Lost all Local Contacts this afternoon

Hi Everyone !

So I have had my Priv since November 2015.

Its generally been very good and have had zero issues.

However this afternoon when trying call a contact directly after searching for them through contacts, the contact app would fail/close and ask if I wanted to send an error report or not.

I tried this about 5 or 6 times. Same issue persisted...

So I then did a simple restart of the phone.

When it powered up again essentially I had lost all of my contacts....over 4,000 if I remember correctly.

All my contacts were saved as local contacts.

The only remaining contacts, about 36 or so, are an odd mix of ones added a long time ago and/or ones I had previously had BB Messenger conversations with at some point.

Also when I open my contacts app, it almost seems as it opens up twice, very quickly and you see one window being covered up quickly by the second one which is then usable.

Also when I go to dial a number through the dial app, and I start typing in the first few numbers of a UK mobile number it suddenly shows me contacts that have those numbers in their phone number, and the list is more than the 36 or more I have that I can see in the contacts app. When I try and click on one of the numbers found after typing the first few numbers, it then says the contact does not exist....

Its quite a stressful time and any help is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance !!

Originally Posted by M5 London

Hi Everyone !

So I have had my Priv since November 2015.

Its generally been very good and have had zero issues.

However this afternoon when trying call a contact directly after searching for them through contacts, the contact app would fail/close and ask if I wanted to send an error report or not.

I tried this about 5 or 6 times. Same issue persisted...

So I then did a simple restart of the phone.

When it powered up again essentially I had lost all of my contacts....over 4,000 if I remember correctly.


Thanks in advance !!

Sorry to hear. Have you clicked on the menu in the upper right hand corner of Contacts to see if the contacts have been moved to some other group, or if "Local Contacts," are active or being shown? You could also set it to show all contacts. I thought I lost some at one point, and found them later.

In the future, you should back up your contacts to the SD card by exporting them from Contacts or using a backup app.

Hope you get it resolved.

Originally Posted by PHughes

Sorry to hear. Have you clicked on the menu in the upper right hand corner of Contacts to see if the contacts have been moved to some other group, or if "Local Contacts," are active or being shown? You could also set it to show all contacts. I thought I lost some at one point, and found them later.

In the future, you should back up your contacts to the SD card by exporting them from Contacts or using a backup app.

Hope you get it resolved.

Thanks for your response !

Yes I have checked if the contacts have moved to other groups etc etc.

Yes agreed I should have exported it to the SD Card at some point.

I do have a content transfer I did in November 2015 when I swapped from a Z10 to the Priv. So I essentially have all my contacts up until that point. I could live with that for sure but having a real tough time getting that back into the Priv now. I only need the contacts from the Content Transfer data of Nov 2015.

I have an content transfer XML file with about 6,500 contacts. I have been able to convert it to an XLSX (EXCEL) and also into a CSV file. Have sort of managed to convert it into vcf Vcard that the Priv should be able to import, but the Priv says it cannot read it and will not import it.

What's really weird from yesterday :

1) Contacts App kept freezing, when I tried to dial a contact after searching for it. Said there was an error and would I like to report it or not.

2) After multiple tries I did a simple restart.

3) After booting up all my local contacts had gone missing

4) However when I go the dialler and start manually dialling the 2 or 3 digits of the number it automatically shows me all my contacts that start of with this 2 or 3 digits in their number (I can see contacts' names and numbers) but when I click on them it says the contact does not exist.

5) When I manually add one of my old contacts and save it, it then shows me my full history of calls to them / from them and also our sms history....How can it relate my old newly added contact with the sms and call log history, if the contact has been deleted ? All my contacts must be on the phone I reckon...somewhere. (based on points 4 and 5).

6) As expected in whatsapp I just see the numbers of my old contacts with my conversations with them....BUT on Whatsapp Web on my laptop it shows the names of all my contacts I am having conversations with....

7) When opening the contacts app it opens then sort of half closes and then opens again. I really thing there is an issue with the contact app. It was acting very buggy yesterday and then freezing out when I tried to call a contact and then lost over 6,500 local contacts of mine

I seem to recall reading a thread recently regarding someone having issues with Contacts crashing.

If you have a decent file manager, use it to search, "contacts," and see if there happens to be some sort of backup file. You also may try doing an export from Contacts and see if somehow it can export your contacts, since it seems they are there in some form. You never know.

This is yet another example of why cloud-based accounts are a really good idea. Gmail, Microsoft, even Yahoo allow you to set up an alias using whatever email address you like.

What if you lost or damaged your phone? What happens to your 4500 contacts then?

Sure, but storing your contacts with Gmail, Yahoo or Microsoft defeats the purpose of using one of the most secure phones.
These companies are obliged through US legislation like the Patriot Act, USA Freedom Act, Homeland Security Act and other legislation to share their information with US authorities without a judge"s consent being necessary.

I still have not found the perfect backup solution either. It would be great if BlackBerry provided a Windows software with local PC backup for this.

Helium Backup (Android app with backup to sd card which then needs to be copied to pc) or MyPhoneExplorer (windows backup app) are two options for local backups.

Originally Posted by CarstenF

Sure, but storing your contacts with Gmail, Yahoo or Microsoft defeats the purpose of using one of the most secure phones.
These companies are obliged through US legislation like the Patriot Act, USA Freedom Act, Homeland Security Act and other legislation to share their information with US authorities without a judge"s consent being necessary.

Do you only communicate with those who also use local contacts? Your reasoning seems flawed if the purpose is to keep your identifying info from the government.

Originally Posted by PHughes

I seem to recall reading a thread recently regarding someone having issues with Contacts crashing.

If you have a decent file manager, use it to search, "contacts," and see if there happens to be some sort of backup file. You also may try doing an export from Contacts and see if somehow it can export your contacts, since it seems they are there in some form. You never know.

Thanks and I will give it a go with a file manager. Any recommendations please ? I used ES File explorer which didn't really find anything more than what I could find connecting the phone up via USB to my laptop and using its own file explorer.

I also read the recent thread stating the contacts app was playing up and crashing !

The relative good news is I was able to convert the xml file that was produced by contents transfer back in Nov 2015. Converted that to Excel. Then converted it to Vcard (VCF). The phone wouldn't recognise the Vcard but I then uploaded the Vcard to Gmail contacts and then imported it to my phone.....so I now have all my contacts back upto Nov 2015....so that's quite a relief !

Thanks

Originally Posted by ALToronto

This is yet another example of why cloud-based accounts are a really good idea. Gmail, Microsoft, even Yahoo allow you to set up an alias using whatever email address you like.

What if you lost or damaged your phone? What happens to your 4500 contacts then?

Yes agreed ! I just found it weird that I had to share my contacts with gmail.....I am quite old fashioned like that....but I suppose its the way forward.

Originally Posted by M5 London

Thanks and I will give it a go with a file manager. Any recommendations please ? I used ES File explorer which didn't really find anything more than what I could find connecting the phone up via USB to my laptop and using its own file explorer.

I also read the recent thread stating the contacts app was playing up and crashing !

The relative good news is I was able to convert the xml file that was produced by contents transfer back in Nov 2015. Converted that to Excel. Then converted it to Vcard (VCF). The phone wouldn't recognise the Vcard but I then uploaded the Vcard to Gmail contacts and then imported it to my phone.....so I now have all my contacts back upto Nov 2015....so that's quite a relief !

Thanks

Well, at least you got most of them back. I use ES File Explorer as well, so I guess that didn't work.

Now that you have most of your contacts back, do an export to the SD. :)

You said a "simple reset", not sure what that means. Try a 32 second power button hold down reboot. That fixes a lot of issues.
Super Backup, https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...tactspro&hl=en
does a good job of backing contacts up to SD, there may be other good ones, or even better, but I can vouch that this one works.

I don't understand why you don't want to upload ur contacts to cloud. Do you think your contacts are secrets? Just search true caller with your contacts probably already these are uploaded there.

Posted from my beloved  Q10  which is as awesome as my gf..

Originally Posted by chataddicted

I don't understand why you don't want to upload ur contacts to cloud. Do you think your contacts are secrets? Just search true caller with your contacts probably already these are uploaded there.

Posted from my beloved  Q10  which is as awesome as my gf..

Some of mine are of well known people, and are not on true caller. They may be a bit upset if their numbers got out. Likely? No. Possible? Yep. Besides, i prefer to have things local. I do back them up, and I sync them to my Mac via Bluetooth.

Originally Posted by chataddicted

I don't understand why you don't want to upload ur contacts to cloud. Do you think your contacts are secrets? Just search true caller with your contacts probably already these are uploaded there.

Posted from my beloved  Q10  which is as awesome as my gf..

I'm totally out of the loop here. Please educate me - what is True Caller and why would it have all my contacts?

Originally Posted by ALToronto

I'm totally out of the loop here. Please educate me - what is True Caller and why would it have all my contacts?

Truecaller is an apps that can recognize literally any unknown no. Which is absent in your contacts. This apps has a huge database of callers. When some one installed this apps and gives it the permission to access his contacts then it automatically copies all the contacts to it database.

Posted from my beloved  Q10  which is as awesome as my gf..

If you upload contacts to Truecaller you would, depending on your local legislation, violate local data protection laws if you did not receive prior permission by each contact you upload.