I synced my mum's iPhone 3G for the first time tonight and all her contacts have been erased.

Question

I synced my mum's iPhone 3G for the first time tonight and all her contacts have been erased.

I have a MacBook and I synced her iPhone 3G to transfer the contacts to the Mac, but after the phone was finished syncing I went to Address Book and I could only find the contacts from my iPhone 4. I can't find mum's contacts anywhere on my Mac, and they're gone from her phone.

Does anyone know if there's any way I can get the contacts back on to either the Mac or the iPhone? I've never really used Address Book much and I know there's some sort of problem syncing the 3Gs... Please help!! :'(

Thanks

Sasha

iPhone 3G, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Jun 13, 2011 3:47 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 13, 2011 3:53 PM in response to iSashaSasquatch

You would need to sync her phone to the computer that she normally syncs to -- you can't sync an iPhone to more than one computer without erasing what's on it already.

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Answer 2

Jun 13, 2011 3:56 PM in response to iSashaSasquatch

Open Address Book on the Mac, then launch Time Machine and you should be able to restore the contacts from any backup made by Time Machine before you synced, After you do that we can try to figure out what happened.

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Answer 3

Jun 13, 2011 4:10 PM in response to iSashaSasquatch

Ouch, loosing data is never fun. Sad to say the contacts are gone from the phone and can't be recovered there.

iOS devices are currently designed to have their data managed by one computer. Connecting to another computer and syncing it takes ownership. Thus, overwriting the data. You need to have it connected back up to the her computer to get the data back.

If there are contacts on her phone that she wishes to share with you, then share them individually from her Contacts on her phone, or export them from her iCal (if using a Mac OS system).

I am using a white iPhone 3G and have never had issues syncing, nor heard of that being an issue.

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