Contacts missing from People app

[John Loo]

So, I recently did a reset of my Lumia 650 because I thought I would get better performance out of it. But now Skype won't start, it keeps crashing. But that's not the main issue.

So today I was looking at my contacts and there's a lot of redundant entries. Entries with names but no actual contact details. Probably rubbish from my various email accounts. So I delete a few of them. Then later on I noticed that all my contacts saved to my Hotmail account are gone! Which practically means all my useful contacts are gone! My sister's number is gone, my brother's number is gone, and the list goes on. But they are still there in the People app on my PC.

So I thought about signing in again on the People app, but it tells me my Hotmail account is already in use. Okay.. Then I noticed that it is syncing.. But it seems to be stuck. None of my contacts have been restored yet. I'm worried when this "sync" is complete, all my contacts will be gone from Microsoft's servers.

Wtf, Microsoft? I'm going on a trip in a few days and all my contacts are gone! Just when I wanted to say that I'm sticking with my Lumia 650 until it dies, this happens. Oh, and Skype keeps crashing. I can't even get to the start screen.

Sigh........

I'm thinking about resetting my phone. Again. Will that help anything?

 

[John Loo]

Strangely, SMS sync is still working for Skype, even though it is not exactly up to date with the latest SMS I've received. I haven't been able to open Skype for days, but Skype still managed to sync my SMS up to yesterday.

 

[satishn]

Something similar happened to me yesterday. My skype contacts and Hotmail/outlook contacts were linked previously. All of a sudden yesterday, they became unlinked and multiple duplicates started showing up in the People app. If you look carefully each of them would show where it is - one has Outlook, one shows Skype etc. If you happen to delete the ones from Outlook they would have been deleted. Resetting the phone won't help bringing them back :-(

 

[satishn]

Something similar happened to me yesterday. My skype contacts and Hotmail/outlook contacts were linked previously. All of a sudden yesterday, they became unlinked and multiple duplicates started showing up in the People app. If you look carefully each of them would show where it is - one has Outlook, one shows Skype etc. If you happen to delete the ones from Outlook they would have been deleted. Resetting the phone won't help bringing them back :-( and the entries with names but no details are from Skype.

 

[andrew-in-woking]

Go to settings in the People app, then tap and hold on the Outlook account that is faulty and select Synchronise. This will solve the problem.

 

[John Loo]

Yup.. Got back some of my contacts but I noticed some weird new entries that I didn't put there. Sure enough, I open the People app on my PC and those weird new entries are also there. I guess this has something to do with the new People app on PC? So far I don't find it to be useful at all. First the People app on PC didn't sync contacts from my phone properly, now this.

Oh eff... you, Microsoft...

 

[John Loo]

And I'm getting this error message for my email accounts that are not Microsoft related, both on my PC and my phone.

 

[John Loo]

Go to settings in the People app, then tap and hold on the Outlook account that is faulty and select Synchronise. This will solve the problem.

Does not work.

 

[SeanContra]

Can't synchronise what's already synchronising.
I reset my phone to factory settings last night and everything went back to normal when I linked my outlook account.
No missing contacts, no problem.
And today afternoon, I am greeted with the same problem as last night.

I hope somebody would do something about this cuz Microsoft sure as f*** doesn't care about WP userbase... Or whatever's left of us anyway.

 

[John Loo]

It seems that most of my contacts have been recovered, but some of the numbers have been screwed up. I guess the People app really doesn't like it when it is not always online?

Hmm.. One of the big downsides of Nutella's cloud strategy?

 

[OldMillXxX]

This has been happening FAR TOO OFTEN lately. For being a SW company, they sure have a lot of bad SW.

 

[greedo_greedy]

This looks like a problem coming from the Microsoft servers that MS needs to fix.

I encountered this issue a couple of times on my Windows Phone. MS needs to fix this stat!!

Thankfully through the outlook website it shows my contacts are still there.

 

[TechFreak1]

The easiest solution to manage contacts without your phone is go to https://login.live.com/ and you should be able to login with your hotmail account and in the squareboxes select people (this loads people.live.com) then see if your contacts are there.

Alternatively, you try www.microsoftonline.com - the layout is much easier to navigate and the 'apps' are there in one screen without any navigation.

However people.live.com appears to be down at the moment, which may explain why you don't have any contacts as there is most likely a sync issue due to outage.

 

[SeanContra]

And everything is alright again with no explanation nor reason as to why this even happened in the first place.
Yay!

 

[SRRAE]

The easiest solution to manage contacts without your phone is go to https://login.live.com/ and you should be able to login with your hotmail account and in the squareboxes select people (this loads people.live.com) then see if your contacts are there.

Alternatively, you try www.microsoftonline.com - the layout is much easier to navigate and the 'apps' are there in one screen without any navigation.

However people.live.com appears to be down at the moment, which may explain why you don't have any contacts as there is most likely a sync issue due to outage.

The solution to the issue isn't to use a computer to manage our contats. The issue is text messages are showing mobile numbers instead of names making reading texts difficult and sending nearly impossible unless you know the mobile number of all your contacts.

 

[OldMillXxX]

It is almost like they are trying to force consumers away, so they can start at the very FRESHEST AGAIN! If they keep forking up, they will have a hard time bringing back the very people they need for the company to survive as the Microsoft we know.

This is now beyond a joke!

 

[TechFreak1]

The solution to the issue isn't to use a computer to manage our contats. The issue is text messages are showing mobile numbers instead of names making reading texts difficult and sending nearly impossible unless you know the mobile number of all your contacts.

The OP has a very different issue then what you are stating, I would suggest you create a new thread for your issue as not to derail this thread and allow users who many be having similiar issues to yours to be able to find a solution easier as opposed to digging through another thread and sifting through comments.

Should you wish, you can link the thread to your comment by right clicking the comment number next to the edit button (pen icon) and selecting copy link location. However that feature is currently not working at present and has been reported to tech support. So therefore to copy a link just single left click your post number and it will copy it to clipboard.

I would be would more than happy to suggest solutions but I can not create a thread for you, that you must do yourself.

 

[cymumtaz]

I noticed my problems started after Outlook became "Outlook Mail and Calendar." Lots of sync issues, and my people app works fine up until the latest update where I get Focused Inbox and category sync in the Calendar.

 

[cymumtaz]

Mine still isn't working! Do you have the latest updates of Outlook Mail and Calendar? After I get Focused Inbox my contacts don't sync properly in the People app.

 

[John Loo]

I have the latest Outlook Mail and Calendar. I'll look into TeckFreak1's suggestion later. Been busy with my new Redmi 4A. I can't sync contacts from Outlook there, only Google contacts. Urgh.....