Losing all contacts can be be very frustrating and no one wants to go through that. In rare cases, some people may decide to delete all contacts but losing them unintentionally is really a bad feeling.
If you have recently lost contacts and don’t know what happened, you don’t have to panic much. It may be due to a new system changes by Google. Google has recently rolled out a new update for Android contacts. This update introduces a new contact syncing process on Android devices. As little as this change could be, it can completely wipe off all contacts if not handled carefully. Nevertheless, the contacts may still be stored in the cloud.
Google Play Services V23.20 Has Brought New Changes to Google Contacts Sync on Android
Per the report by Android Authority, this changes come as part of the May 24th update to the Google Play Services version 23.20. The changelog indicates that when you turn off sync with Google Contacts, it automatically removes all previously synced contacts from the Android device.
Initially, this wasn’t the case. You would still have all contacts on your phone even if you turned off Contacts sync. The only issues was that, new contacts would not sync until the user turned sync on again.
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What to do if You Lose All Contacts on your Android Phone Due to the New Google Changes
As a new feature, it can be quite confusing for a lot of users who may not be aware of the new changes. A user could mistakenly turn off auto sync and later realized that all contacts are gone. When this happens, there is no need to panic. This is because the contacts may not be available on your Android smartphone, but still be in your Google cloud account.
When this happens, all you have to do is to turn Contacts sync on again. To do this, navigate to Settings>Google > Settings for Google Apps > Google Contacts Sync > Status and turn on the toggle.
Also, you can view all synced contacts on the web using your smartphone or computer browser. To view your synced contacts on the web visit Google contacts and login to your Gmail account.
However, if you want to get the whole contacts back to your Android device, you need to turn auto sync on. Turning off the contacts sync actually requires similar steps that are required to turn it on. This is to ensure that users do not mistakenly turn it off.
So, if you notice that all your contacts are gone, the first thing to check is whether Contacts Sync is on or off. Getting the full contacts list back after turning auto sync on takes some few minutes. But if you urgently need a contact and cannot wait for the sync to finish, you can access the web version.
Source / Via: PhoneArena
