Recover deleted contacts from Android

Martyn Casserly reveals how to retrieve lost contacts

Gmail

It might seem odd to look for your contacts in Gmail rather than on your phone, but as the services are intertwined there’s a good chance you’ll find what you’re looking for here. When you add contacts into your Android phone using a Google service they are synched up with the online servers to hold

a record. You can restore any contact that you’ve deleted in the past 30 days and Chat contacts from the previous 24 hours.

To recover the missing details you’ll need to log on to the web version of Gmail, then in the top lefthand corner where you see the word Gmail. A drop-down menu will appear, from which you should select Contacts.

You’ll now see all of the contacts that Google has attached to your account, this will include entries for email addresses and phone numbers. In the lefthand column you’ll see a list of options. Click on More and then from the new headings that appear select Restore Contacts.

You’ll be given the choice of when you want to roll back to (an hour, a day, a week, and so on), so choose a point when the missing data was still on your phone. Click Restore and you should find the previously lost contact now back in the list.

Other methods

If you don’t have a Gmail account, or at least not one that you synch your contacts to, then recovering your data might be a little more difficult. There are several third-party apps that provide this service, which entails pulling the data from the deeper recesses of your handset’s storage using a PC or Mac. From the offerings we’ve seen, Recovery Android looks to offer support for a wide range of devices, with an interface that is simple to learn.

You can also try searching Google for your specific device and the contact app you use, to see if there are any internal settings that might come to your rescue.