Help! iPhone 6 contacts lost and NO backup!

Question

Level 1

0 points

Help! iPhone 6 contacts lost and NO backup!

Any idea what to do with an iPhone that is NOT backed up to anything but iCloud and logged into iCloud and the contacts are 95% gone on that too? Thank you.

I have a friend who has NO technology. I begged her to get an iPhone. After three years, literally, she agreed. She called me this morning in a panic. Her contacts were mostly gone. I went through what I thought could help and she said that none of that worked. She drove an hour to my house to have me help her. Even though I have AppleCare for 3 computers and 1 iPhone she does NOT. I logged onto iCloud on one of my computers. At first it wouldn't open her contacts. I sent the error message to Apple. I logged in and out for her (she can't type - remember NO technology) it brought up her 8 contacts that were showing up on her phone. I logged into her Hotmail (Yuck) and all of her contacts were gone there, too.

On her phone I did all of the contact suggestions...refresh, show/hide, all accounts, went to settings and did mail settings and iCloud settings. Nothing.

She left unhappy when I said that I guess all she could do was recreate all of her contacts. Anyone have any other ideas. Now that I think of this I think of my 80 year old mother's iPhone that is NOT backed up to anything and I guess I should back it up to one of my MacBook's when I visit her next time!

Thank you so much!

iPhone 6, iOS 8.4

Posted on Aug 3, 2015 2:47 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Aug 3, 2015 3:32 PM in response to saf0523

Your friend is quite capable of learning how to use technology as evidenced by the fact they drove a car to your house. It's all a question of whether or not they feel motivated to do so. If they didn't really want an iPhone in the first place but only bought it because you kept "begging", they may not be very interested in learning. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water buy you can't make it drink.

The only suggestion I can give you is to show your friend how to back up their phone. iCloud back ups are automatic. Once it's set up, the phone will back up contacts at night while the phone is charging as long as it's connected to WiFi.

Reply