iPhone Contacts Are Gone! Fixed :)

So my sister had her iPhone 4 and for some reason all her contacts just vanished. She never uses iTunes or iCloud... they just simply disappeared. You have a few options such as the easy one of restoring from backup in iTunes, but if you haven't regularly or recently you could lose important data.

She contacted apple and they said oh that is strange... haven't heard of that happening before :censored. It is a common issue! (just google it) and was told that it was outside her warranty. They suggested logging into iCloud to see if the contacts were there and to also Sync with iTunes and upgrade to the latest iOS. Still not there. Ok, here is something that I knew would just work. Bear in mind you do not need a jailbreak or anything fancy like that. Also note if you do not have a backup... try backing up and extract the iOS files to see if there is any content in the AddressBook.

Also note that if your backups are encrypted... it is not gonna work for you.

Luckily I had a older backup in iTunes from an upgrade.

Step 1: Download iPhone Backup Extractor:

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http://www.iphonebackupextractor.com/

Keep in mind there are plenty of these type of tools out there, so pick one you like.

Step 2: Find your AddressBook Database
I was able to locate the iOS files and the AddressBook.sqlitedb file. Sweet.

Step 3: Download Sqliteman

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http://sqliteman.com/

Note that alternatives are hard to find. Some just let you browse tables or run SQL queries which you can't export There is a Firefox addon called SQLite Manager

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https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5817

But I am on Chrome and do not want to install Firefox

Step 4: Extract and Run Sqliteman

Step 5: Open AddressBook.sqlitedb


Step 6: Run the Following DB Query

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select ABPerson.prefix, ABPerson.first,ABPerson.last, ABMultiValue.value from ABPerson,ABMultiValue where ABMultiValue.record_id=ABPerson.ROWID

In the right hand top box and click the green play button.

OR

If you would more information from the db (job titles, birthdays, departments, organisations, nickname etc), you can run the following query instead:

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select ABPerson.prefix,ABPerson.suffix, ABPerson.first,ABPerson.middle,ABPerson.last, ABMultiValue.value, ABPerson.note, ABPerson.nickname, ABPerson.organization, ABPerson.department, ABPerson.jobtitle, ABPerson.birthday from ABPerson,ABMultiValue where ABMultiValue.record_id=ABPerson.ROWID

Note that there are 20 fields, chose the ones that suite you. What you did there is selected certain tables from the database which hold basic information, feel free to export more if you wish.

Step 7: Save as CSV



Step 8: Get your Contacts Back on Your Phone
It might be a good idea to enter these manually back to your phone. Or you can use the following method to get from CSV to iPhone.

YouTube Video

Watch this video on YouTube.

Future Tip: Editing a CSV file in Excel is so much quicker and easier than adding /editing contacts manually. So it might be a good time to fill in that missing information from your AddressBook. Also for others who have a list of contacts in an actual old school physical address book, this is probably the best way to go digital.

Tip: You can get various USB SIM card readers for cheap that allow you to export your contacts to CSV.

Now I hope you learn your lesson at least one backup once! right now