If you haven’t lost all your contacts, calendar, to-dos, etc start backing them up now. Seriously, stop what you’re doing and back them up.

silversidekick also let us know a handy tip. If you already lost all your data but you have an old Sidekick laying around that you’ve used in the past, there’s a chance it might still have your contacts on it. Fire it up and take a look.

For most people the most important things are their contacts, so here’s the best way we’ve found to back them up:

1. Open your Address Book.
2. Highlight the first entry
3. Hit Menu + M
4. It will bring up an email with a .vcf attached.
5. Type an email you have access to on another computer.
6. Copy that email address so you won’t have to type it every time.
7. Hit Menu + M to send.
8. Scroll to the next Entry
9. Menu + M (To open email with contact attached)
10. Menu + V (to paste email address in To: field)
11. Menu + M (To send email)
12. Repeat steps 8-12 until done.

You’ll end up with a ton of emails in your inbox, and if you’re using GMail or something that handles filtering messages, it should be relatively easy (although time consuming) to save all these vCards into some other application. More info on these vCards (.vcf files) can be found here.

For notes, emailing them is the best bet too. Menu+M, Menu+V, Menu+M again. As far as To-Dos and the Calendar events, I’m still investigating.

Many thanks to Ian and Nicole for the quickest way to export contacts that we’ve heard so far. If you’ve got any tips on how to save your info, drop them in the comments.