Contacts lost on Dad's iPhone - PLEASE READ/HELP

[orange42]

My dad went to sync/charge/whatever he was doing with his iPhone on his Sony Vista computer and all of his contacts disappeared. This has happened before and he found a way to restore them but can't do it now and I can't really help him because I don't know where the backup would be or what to do. Can anyone help him retrieve his contacts? He had a **** ton and really needs them back for work/business.

PLEASE HELP.

Thanks.

 

[milani]

You're going to have to provide us with more information. Did he have MobileMe? Was his phone sycning to Outlook? Was he syncing his contacts with Google?

 

[orange42]

They were all synced with Outlook but disappeared when he plugged the iPhone into the computer.

 

[UnbornApple]

Did they erase from the outlook or on the phone? Because if they are still on the computer just go back into iTunes and sync.

 

[orange42]

Did they erase from the outlook or on the phone? Because if they are still on the computer just go back into iTunes and sync.

They're all gone from the phone, and Outlook doesn't seem to be opening them. There's no specific backup folder that they'd be located in?

 

[milani]

They're all gone from the phone, and Outlook doesn't seem to be opening them. There's no specific backup folder that they'd be located in?

The contacts would be stored in Outlook. Just poke around in Outlook and you will probably find them. I find it hard to believe that simply plugging the iPhone into iTunes deleted everything.

What do your contact settings look like in iTunes within your iPhone tab?

Edit: just to confirm, we're talking about Outlook 2003 or 2007 - not Outlook Express. Outlook Express won't sync anything related to contacts - only Outlook 2003 or 2007. Check your contact sync preferences in iTunes and let us kno what it is set to. That will go a long way to determining what happened to the contacts and where they went.

 

[PNutts]

Also, check to see if iTunes is still set to sync contacts from the local program.

 

[UnbornApple]

You could also go into to iTunes are try restoring the phone from a backup as well.

All you would have to do is plug the phone into iTunes and right click on the phone on the left hand side of iTunes and go to restore from backup.

If there are multiple backups try them all, they have to be there somewhere.