forum and thanks to Killroy321 it succeded at last! Now Im waiting for my new phone to arrive (Asus Infinity) and Im eager to see if I will be able to export all these things back to the new phone. But once again, big thanks!

 

[ubplaynme]

My phone also took a dive in the dog's water bowl.. same problem with screen. did u have any luck with contacts?

 

[Mega Yo]

My gmail account was linked, but only a few of the contacts were transferred to it, how is this possible?

 

[NewAnd]

You can download Samsung Smart Switch, it allowed me to transfer files from my S4 to S5 through my PC when the S4 screen broke and I couldn't access it at all.

Smart Switch | Samsung CA

 

[malex3002]

Hello. I am glad to read that you managed to recover your data. Did you also manage to pass the recovered data after using my phone explorer to your new phone? how did you do it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[uuuyou1]

The path of saving contacts on Android is data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts.db