Updated to IOS 5 on my 3GS and lost my contacts, help!

[joshhawker57]

I have only just got round to updating my 3GS to IOS 5, I know better late than never.

When I did everything worked fine except I lost all my contacts. I did a restore to a previous date when they were definietly on there and they are still missing. I have had this contact list / phone book for years and I cant lose my numbers. I have read many forums on this and they say a restore should fix it but it hasn't.

The weird thing is that after the restore when i go into my favourites (numbers) they appear for a split second as names and then revert to numbers. Same with my messages, they are all in there but not names just numbers.

Can anyone suggest a fix for this.

thanks for any help in advance!

 

[CosmoPilot]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B179 Safari/7534.48.3)

Do you have a time machine back up? If so, go into iCloud, delete all contacts from the cloud (if any are there). Next, delete all your contacts from your mac (assuming the cloud delete didn't already remove them). Then, turn off iCloud contact syncing on your mac & phone (if you have any contacts on your phone, delete them now). At this point, no device you own should have any contacts on them, and all iCloud syncing of contacts should be disabled. Then:

1. Go into time machine and select all contacts then "restore" them back to your Mac.
2. Once contacts are restored onto your Mac, turn on iCloud syncing for contacts. iCloud will then ask if you'd like to merge your contacts with those in the Cloud. Select "yes" and all your contacts will be restored to the Cloud.
3. On the phone, turn iCloud contact syncing (Settings > iCloud > Contacts: ON). This will now allow your contacts to flow back to the phone from the cloud.

Done!

If you don't have a time machine back up, do you have any backup at all?

 

[elmo151]

what josh said

and contact apple for advice before you begin