How to recover lost contacts on Android

Make sure all your contacts are being displayed

It's possible that your contacts are still in your Android device but they're not showing up in your contact list. You can find them right away with just a few steps.

1. Open your Contacts list.

2. Tap on the menu (the three dots in the top-right corner of your screen).

3. Hit Settings and then tap Contacts.

4. Open Contacts to display.

5. You should see a list of the contacts your phone is set to display. Hit All contacts and all the contacts from your apps should now be displayed in your Contacts list.

Get your contacts through your Gmail account

Your Gmail account has a special feature that can restore your contacts; if you've synced your Android device with your Gmail account then you can utilize this feature. Your email contacts should have other contact information in the email contacts list and you can use this to quickly get your contacts back.

Get on your computer and jump into your Gmail inbox. On the top left-hand side of your screen you should see a dropdown menu called Mail. Click on this and select Contacts.

You can custom restore for up to 30 days on Gmail. Any contact added before then will be recovered. Beware though, if you added a contact after that time then it will be lost. Once you'e finished you just need to re-sync your Android device.

To sync again, go into the Settings on your Android device. Under accounts, tap Sync. You should see a Sync now-button. Hit that and your contacts should return to your device

Backup your data

To avoid this problem again you should back up all the valuable data on your Android device. We suggest you backup your data through Google. Just make sure you've connected your Google account to your phone first.

Jump into your phone's Settings and tap on Backup and reset. From there you can adjust the settings for your data backup so you don't lose anything again. You should see your account underneath the Backup account setting. If you don't see a Google account just tap the button and follow the steps.