HTC Incredible: Android deleted my phone contacts, only gmail contacts remain

My phone recenty decided to delete all of the phonebook contacts seemingly out of the blue. They were all there in my phonebook one minute and the next thing I know they are all gone. Nothing was installed or modified between the time I saw the phonebook with all the contacts and the time when they were all gone. Another interesting thing was that my call history was completely erased, but my text messages were still preserved. ** I could have sworn I set the backup assistant to backup my contacts daily ** but when I go to the online backup assistant through Verizon Wireless, only the few google contacts remain.

This is extremely annoying, since I manually entered a lot of information for each "Phone" contact and I do not really utilize gmail contacts. When I went to the phonebook after this happened, only the few contacts I had saved in the gmail cloud were available. I can still link my facebook account to my phonebook, but its not the same since the only information your phonebook will show is only what each person's individual facebook profile allows to be seen. Thus, there will be some people who will not post certain info on facebook (like a phone # for example) and I will not be able to get that info back. I had entered all sorts of information for some people not available through an online directory that I would like to have back, but again, they were stored under the "Phone" contacts and not the "Google" contacts.

I tried restarting multiple times (also taking battery + SD card out and putting them back in) and that did not work. Usually this tends to work on all other weird software problems, but not this time.

I tried going into the settings under the phonebook and making sure the "Phone" box was checked under the "View contacts" option. They were checked.... it only says I have 1 phone contact

I tried using the backup assistant I have installed on my phone, but again, it said I only had 1 phone contact.

The one thing I have not tried is to do a complete factory reset, but then I will lose all my apps and settings which would be another pain to get back. Im not so sure this would work anyways, since the online backup assistant only says I have 1 phone contact.

Is there any way for me to see if I had my "Phone" contacts stored away in the past? In a cloud somewhere? On the phone internal storage? On my SD card?

Please help. Im usually pretty good at troubleshooting software issues, but this has me stumped

Accepted answers

JohnB_VZW

If you had Backup Assistant you should be able to view the contacts online via your My Verizon account.

1. Sign in to your My Verizon account.

2. Scroll over the My Services tab and click on Backup Assistant.

If you did not have the Backup Assistant you may try checking your Gmail account and see if the contacts are online. If they are you can sync the contacts to your phone. You just need to make sure that the setting on the phone is set to sync the contacts.

1. On the phone press Settings

2. Click Accounts & Sync

3. Click on the Gmail account

4. Make sure the Sync Contacts is checked.

5. Click Sync Now

Thanks

All comments

BakerGeckos

If you have backup assistance turned on you can try to visit this site https://wbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/nos/ba_nab/overview_def.jsp and see your contacts and look for any that were deleted in the last 30 days and restore them....On next sync they'll be back...

Mike

JohnB_VZW

If you had Backup Assistant you should be able to view the contacts online via your My Verizon account.

1. Sign in to your My Verizon account.

2. Scroll over the My Services tab and click on Backup Assistant.

1. On the phone press Settings

2. Click Accounts & Sync

3. Click on the Gmail account

4. Make sure the Sync Contacts is checked.

5. Click Sync Now

Thanks

lfergy

This is total bull**bleep**. I had the same thing happen with my HTC incredible 3 TIMES. Call history and all contacts vanished, but gmail contacts and text messages remain.

I brought it in to a Verizon store the first time, they did nothing but said if it happend again to bring it in and switch it out while it was under warrenty. After the second time, they uninstalled my task killer and said that would solve the problem. I don't know why they wouldn't just switch my phone out since it was still under warrenty as they promised before, and look now- It just happened again, last night, and this phone is only 6 months old. They better be willing to give me a new phone because clearly this is a glitch that they can't fix about. My back up was set up properly and it only saved my gmail contacts as well. To my suprise when I go check my Verizon back up assistant (I have two, one is a different company) alllll of my contacts had mysteriously shown up in the TRASH. I certainly hope that the erasing of contacts isn't a glitch in Verizons back up assistant. This is such a hassle, especially compared to the old brick phones where you didn't have to go through and individually link peoples contacts together. Total bull**bleep** for the price of the equipment and totall bull**bleep** from Verizon.