Outlook sync problems

[jeephed]

Hey guys, not sure what to do here. I accidently whiped all my Outlook contacts out. They are still on the phone but when I sync (using Mobile Device Center) they get blow out of the phone too. I can get them back for my backup in the phone. I've tried both settings in the Mobile Device Center (copy to phone, and copy to desktop). How can I copy them from my phone back into my Outlook?
Thanks.

[jsalh]

I did something similar - but I sync with Exchange; but I think the concept is the same. In your OUTLOOK, look in the Deleted Folders - the deleted contacts should be there; then it just a matter of dragging them into the contacts folder - and resync and things should be normal.

Let me know if this works..

[jeephed]

That was a great idea, but they weren't in the delete folder. They are all on my phone though, with Palm I could controll witch direction the information went in a sync, it seems like this only wants to blow away my phone contacts with the deleted Outlook ones. Can I restore from and archive in Outlook?
Any ideas? Thanks for any help.

[jerryyyyy]

What version of windows are you running? If you have a computer with an old version of XP, you may be able to go back to an old version of ActiveSynch. These old versions gave you the option at initial synch to combine contacts... This would mean you could get an Outlook.pst file on the XP machine, then transfer over to your current computer.

If this was me i would find an old computer and try to install a fresh version of XP SP1....

[jeephed]

Ugh, I think you're right. I'll give that a shot. I just can't believe they don't give you the option to sync from the device and have it write over Outlook. PITA !!
Thanks for the great ideas.

[jerryyyyy]

Tell me how it turns out. I collected a series of Outlook synch stories over the years. For your amusement, I have the complete collection:

3.8 (2005)
4.1 (2005)
4.2 (2006)
4.5 (2006)
4.5.2 (2006)... then Vista.. but most kept using this... I am not sure it does the combined etc. trick on install. I would go back to an old machine with SP1.

It used to be you installed the earliest one then when it screwed up, you installed the next one over to right the system!

BTW, I had a rather devious thought. You can install XP-SP1 as a VMWare virtual machine and maybe it will also synch. You can just delete the machine after creating the .pst file.

[jeephed]

Hey, if I had a backup of my documents from before everything got deleted could I copy the contacts back? Do you know what folder it would be in?
Thanks again for all the help.