Lost My Contacts

I'm not sure when this happened. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what stayed and what went. I have some contacts from years ago as well as I think all from after I believe this happened. I've tried syncing backups from the Cloud, Backup Assistant, my primary Google account, the SIM card, and Facebook. But none of them seem to make any change to the list of remaining contacts. I just did a factory reset a couple of months ago (thanks a lot Kitkat ) and everything backed up and restored just fine. Any ideas on how to get my contacts back?

Not that it probably matters, but I have a Droid Razr M with Android 4.4.2

Accepted answers

deltabond

In learning to use my Note3, I noticed that some of my contacts were saved on the phone, and some were only linked to my gmail account. If I happened to save someone's number in there and didn't make sure it was saved on the "device", then I lost the numbers eventually with a change of a google account or a change in phone. The backup assistant seems to only back up the contacts that are saved to the device. I'm not sure if this helps, but Androids seem to think you want everyone's information saved from your email and facebook, etc, and its not readily obvious which list is just with your phone.

All comments

deltabond

Jakeman1

You should save all of your contacts as google contacts and they are backed up to google or gmail which is so much more reliable then Backup Assistant. In the case of only some getting backed up, it sounds like you have multiple phone lists turned on, on your phone (Google, SIM Card, BUA) and when you save a contact it is randomly saving to one of these

Ozatm2

I think you're right that the Backup Assistant / Verizon Cloud have managed to lose my contact list. I tried reformatting my phone again, and this time managed to lose both my messages and my call logs even though I made sure they were clearly backed up before hand. Thanks for nothing Verizon. Guess I should have expected this. Time to pick up the pieces.

BTW this forum is one of the most confusing and difficult to use pieces of internet technology I have yet to encounter. Verizon FTW