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All my Address Book contacts are GONE... PLEASE HELP

J

jon08

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 14, 2008
1,885
104
Just yesterday, after syncing my iPhone, I realized that my address book on iPhone was EMPTY - no longer did it display my friends' names - just phone numbers. I immediately went to check my Address Book on my MBP - it was empty as well.

I'm really miserable as I believe I did not have any backup and have lost 300+ contacts (and I don't use TIme Machine). Is there any way to retrieve my contacts??

It appears that the culprit here is an app called BirthdayScanner X (though it probably isn't the culprit), which I deleted off my MBP earlier that day, and apparently it erased all my Address Book data?!?!?

I still have the entire app (with its files) in my trash bin, if that could be of any help in retrieving anything?

PLEASE HELP. I would really appreciate it.
 
Last edited:
J

jon08

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 14, 2008
1,885
104
Fortunately I had all my contacts in Outlook Address Book, as I realized a bit later, so I was able to sync it with Mac Address Book and then the latter with my iPhone, so everything is fine again!:cool:

As fro the culprit for wiping out my Mac Address Book in the first place, I guess I will never know for sure.

One thing everyone reading this right now can do is make a backup of your Address Book NOW! ;)
 
T

Travis Mobley

macrumors newbie
Jun 21, 2011
1
0
Lost Contacts data

I too have had a random dump of all contact data --- twice just this month. The second time was after painstakingly reconstructing 200+ entries with addresses, emails, phone numbers, birthdays, and pictures and adding one last detail, even as I was about to plug it in to back it up.

After adding a datum to the contact, the app closed. When I reopened the app, everything was gone, completely everything. This happened the same way both times.

The first time I took it into the Apple store and they ran a diagnostic and said that the software and OS were operating fine. They didnt know why it did this. Their answer was just to always back up. But if I am always backing up my unreliable iPad to my reliable PC laptop, and I always have to have my laptop with me since the data dump is seemingly random, then why have the iPad at all?

The issue shouldnt be in backups. The issue is why this is happeneing for apparently a lot of people per the complaints I am seeing elsewhere on the net. So what is the answer or fix for this? And is Apple even acknowledging or working on one?
 
J

jon08

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 14, 2008
1,885
104
Yeah, something fishy about all this... It's quite inconvenient to experience it but now that I did my backup I'm quite relieved and don't really care that much anymore: I've learned my lesson and will now back my Address Book up regularly...

Perhaps it would be a good idea to let Apple know about this "bug" though...
 
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