Lost all contact from My Nokia Lumia 720

[Duncan Stoddart]

Hi there, I've lost all the contacts on my Nokia Lumia 720. Windows phone with Microsoft account / Hotmail email.

I've signed into the windows phone website to check them and there was about 5 or 6 which I recently created.

I noticed they were gone on the 16th of September in the morning and the night before I all of a sudden had 110 emails (57 of which were birthday messages from the 14th) which implies it was signed out or not updating for a period of time.

This is REALLY REALLY annoying as I phone loads of people for work throughout the day and save every number I call for future reference (estimated over 1000 contacts - maybe that's an issue?) so could really use getting them back??

One other thing I noticed I hit refresh a couple times and an error message came up saying error code 1428..... something something (cant remember and never took a screenshot.

Hope someone can?

Excuse me if this is the wrong place I'm new :smile:.

Thanks,

Duncan

 

[Narse77]

So as far as you know the contacts were never copied up to your Microsoft account? If they were never there you are not going to have much luck getting them back. It is a good practice to periodically make sure your contacts etc are being backed up etc.

 

[Duncan Stoddart]

So as far as you know the contacts were never copied up to your Microsoft account? If they were never there you are not going to have much luck getting them back. It is a good practice to periodically make sure your contacts etc are being backed up etc.

If there not how do get them copied? I've had my phone synced with my computer and I'm quite good at keeping it up to date. Could I get them back this way or if there not on the outlook / windows website its game over?

 

[Duncan Stoddart]

Just had a thought, back in April I lost my phone and I thought I lost all my contacts then however when the new phone came and I signed into my Microsoft account they all can back.

So should that not mean at least a large majority of them, up until that point in time, are stored else where rather than just my phone? Can anyone explain that?

Also, how do I make sure these are saving to outlook etc and can't be lost again?

 

[kammoji]

Dear Duncan,
I know this thread is many years old but I just now had a case of this with my old Lumia 720. Logging into live account after a long time (because wanted to install WhatsApp and update outdated apps) caused a weird and erroneous synchronization of contacts:
1. At first, all contacts showed in WhatsApp and People.
2. Later on the same day, nearly all contacts lost from People on the phone. The phone showed that the contacts were synced with the live account. Only about 20 contacts remained and sure enough, they were the same contacts that were visible in people.live.com
Did some Googling and contacted operator when unable to find answer. The technician at the operator checked my Skype account and the lost contacts were there (!). Apparently the Lumias of that time (bought 2013) did move the contacts into Skype (without clearly stating this to the user, at least I had no idea that they were there). Apparently, when I activated my live account after a long time, it did sync the live account contacts but forgot completely about those that were in Skype.
Skype export and Outlook import were a bit tricky. The technician was only able to export the contacts from Skype and delivered them to me in a .vcf file but could not assist further, so I had to do some text file manipulation myself. A computer with internet connection is needed to do these steps, preferably Linux:
1. Skype exports the contacts in a "Skype vCard format" (.vcf) which is like any other vCard format except that it is not recognized properly by Outlook or Gmail.
2. Had to manually edit the .vcf file on a Linux command line (details and help available upon request but omitted here) to get the .vcf into proper format.
3. Had to upload the edited .vcf into Gmail contacts. The current version of Gmail contacts did not support .vcf imports so I was guided to the old version where I was able to Import the .vcf . Lost contacts successfully imported to Gmail contacts (both old and new), hooray!
4. Had to export all contacts from Gmail contacts (old version) in a "Microsoft Outlook CSV" (comma separated values) format file.
5. Uploaded the CSV file into people.live.com account using the "Import contacts" utility under the "Manage" drop-down menu. (In the opening menu select the "Gmail" option for importing). Lost contacts now imported to my live account, double-hooray! NOTE: The contacts showed as duplicates and triplicates in the list after the upload, but I guess it does not matter.
6. Restarted my Lumia 720 and made sure that the live account sync was on. In a few hours, the lost contacts started automatically showing on the phone (no duplicates or triplicates).
What I learned: Always, ALWAYS, keep a backup of your contacts on your phone memory or better still, on your computer. Windows store has a tool called "contacts+messages backup" to accomplish this in Lumia phones.
Quite a lot of trouble just because I wanted WhatsApp on my phone. However, I think this would have happened in any case on the next time I would have updated my phone. So no offense, WhatsApp! Hope this helps.