How can I recover my contacts?

[Guest Supadan]

Okay so I never really understood how to sync my contacts to my PC but I flashed my rom and i saw something about 180 contacts so I figured if i erased my contacts my cmoputer saved it. It was a long shot but unfortunately i was wrong and now all my contacts are gone.

Does anybody know how to recover sim contacts without having a sim card reader?

[Guest awarner (MVP)]

SIM contacts would not have been wiped when you flashed your ROM as the SIM is not affected in the flashing process,

Only contacts in the phones contact list would have been wiped and if you have not backed these up on your pc with a third party application or MS Outlook there is unfortunately no way to recover them.

[Guest Supadan]

SIM contacts would not have been wiped when you flashed your ROM as the SIM is not affected in the flashing process,

Only contacts in the phones contact list would have been wiped and if you have not backed these up on your pc with a third party application or MS Outlook there is unfortunately no way to recover them.

The contacts were on my sim after the flash and I manually deleted them. On active sync I have contacts checked (on my desktop) but i had/have no idea how to physically see my contacts being backed up so I figured they were (considering i saw the number 0/180 when it was syncing once) and so I figured activsync already had my contacts stored on my pc somewhere. Am I wrong to think so? Do I need to do more than just plug and checkthe box? I thought that was the whole point of activsync and i have no idea how to use outlook with my omnia for the death of me so i guess 2 questions: is there a way to recover contacts based on ^ information (I manually deleted, not due to a flash) AND if not can anyone give me advice on how to backup my contacts?

[Guest Neil5459]

Do you have MS Outlook 2003 or later installed and configured on your PC?

If so, then the initial pairing process with ActiveSync should have copied any Outlook Contacts to your phone. There is no other way that you can sync these items to the PC, and ActiveSync should warn you if you don't have a suitable Outlook installation set up. Any subsequent changes on the phone (such as copying SIM contacts to the main device memory) should then have updated Outlook at your next sync. 180 contacts would take a finite time, so you should have seen the 0/180 message gradually increment to 180/180.

To check, you need to open Outlook, and click the Contacts button. Hopefully your contacts are there. If so, then all you now need to do is to reconnect the Omnia to the PC and create a new Activesync pairing, and allow the contacts to sync back to the Omnia from the PC

If you don't have a valid Outlook installation, or if the Contacts are not present in the Contacts section, there is nothing more you can do- the hard reset would have wiped the Omnias memory, and if they never made it to the PC, there's nothing to recover. One small possibility is that they could be in Outlook's Deleted Items folder, so look there as well. If so, you could select them all and drag them back to the Contacts folder.

I don't think it's possible to recover deleted items from a SIM card.

[Edit- I was wrong on that last point, but the USB SIM card reader plus recovery software would cost around £60]

[Guest Supadan]

Do you have MS Outlook 2003 or later installed and configured on your PC?

If so, then the initial pairing process with ActiveSync should have copied any Outlook Contacts to your phone. There is no other way that you can sync these items to the PC, and ActiveSync should warn you if you don't have a suitable Outlook installation set up. Any subsequent changes on the phone (such as copying SIM contacts to the main device memory) should then have updated Outlook at your next sync. 180 contacts would take a finite time, so you should have seen the 0/180 message gradually increment to 180/180.

To check, you need to open Outlook, and click the Contacts button. Hopefully your contacts are there. If so, then all you now need to do is to reconnect the Omnia to the PC and create a new Activesync pairing, and allow the contacts to sync back to the Omnia from the PC

If you don't have a valid Outlook installation, or if the Contacts are not present in the Contacts section, there is nothing more you can do- the hard reset would have wiped the Omnias memory, and if they never made it to the PC, there's nothing to recover. One small possibility is that they could be in Outlook's Deleted Items folder, so look there as well. If so, you could select them all and drag them back to the Contacts folder.

I don't think it's possible to recover deleted items from a SIM card.

[Edit- I was wrong on that last point, but the USB SIM card reader plus recovery software would cost around £60]

Thank you for the speedy replies. I did take a look see at Outlook 2007 and (it never worked previously...i wonder why) but it allowed me to choose one of users so I clicked the one I set my phone to and my current contact list showed up, not my old one :-( I guess that means bye bye to my contact list.

I am going to try the method of recovering numbers via sim card reader. I bought one on ebay for $1 and was wondering does it have to be an expensive one in order to use one of these programs?

[Guest ronaldb3]

Thank you for the speedy replies. I did take a look see at Outlook 2007 and (it never worked previously...i wonder why) but it allowed me to choose one of users so I clicked the one I set my phone to and my current contact list showed up, not my old one :-( I guess that means bye bye to my contact list.

I am going to try the method of recovering numbers via sim card reader. I bought one on ebay for $1 and was wondering does it have to be an expensive one in order to use one of these programs?

Just some quick notes-

1. Do not ever trust Activestink to save you. (I use Intellisync to sync Contacts and Calendar and Tasks, but that is extreme).

2. Search PC for *.pst files. These are the Outlook data files. You might find a Outlook backup that's good.

3. If you are close to a store for your phone carrier they might have recovered Sim data before and know how.

4. Manually copy your Outlook pst occasionally to somewhere safe. If you have a loss, you won't lose it all.

5. Basically, if it's important, make at least two copies at different places on different media types. (Outlook, Quicken, docs, etc.) The PDA/phone is a good backup place, but cannot be the only repository. It will fail sooner or later as well as will your PC hard drive.

Sometimes it takes a painful lesson to make a believer out of people. (Yea, I've been there, done that B) )

IMHO

Ron...

[Guest Supadan]

Just some quick notes-

1. Do not ever trust Activestink to save you. (I use Intellisync to sync Contacts and Calendar and Tasks, but that is extreme).

2. Search PC for *.pst files. These are the Outlook data files. You might find a Outlook backup that's good.

3. If you are close to a store for your phone carrier they might have recovered Sim data before and know how.

4. Manually copy your Outlook pst occasionally to somewhere safe. If you have a loss, you won't lose it all.

5. Basically, if it's important, make at least two copies at different places on different media types. (Outlook, Quicken, docs, etc.) The PDA/phone is a good backup place, but cannot be the only repository. It will fail sooner or later as well as will your PC hard drive.

Sometimes it takes a painful lesson to make a believer out of people. (Yea, I've been there, done that B) )

IMHO

Ron...

Your advice is much appreciated.

[Guest poedgirl]

Of course, it's always a good idea to back your contacts up to somewhere in the cloud. I use Neuvasync to sync my contacts with a gmail account (works better than google's own sync). There are quite a few other solutions too, such as MS's upcoming MyPhone.

[Guest MrJoneswii]

This is the reason why I have my contacts saved in outlook, Jeyo mobiler and a hard copy in Excel that I update once in a while.

Outlook is enough though.

And then there's always facebook as well