Lost Phone Numbers
September 27th, 2007 by matt
This is how I managed to lose all my contacts. I plugged my iPhone into my computer to sync and recharge. Then I opened up Address Book and iCal while the iPhone was syncing. Apparently I managed to do so right when iTunes was attempting to sync my contacts and calendars to my iPhone. That managed to lock up Address Book (I feel like calling it iAddress, everything else is spelled that way) and iCal so that I had to force quit the apps. Since iTunes and Address Book were trying to access the same file at the same time, my contact list somehow got corrupted and was deleted upon the next time I opened Address Book (since it couldn’t recognize the corrupted file, I presume).
Unfortunately, the iPhone had already synced with my Mac before I realized all my contacts were gone. That means all my contacts on my iPhone were wiped out, too. (Which is strange, because the sync is supposed to work both ways. If there are contacts on the iPhone that are not on the computer, iTunes is supposed to ask you if you want to import them. Not sure why that didn’t happen.)
Long story short, I did something sort of stupid. However, I submitted a bug report to Apple because iTunes and Address Book (and iCal) should be smart enough to not access a file if another application is currently opening it or writing to it.
Let this be a lesson to any other iPhone owner. Don’t open Address Book or iCal during the syncing process. (If they are already open before the sync begins, that’s OK.) Wait until after the sync is finished to open Address Book or iCal.
Asalie wrote on 10/27/08 at 6:16 pm :
Keep up the good work.