Issue:
You have Exchange back-end. Using Mac Address Book to sync contacts with Exchange. You already have one or more contacts locally before you chose to sync to your Exchange Address Book. All is well, your contacts are now down. However, you then decide to sync with your iPhone via iTunes. You get the 5% have changed warning and proceed. You noticed after the sync, only the pre-existing contact(s) survived that were also on the iPhone. All your work contacts are now gone from the Mac's Address Book, too!
Solution:
If you have Time Machine machine, this is going to be pretty easy. Just restore the AddressBook.data file.
If she has Time Machine going, then she can retrieve her AddressBook.data file usually months back (depending on her backup drive's size and how much of her data is constantly changing). Otherwise, if no Time Machine, if she JUST did an iPhone sync, and hasn't done another sync, the last sync version of the address book on her Mac is saved.
Directions to the file:
1. Close the Address Book app.
2. Choose Finder Open Folder option, or navigate from Macinosh HD icon and go to the folder:
/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/
3. Rename AddressBook.data (current version) to AddressBook.dataold
4. Rename AddressBook.data.previous to just AddressBook.data.
For the System Admin and User:
To restore files from Outlook that were deleted, deleted items are stored in the "Deleted Items" folder of the mail box. After they are emptied, the Exchange server can retain deleted items. By default, they are kept for 14 days (Exchange 2007 - 7 days for 2003). This is configured within Server --> Mailboxes --> Storage Management page.
1. Select the Deleted Items folder in Outlook.
2, Choose Tools --> Recover Deleted Items --> Choose Recover.
Other Notes:
Shift - Delete in Outlook bypasses the Deleted items folder.
Sync Services w/iTunes is slave to the current/last used profile in Outlook (poor iTunes). Contacts and data are wiped on the iPhone depending on the profile currently loaded. By switching back to your Exchange profile and syncing all the contacts from Outlook for that profile come back (assuming they weren't deleted on the Exchange side).
You can also restore your iPhone to a previous sync via iTunes if the desire is to get at the iPhones previous contacts.
Sync Files on XP location:
If this is a Windows XP PC syncing with iPhone, the contacts backups are in the SycServices folder:
c:\Documents and Settings\MyUserName\Application Data\Apple Computer\SyncServices\Local\clientdata\***
*** = multiple directories of hexadecimal "gibberish". Each contains several files, one of which is data.syncdb which contains the contacts. The sync is done with the most recent of these folders, after a while the older folders are purged/deleted. Look at the Date Modified column to figure out which folder is most recent. To restore:
1. Backup those folders. This process is somewhat of a "hack".
2. Looking at the Last Modified column, locate the folder which should still have a good copy of the contacts.
3. Copy those files into the newest folder which then should be used for next sync.
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