Software upgrade deleted all contacts, texts

Try to restore from backup maybe?

 

it's not the bus, it's the driver

out of all the people on these forums you are the only one that has mentioned it, dig deeper......

 

It is not a problem, just restore from your back-up

 

Are you using Google Sync for your mail, calendar, and contacts?

 

before i upgraded i synced my contacts to windows contacts. you can also use google and mobile me. i never synced my contacts before and it went without a hitch. my texts and pics from my camera roll as well as notes from awesome note are a different story. lessoned learned back up everything

 

You click restore and it asks whether you want to "setup as new" or "restore from a backup."

 

Wrong. Many people on that same "bus". I had a restore point from earlier but when I plugged it in again it removed that restored backup and made a new backup, one with no contacts. Still looking for a solution...

 

The same thing happened to me and I tried to use System Restore in Windows XP to get to an earlier backup file, but that didn't work. More backup files showed up, but they were all ones that were created during the upgrade process and iTunes Backup Extractor showed me that they were all empty.

So you could try System Restore in Windows or Time Machine on a Mac, but this might not work. Worth a try, though. I tried 3 different restore points - yesterday morning, 2 weeks ago, and a couple months ago, and they were all the same.

Now I have the fun task of uploading all of my contacts from a spreadsheet to Google... but that spreadsheet was updated in August 2009 and I have lost at least 40 contacts that I've added in the past year.

 

I feel your pain. I am going to try to help you as best as I can from what I have done so far and hopefully others can provide other helpful input. This comment on the link you provided best explains my problem:

arthur s says:
June 21, 2010 at 11:21 pm
All my contacts were deleted. When I go to favorites, all of the numbers are still there but I don’t see any of the names. Same with text; all of my texts are there but no names associated with them. This is very frustrating

In fact, after restoring, when I slide to unlock, I see the names in my favorites list for 1 second and then they disappear! This is VERY frustrating because it feels like the names are there and that iOS4 just doesn't want to let me see them.

I have tried restoring numerous times with different backups and the results are the same, no contacts, all texts there with numbers and all favorites there with numbers BUT no names. It may help you to know (if you have windows 7, unsure of other operating systems) that my backup was deleted and after clicking on properties by accident, windows 7 has a list of previous versions. So after you find the backup folder, I would copy all of those previous backups to be on the safe side.

I went to the genius bar (yes, even after I had been advised that they probably wouldn't be able to help) and they were of NO help. I explained the situation and he just did the same exact thing I did at home, attempted to restore. I asked if this was due to the new OS but he seemed to believe that the OS has nothing to do with it and that the contacts were not there in the first place. Here's what I thought: Are you serious? One of the most important backups before upgrading to a new OS and you're going to tell me it didn't save something as trivial in size as the contacts list. Very hard to believe.

There is a program called iPhone Backup Extractor and this may help you if your backups were not encrypted like mine. So I'm in quite a dilemma here and my next attempt is going to be to use my sister's iPhone which is still running 3.1.3 and attempt to restore the old backup there. For some odd reason, I feel that the iOS4 is limiting the ability to read backups even though it worked perfectly fine on my iPhone.

So what didn't work: restoring a backup onto iOS4, backup extractor (due to encryption), going to the genius bar, importing from sim card

What I'm going to try: restoring backup onto 3.1.3, calling applecare?

You can try any of the options mentioned if you choose to. Let me know how it works out for you.

If those options fail for me, I may have to quit trying and accept that I have lost them. If you took the time to read my situation, please provide any helpful advice if you can. And yes, I know I should have synced them somewhere else prior to updating but I can't change the past.

 

Just wanted to post a quick reply and say that I restored my contacts. I posted a reply here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=946942

If anyone has any additional questions feel free to ask me. Good luck to everyone trying to restore their lost contacts and other valuable information.