iPhone Guys, I did something stupid with my contacts...

[TheSacredSoul]

I tried exporting my contacts with iTunes but it somehow deleted all my contacts on my iPhone instead. And I do not have a backup anywhere.

And I really dont want to restore from a backup just for the contacts. Used a 3rd party software to extract just the contacts from the backup. Problem is, it is either in a .xls format or a .db format. I don't know how to import this to iTunes? Any help guys? Anyway to just drop the .db in a folder and get all my contacts back?

EDIT : Got it working again, thankfully. Used a different program to extract the .vcf files. Used a command in cmd to merge all into a single .vcf file and imported into Google contacts. Merged duplicates in Google Contacts and synced with iTunes. Contacts are back. Phew. That was a stressful 1 hour.

 

[eyoungren]

It's always good to keep your eggs in more than one basket. Before I got my iPhone 5, I had a WinMo phone (HTC Touch Pro). All my contacts were on that. But I had a backup to my SD card every night. Those contacts were also synced to my Entourage programs on my Macs. When I got a 3GS about two years ago I synced them to my 3GS.

Having them on my 3GS made it very easy to get them to my iPhone 5 when I got it. I sync them to Google (on the 3GS too, so the 3GS is current) I also never deleted them off my Touch Pro (I keep it and the 3GS as WiFi devices). Losing them off my iPhone 5 would be bad, but because of all this I have a backup in at least four places. I'm just bringing this up, because if you have any spare iDevices or unused contact apps lying around you might put them to a good use as a backup of your contacts.

Glad you were able to restore your contacts.