Reloading contacts & data from backup files?

I've been using BB10 for over a year, and how quickly i've forgotten the old desktop software!

I am trying to help my husband set up his 9900. He's been using the device for years, but given a new email address from his work. When we added it to the device, it would receive but not send. So his IT guy advised we wipe the device, and start fresh.

We backed up his device (2X), then did a security wipe. But the desktop software doesn't offer the option to reload the original data (contacts, msgs, etc) to the same device � it will only offer if you're loading to a new device.The only thing we're allowed to is "sync" - which is empty since he never synced with outlook prior.

My idea is that we have to pull out an old device, pretend to switch and transfer the data, then switch back to the 9900?

Am I over thinking? Does anyone know of a simpler solution?

Wow, I thought I have an answer for that but just realized that I don't remember how the BlackBerry Desktop software functioned.
But, I thought there was an option to restore from a backup.
Here is a link which I hope will help you> Restoring BlackBerry smartphone data using BlackBerry Desktop Software 6.0 for PC - YouTube

Here is another link for 7.1 instructions> Restore smartphone data or tablet data - User Guide - BlackBerry Desktop Software - 7.1

Thank you for the tutorial! Oddly enough, search on BB's website took me to barely related blogs and forums.

the key was to "connect device as USB" (previously we were connecting to "sync")

after this, RESTORE was no longer greyed out.

contacts returned, yay!