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HELP needed -- Address info just disappeared on iPhone 4

TallGuy

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Hi, I have an iPhone 4. I'm on Windows 7. Please help.

Where are my contacts? 300+ poof gone!

I was using iPhone4 fine on the ride home from work yesterday. 2 hours after being home, poof gone almost everything in my iphone address book. Here's what happened: Last night, I was making a call and in the middle of the call, the apple symbol came up and nothing would work. I put it in the charger. Came back to it in twenty minutes. Click on phone icon on iPhone and it took me to search page. Click on contacts and I have 63 not the 350+ that were there before. Did a lot of searching and reading. Seems like a few of issues like this. So all my groups are gone under "From My PC". Where does iPhone pull that information? I can't see any config where I specify that information.

I've looked in Contacts on my PC (finally found a video to tell me how to find it). That's empty. I don't use Outlook 10 though I have it. That's empty. Where else would iPhone 4 store contacts under category "From my PC" (I'm running Windows 7). On iPhone category "All from my PC" is totally blank. All the other categories are gone. Exchange is providing only contacts still on my iPHone. When I click on Exchange global address book list on iPhone brings up "search for iPhone". Like it can't find the GAL.

Issue:
I click on the phone icon and it sometimes takes me to iPhone search page. And sometimes lets me see the Groups or address book only missing 300 contacts and groups mostly gone.
If I go to my address book, contacts page, I have:
All contacts - about 63 -- was over 350 yesterday
The category "From my PC" - is now blank. And all my groups are gone. I had things like family, medical, etc. <<< Where should this information be coming from ??? >>>
Exchange - contacts are the 63 showing (scrolling to bottom shows 63)
when trying to see what is configured for Exchange global address book - brings up the iPhone search page.

Will restore from backup resolve the problem?
I have one backup showing from 2 days ago in iTunes. I changed the encrypt setting to don't encrypt so maybe it erased the other backups. I usually synch with iTunes every couple of days. Is that why there is only one backup? I changed encryption setting so I could get some backup software to work with my iPhone. I've never been able to find all my contact information to verify it was getting backed up. So I was loooking for a different solution.

Related / unrelated information:

I have 11 email addresses that I track. All gmail. They are still active.
my exchange account for mail boxes still has a gmail account associated. That's where the 63 contacts are showing up from.
I have outlook 10 on my PC but I don't use it. No address or e-mail accounts in it. It's not setup.

e-mail:
email is setup for exchange and my notes, Calenadar, e-mail are synching OK. Addresses from this location look to be synching ok.
Under default gmail account, the default gmail address is different that the ms exchange gmail address.
All the contacts in the synch gmail account are email only - no phone or address information at all. I also use this one for calendars and it is fine.

Notes:
All are synching correctly to ms exchange gmail account.

Text Messages:
Almost all of my existing messages lost the name that was on them. trying to pull from missing address book information.



I saw what looked like related posts:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16011859#16011859

posted same question - under new member - re-posted here thinking I had posted in wrong place.
 
Hi, I got through to customer care at Apple. Bottom line. I didn't have a backup. Thought that synching would actually create the backup. Guess with new devices I need to read the owners manual. Synch doesn't backup. Have to right click on device and do a backup. If you have a backup, you can do a restore and it'll restore the information. So I'll be busy re-entering the information. They also recommended to upgrade to new version of iTunes and to IOS 5.0 -- never have been thrilled about being on new operating systems when thy are first released. Just leaving this comment in case any one else is having the issue.
 
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