Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Had a really painful experience with my Nokia N900.

Needed to delete all the contacts from the address book. Did just that. Manually. Didn't find "Delete all" option in time. And did not pay attention to a warning "The contacts will be deleted from server". Now all my contact lists from Skype, Gtalk and MSN Messenger from the last 6 years, are just gone.

More info here: http://www.unwiredview.com/2009/11/2...er-im-servers/

Am I an idiot? Yep. I surely feel that way. But I also feel a bit angry at Nokia too. If you are making a consumer device, you are supposed to make it idiot proof.

Yeah, I know N900 is not really a consumer device. There's one more iteration until they get there. Still. Some better warning would have helped.

"Contacts will be deleted from server?". What do I care?

I had the backups, so everything's supposed to be restored anyway. And why should I worry if N900 is deleting contacts from some server, when I'm deleting 10-30 contacts at a time and most of them are phone numbers from my phonebook. And only a few are my IM contacts?

Problem is, the backup saved only those IM contacts that I merged with phone contacts in address book. All others, brought in there from Skype, Gtalk and MSN are lost.

How about the warning that says "All your Skype, GTalk, MSN contacts will be deleted from Skype, GTalk, MSN servers, and we do not back them up with any available utility. So they will be really truly gone". That one, I would have paid attention to.

Anyway. I try to look at the bright side now. 90% of the IM contacts lost were garbage. I don't even have an idea who they are. Some guy or gal who wanted to talk to me at some point in time about something. Good riddance and good phonebook cleanup.

But the other 10%? I'm really gonna miss those.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Ouch, sorry to hear that.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Really don't see how this is isolated to the N900, this is a "feature" of any if not every chat client... - the linking of contact lists to server.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

they'll message you if its important

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

So if you sign into Gmail.com and click Contacts, it's all gone?????

This would be a good reason to click the "Export" every once in a while : ) (From the Contacts page of Gmail.)

(Note for everyone reading: if you have never done this, do it now!! You'll never know when you might need it. Saves as excel doc. Save the document on your computer somewhere, or email it to yourself :D)

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

According to this you can contact Skype and get your contacts restored.

For google talk and MSN they might all still be in your address list.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

If you log into MSN Messenger, you can go into the Privacy part somewhere in the options and look at all the people that have you added on their list. Hopefully those are all the people you needed from MSN.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

The address book on a phone is not expected to be a chat client. When I delete contacts from my N800, they're not deleted from the server. When I delete contacts on my PC from Evolution, they're not deleted from the server. Each of these apps/contact lists holds my contacts' IM accounts.

I delete my contact from my phone regularly because of sync problems that occur every now and then. It would be absurd if I couldn't do it without deleting my jabber-roaster as well.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

@Firebird8 The difference is, that if I am deleting contacts from my IM client or IM aggregator, I fully expect those contacts to be gone. When I am deleting contacts from my phone's phonebook, I do not think of IM clients.

@johnnyrockets911 No, they are not gone if you just signed in to Gtalk or Skype on N900. Actually they are in your phonebook, and it's super convenient. But if you delete Gmail, Skype or any other contact from your N900 "Contacts", they will be deleted from those services servers too.

@sharper Thank you very much. This is the first hope that I may actually have those contacts restored. Thank's again. I will definitely try that

@horus Thank's. I'll try that too.

Wow, this one's a one helpfull community. Waited a day from making the post on my blog and twittering. Didn't get a single helpfull reply. 20 mins here, and I have almost solved them. Wow :)

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Ok, so some people might be saying about poor Staska here, "what an idiot, he didn't read the warning!"

But what about my case? I was merging contacts (something I have had to do several times on my N900), and I accidentally hit an unrelated contact's name (easy to do when you are trying to scroll the list).

Boom, the two unrelated contacts were merged! Fused! Bonded!

Ok, so just un-merge them, right? Wrong! There's no "un-merge" button!

Ok, so just delete the incorrect fields from one of the contacts!

"Warning: Contacts will be deleted from server!"

Yikes! Help!

So I agree with Staska. There's some serious problems here. Definitely not consumer-ready.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

That sounds like two separate UI bugs.

1. Merging should probably ask for confirmation.
2. The warning could be better, assuming it really means it will only delete the exact information.

And a feature request:

3. Some way to unmerge, please.

Based on this thread, this strikes me as a rather desirable bug/feature request, depending on your point of view:

4. Backup then restore should get you back to where you were before - or at least have that potential. That means "delete all contacts" should, at the worst, only delete those contacts which are actually on the phone at the time, not contacts which haven't yet been synced to the phone.

And this would be a nice bonus, letting you confidently explore with the phone by limiting possible damage:

5. General undo facility to undo configuration changes including contact changes would be great! C'mon guys :)

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

This is one of the reasons why I think the whole contacts integration with all your IM services isnt up to snuff yet. I'm just glad there are alternatives (Pidgin for ex.) that allow you to connect to a wide variety of networks. I hope the makers of Fring come out with a maemo 5 version so that we also get video skype call support they just brought over to s60.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

see (and possibly vote for) this enhancement request

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Yes, I am rather uncomfortable with putting any IM contacts into the N900 address book because of this revelation, so I'll probably be looking for another app to handle IM on it if isn't resolved.

I definitely want to IM on the N900 - so that clients think I'm a really hard worker because I'll be always online :D. But this issue, I understand how it's arisen, but it's very concerning.

The "warning" isn't informative enough, among other things. When you get a warning that it'll delete all contacts, it's not obvious what it means because there are several different things that could mean.

It's a mistake, of course, but natural to hope it's not too dangerous - for the simple reason that adding IM contacts and removing IM contacts from the phone list should be complementary operations - that is, do the opposite of each other.

If you remove an IM contact from your phone's contact list, it doesn't usually mean you want to remove your connection to them from your IM account. It just means (I would normally expect) that you don't want it in your phone's contact list any more.

Btw, does anyone know a way to collect all IM contacts from all different services used and back them up in a safe place, regularly? With ability to restore individually and all together? By that I mean not having to do a long-winded web operation with umpteen different web sites to make a backup.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

You could always write them down on a piece of paper. Or a word-type document.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Well, honestly, the quality on Pidgin isn't much better than the contacts app in the N900. And you will still delete contacts from the servers if you delete them in Pidgin.

The problem is that people aren't thinking, "this is an IM chat client like Pidgin," they are thinking, "This is a mobile phone with a phone book, just like my other mobile phones," but it isn't, it is much more "connected" than that. If you carry on an e-mail conversation with someone in GMail, suddenly their status will start appearing in your N900's contact list!

I agree with jjx, what is needed here is some more guard rails and seat belts. You need to be able to undo changes that you make to your contacts without much hassle, and you need more confirmation dialogs with more clearly worded warnings.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Can't we request a feature that can set ''Delete original contacts'' so you can decide yourself if you keep them or not?
And I don't know if this has been mentioned but in MSN you can see a list of contacts that have you in their list in Tools>Options>Privacy :)

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

I agree with both of the above. It's a surprise because it's not what phone contact lists have traditionally done.

In particular, some other mobile phones let you add and remove IM contact information from their main contact list, but that doesn't affect the server list. That's because it's no different from adding and removing email addresses and phone numbers.

A lot of people even like to maintain different lists on their phone then, say, their computer address book or paper address book of all known contacts.

I expect people who are used to syncing their phone contacts with their big database on Google or on their main computer, and who always aim to have One Big List(tm) on all devices, will not be as surprised.

But they might still be surprised, if they're not used to thinking the IM client way.

After all, if you delete info and then sync, often deletions are synced around too. That said, you usually have some control over this - whether it's dialogues at sync time saying "do you want to delete the following contacts removed from $DEV1 and still present on $DEV2?", or an option to sync in one direction only.

So even regular syncers can correct their mistakes that way.

A lot of people don't sync their phone contact list regularly with other systems. They just maintain the list manually, or bluetooth entries around. They're not expecting deletions to propagate.

Culture clash, I guess, between the way people maintain phone numbers on their phones (and have done forever), and the way IM clients keep a single list on the server.

Well, apart from the expectations difference, there may be a technical surprise which is different from both traditional phone contacts and IM client behaviour:

Judging from the OP's report: "Delete all contacts" deletes contacts that have never been synced onto the phone. That's not even like an IM client, where you can at least see who you're about to delete.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Actually, there is a feature "Delete all contacts" that deletes them and does not touch IM lists. It's just a bit hidden under the "Contacts"-->"Settings" and I did not notice it at first.

My problem occurred when I manually deleted the contacts, by selecting them 10-30 at a time and using general contact deletion button.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Backups should be regular and accurate enough to trust on restore.

Are you seriously proposing to login every day to 10 different accounts on 5 different web sites, go through a list of 300 contacts, compare them with your word document or piece of paper, and update the ones that you've changed recently?

Or are you suggesting every time you add a contact, remember to write that change down somewhere else too? Possible, but a tad inconvenient and prone to forgetting from time to time.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

I realize that this is the same issue with emails. If I delete my emails on the N900, it also gets deleted on my gmail account. To make it worse, it doesn't go to trash or deleted item, it just vanishes from your account without a trace.

Also, how do you get MSN? I thought it doesn't come with the phone and I can't seem to find a MSN messenger for the phone except for aMSN.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Is there any way to Archive Gmail emails on the N900?

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

There's no such thing. The contacts list is really just like the contacts list in Pidgin. If you add an account (Google, MSN, ICQ, Skype, whatever), then all of the contacts are downloaded and magically appear in your contacts list. If you remove the account, the contacts disappear.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

MNX1024: Have you enabled Extras in your Application Manager yet? If so, install "account-plugin-haze" and you will get all of the Pidgin account types.

("haze" is a reference to "purple haze", libpurple being the library used by Pidgin for all of the different account types)

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Yes. I don't trust electronic backups. I have a document that I keep my contacts in, and I print it out when I update it. No electromagnetic pulse will erase that paper. :p

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

I think this could be solved with a simple dialogue when deleting one or more contacts.

"You can choose to delete contacts from this phone only (locally), which only affects your phone, or to delete them from your buddy lists on MSN & Skype as well as your phone. How do you want to delete the following contacts?

john (MSN), fred (MSN), jjx (Skype)

[Delete locally] [Delete from server] [Cancel]

Btw, is there a bugs.maemo.org entry for this yet?

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

That sucks!!!! Nokia should seperate online and phone contacts. And we all should make a backup of online contacts as a lesson :D

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

I have the same thing :)

But I find I sometimes forget to update it, when I add someone's number to my phone and I'm not near the computer to edit the document.

When that's happened, they tend to stay off the document forever, even if they are people I'm calling a lot - after all if I knew they weren't on the document, I'd have put them on already.

It's a long job to go through phone contacts comparing them against the list in the document.

Of course with N900 it's possible to edit the document right there when a contact is added :-) But I know that I'll forget sometimes, being in a rush or whatever.

This is why they invented things like SyncML. But there's that uneasy feeling that it might delete or corrupt something silently - unless a syncing app has really proven itself to be rock solid.

I've used Nokia PC Suite with other Nokia phones, and that does mangle contacts on a regular basis - because the fields it shows in the contacts view are very limited, and not at all as complete as the fields in the phone's contacts database.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Well, lets say I add my MSN contact list, which is quite huge...:)
I'd like to have a different list of MSN contacts on the N900 to keep the contact list clean. There's probably a way to do that....not that I know...I'm getting my N900 somewhere Q1 2010 :)

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Typical b/s that you hear from Nokia...tut

Well basically, to save yourself from this pain & anger, try to backup the most important contacts you have. It's always important to back everything up. I know you can't backup every single thing you add on, but at least the most important stuff you should.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

No one to blame but yourself--you can't even use the excuse 'idiot proof', it's all on you bud. This device isn't meant for idiots, that's why the world has iPhones. Again can't put any blame on Nokia. Don't mean to come off as rude, but putting blame on Nokia for this is like saying you cut your finger nail too short so it's the manufacturers fault for not creating protective guard.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

The problem of deleting mail from the server if you remove it from the device is something all phones I've ever had have done: don't delete from the device till you have downloaded that mail. The bugger for me is that there's no way to just d/l headers so i don't watse bandwith. Am debating a bookmark to webmail instead.

Sorry you lost your contacts, Staska - hope you got most opf them back now.

can someone convert the info in this page into a wiki entry please. Cos something tells me Staska won't be alone. Also, how about a wiki page on backing up. I'd like to get a walk-thru on that too.

And Qole, if you're lucky this will mean nothing to you but my first thought was 'Tuvix!' :D

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

That is only the case if you are using IMAP. Use pop and if you delete the mails on your n900 they will still be on the mail server and readable with e.g. your pc's mail client.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Sorry, but we're talking about a serious UI-bug here... there's no excuse for a device to handle this situation as it does. - Remember, not even Maemo 4 did this, and it had the same kid of IM-integration into its contacts application.

It's a bug, and it's a bug that's new in maemo 5 while Maemo 4 did it right.

The problem is not that somebody could ignore the warning. The problem is that Maemo 5 does delete contacts from the server at all. It shouldn't, at least not from the address book. Worse, as I read it, it doesn't even give you a choice when you try to delete a single contact. (As I say: I don't have an N900, so I have to rely on the information in this thread about this.) It's either "delete it from the server" or "keep it on the phone". There's no "keep it on the server but delete it from the phone", which is default in every PIM suit I know and in Maemo 4.

Blaming the user for this is just really... trollish.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

Is there a bug filed?

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

It's part of this.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

similar thing happened to me with my samsung jet.

i copied my contacts from my sim-card to the memory of the phone.
when i then opened my contact-list, every single contact was shown twice (obviously, once from the sim-card, and once from the jet-memory)
i didnt find a way to "filter" out the contacts from the sim-card because i only wanted the device to show the contacts from its own memory (because of the pictures i assigned to them)

so i thought: whatever, i'll delete all the contacts from the sim-card. when i change my phone, i'll just copy them back to the sim-card from the jet-memory.

so i clicked delete and checked all the sim-card-contacts and pushed delete again. what happens? the phone deletes ALL contacts. from sim-card AND internal memory. what the hell.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

It didn't. Alas, this is the Internet.

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

definatley a bug if i go into
all contacts >setting>delete all contacts it tells me IM contacts will not be deleted from server
but when i click a profile and try and delete contact one at a time it tells me deleting IM contact will remove them from server
this is very odd and not consistant enough

Re: Deleted all contacts on my N900, lost my Skype and other IM contact lists from last 6 years
 

That's why backing up your contacts to more than one place is a given and any person who is even a tad bit tech savy knows this. He makes it quite clear...
He also stated
He admit's it himself, he didn't pay attention to the warning, that's not a bug that's a 'noob moment' nothing more, nothing less--we all have them. Like I said before, their is no one to blame except himself, and since your statement make's it blatantly obvious you didn't read all that the OP said, the only troll here is you, not I.