Good News, Everyone! Contact Recovery
T-Mobile has posted instructions on how to download your contacts and restore them to your Sidekick. Basically you log in to your account at my.t-mobile.com and a new link will appear on the front page, “Restore your contacts”
Once you click on the link to Restore your contacts, it’s a 2 step process to fully restore contacts. Download the contacts to your computer, and then upload the downloaded file to your Desktop Interface. It will probably take a few minutes for them to appear on your device after this.
This is only the first phase of recovery, as T-Mobile, Danger and Microsoft have stated that the remaining PIM data (Calendar, Notes and ToDo’s) as well as Photos saved to the backend and not your SD card will be returning shortly. Perhaps through a similar method.
Let us know in the comments how the recovery goes and if you were in the group that lost all their contacts, or some of them. We’re curious to know!
October 20th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Good Ta Hear.! =D
October 20th, 2009 at 5:07 am
That’s Good To Hear.! =D
October 20th, 2009 at 5:12 am
I’m soooooo HAPPY! Even though I switched to G1, they said I can still get my contacts back =)
Today is a GREAT day!!! Wooo!
October 20th, 2009 at 6:10 am
And what about those ppl that dnt have desktop/internet availability?
October 20th, 2009 at 6:12 am
It only works on a pc im on my damn lx now an still nothing an im not by a pc… by the way wood like 2 give thanks 2 all the staff @ hiptop3.com wit out yu I wood do jail time cus I want vent online lol…. respect…an one love..
October 20th, 2009 at 6:17 am
Opps my bad I ment I would not be able 2 vent yu no what I mean..
Male
32
Sk1,2,3,08 lx an 2009 an what’s next don’t no humm will I stay who noes would I sue them yes they fukced up
October 20th, 2009 at 6:23 am
you have to store( did i use the correct word?) them on your mac/pc before you can import the contacts back into your LX. I got mine…but some of my contacts’s numbers are missing. Luckily, it was only a few people I haven’t spoke to in a long time (besides my girlfirned’s sister) so it’s not such a bad thing.
October 20th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Lookin 4 nu ladys 2 chat wit an nu friends send vcard 2 rude107@yahoo.com
October 20th, 2009 at 7:14 am
There’s always a school computer, or library. I’m sure a friend/relative will have a computer. You also might be able to visit a TMobile store and use their computers.
October 20th, 2009 at 7:14 am
So did any one else not get all there contacts back, most of all my people are back but if you I had multi numbers of emails for them that didn’t all come back. Why is it so hard for Microsoft to do anything right the first time ( windows vista)?
October 20th, 2009 at 7:22 am
I GOT MY CONTACTS BACK!!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!! FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!! i AM A HAPPY CAMPER!! =D Just wish they all wudve comeback…still missing quite a few, but hey!!!!!!!!!! My address book now reads 182 instead of 50!! YAY ME!!!!
October 20th, 2009 at 7:37 am
you shouldnt be that happy at a half-ass job. They should not say here are your contacts if its not all of them. plus what about are data all that’s not back yeah. This seems to be mircosofts thing to put out a product that is not really ready and just ad to it all together along the way. If it took them two and a half weeks to get this piss poor incomplete list of contacts back to some of us. imagine how long its going to take to get all of out data back. I mean I have to assume the people who are downloading the contacts to begin with are the people who were they thought the data was lost for good. otherwise it would have come back to our phones just like all the other people whom already had the contacts back a week ago. IE: we would be the the $100 gift card people which is sub par compensation for whats going on. If this the way its going to be run from here on out then its time to say good bye to the sidekick.
October 20th, 2009 at 7:50 am
most of mine are back, probably 10 or so it just shows their name and not a phone number, so not completly perfect
October 20th, 2009 at 8:12 am
yeah, some contacts have the name only no other info.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Yup, half-assed job. I had over 50 contacts, now I have only 29. And like Grae HImself said, not all the information is there in each contact. Some lost multi-emails, some lost multi-phone, and it looks like most )if not all) lost address. So, do we lose out on the $100 since the “recovered our data”? If so, that’s crap.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Oh and I have to go through and reassign any picture IDs I had to each contact, too.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:36 am
I’d expect those to come back soon.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Yeah I lost alot of contacts as well or some are just blank! I had over 140 contacts now I only have 72!!
October 20th, 2009 at 9:01 am
I’m happy now since I have 136 contacts back, I probably had alittle more but I’m not worried about that since the rest seemed to be doubles of some contacts that I thought weren’t there. The way I look at this is that these were all my contacts that I got from building my addressbook from the first few months of owning a Sidekick back in 2005. 1 wasn’t there but that’s okay I have that contact re-added to my addressbook, atleast it’s some progress being made! ๐ I can’t wait for the rest to come back, if it does. Either way I’m happy that I’m looking at my addressbook that’s back with restored contacts with their numbers and e-mail addresses and not just 5 contacts which were MyFaves contacts, surprisingly, only 2 of them were doubles and I cleared that out so it’s good, now I can’t wait to get my notes back, I could care less about the bookmarks on my end. ๐ Also they should give us the option to label our contacts as Mobile, work etc. It’s no fun if you can’t still do it.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:04 am
FAIL! I have some numbers back but a crap load are just empty names!
And numbers that I had back, are now gone again!
October 20th, 2009 at 9:36 am
NOPE! see screenshot here: https://twitgoo.com/4fdl2
October 20th, 2009 at 10:18 am
same sh*t happened 2 me! wth man?
October 20th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I am glad to Microsoft/Danger becasue contact recovery is worked YAYA
Thank you
October 20th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Okay, well I got some of my contacts. I had 149 contacts on my phone I think. And now I have 133 contacts and yes about 5 people didn’t have a number so I had to email and call other people that knew them in order to get their number. This sucks I still have to do all this extra stuff just to get my stuff in order! I’m still missing some contacts but I have no idea who. I guess Tmobile recovered most of their data and not all of it.
October 20th, 2009 at 11:52 am
It tells me my contacts cannot be restored at this time and its more like 700 that I have lost so I will really have a huge problem if this doesnt get fixed overall
October 20th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
This appears to be a big lie. Microsoft has NOT ” recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage”. The recovery process is only for PHONE NUMBERS for SOME USERS according to their OWN NOTES. Here is what it says:
“5. Your contacts should now populate on this screen which means they have been downloaded to your Sidekick.
Note: This will only include phone numbers at this time.”
ALSO says:
“What about my to-do lists, calendar entries, notes, and pictures?
Microsoft/Danger continues its efforts to recover pictures, calendar entries and to-do lists, which may be available in the future.”.
AND SAYS:
Why did I get an error message when I attempted the download?
Microsoft/Danger is still in the process of recovering some customersโ data. We ask that you continue to check back on My T-Mobile as we expect that they will continue to recover more customer data. If it is determined your contacts cannot be recovered, you will be notified by October 29 along with the $100 Customer Appreciation Card. Once again, we sincerely appreciate your patience.”
Link at: forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/board/message?board.id= Sidekick2&message.id=24701#M24701
October 20th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
5-by-5 here
October 20th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Got my contacts back but all the special characters are ?? — for example Andrรฉ became Andr??. Pretty sad.
Worse, I don’t have my notes, I don’t have my calendar, and I don’t have my AutoText entries, of which I had several hundred.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Oh, I also haven’t gotten a single one of my bought-and-paid-for ringtones and applications, of course.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
DOWNLOAD CATALOG?
I have no apps, no communitys and no way to get them. Is everyone else like this? And NO I had 600+ contacts, it only gave me 46 back. Fuck u tmobile.
I pay you.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I live in aus right, and my internet was fuckin upp, so I went to the Telstra store and they tried to fix it, but they erased my entire memory card. Photos, contacts, notes, callendar dates, everything ๐ but then the next day it all magically came back, its been a rouph week ๐ haha, telstra is severly fucked up if they wanna seriously stop selling one of thebest selling teenage phones, the hiptop slide. And im on mine noww ๐
October 20th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
YES it worked!!! i even did it at work ๐ no need to plug your phone in
just download the file
and go to the desktop manager and inport the file
and BAM there on my kick
some were missing but i didnt care about them any way!!!
HOLLA!
October 20th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Half of my contacts are missing numbers/emails
October 20th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
didnt work for me. It starts downloading and then says i have a connection problem but my connection is fine. can anyone help?
October 20th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
mine does the same thing. i think it may mean they havent gotten ur data yet.
October 20th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Well they need to quit playin around I needs my contacts!!
October 20th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
All that has been restored are contacts. Apps, Ringtones, Notes, To-do’s, and others will be sent out when possible.. So please stop complaining that you got your contacts back, and not anything else. If you would read the article completely, maybe you would know this.
Monthly-charged applications could probably get credited, however, I lost everything on my phone; except for my applications.
October 20th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Only thing that’s bugging me right now is that I was able to only do this once.
But since I did mine around 3pm I’ve been trying to do my girls restoration but the page is not loading up.
The site is down.
October 20th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
I try but the link doesnt work once I click Restore my contacts on my tmobile… I have connection because im typing, but I get a “problem loading page” on the my t-mo…
October 20th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
It was awesome that I could get my contacts back but im still missing stuff!
I was one of the very unlucky thaat lost absolutely everything:(
October 20th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
same thing is happening to me..what should i do?
October 20th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
i still get an error message this phone is a paperweight after all these years and 100 dollars will not be enough for me to keep this piece of shit
October 20th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Wtf. I can’t get on a computer. Thanks a lot tmobile.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
I haven’t tried it yet, but like someone said, if you had “special characters” don’t expect them to show. I knew this already because now that sync is back I’ve got all my (new, made post the outage) to-do list back upon a hard resit, but all the special characters are changed to “?”. Not just unusial characters like stars and the like, even normal “special” characters that the device itself not only is supposed to support but are on the “insert character” list (like the “ยฅ” currency symbol. Oddly enough if placed in the notes these all DO reappear properly. So wtf?!? You can tell it’s a microsoft server if it’s this sad and pathatic.
October 20th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
sucks if you got a new phone, wont let you even try says not a valid sidekick plan, make sure your usuing the right #
October 21st, 2009 at 12:26 am
God, I feel bad for the people who have clients or stuff that has to do with their work on the Sidekick.
October 21st, 2009 at 2:22 am
I had lost all of my contacts before as well as pretty much everything else on my phone. They recovered most of my information except for putting all my settings at the default and severely messing up my email — I have nothing to my alternate accounts and am not even sure how much I lost on my tmail account.
It looks like the contacts count is right, but the data itself is bad. While some of them look like they may be right at first glance you quickly notice the following:
no physical addresses in the ones I looked at
no IM listings for the ones I looked at
some contacts with just a name (huh? why would I even add the record in the 1st place)
I am sure I will discover oddities as I go along
T-Mobile has pretty much refused to work with me when I called them, offering me close to the store price on a new phone/plan. They also raised my overage (by more than double!) with this bill and no warning (their explanation: ‘well, sometimes rate plans change, we are not sure why you were not told’).
Goodbye Sidekick, hello Droid.
October 21st, 2009 at 2:54 am
What the heck are u talking about? I didn’t understand a word of that. Seems like u were just rambling. Yes, Microsoft made mistakes…but im thankful for what I was able to get back. You can’t be 100% better in 1 day. Recovery takes time.
October 21st, 2009 at 3:27 am
T-Mobile is way out front in terms of my lost time this month. The $100 (if they actually give it to us) is a pittance just compared to that, even if they do recover all our data in the end.
Does anyone know if $100 will be credited to your account or your phone#? I ask because my bill lists my partner’s number too. She is not as mad at t-mobile as I am (not that she is happy with them) so she is deciding what to do. As long as I am paying the bill with my credit card anyway it would be rubbing salt into the wound again if they told me the credit was only good for the time I was playing with a new Droid anyway. I wonder if they have gift certificates?
October 21st, 2009 at 4:11 am
is anyone else having problems with their download catalog not loading?!