all my contacts in outlook disappeared. how to retrieve?

HiDennis Hayden1

Greetings!

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

Based on the description you posted, it seems that you have an issue with MS Office wherein you want to know how you can recover your contacts in your Outlook app.

Let’s work together in finding the best solution to this issue.

For me to better understand the issue, I’d like to ask a few questions:

• When did this issue occurred?

• What is the current build number of your MS Office program?

In the meantime, we would like you to try the steps provided down below:

Recover a contact that's still in your Deleted Items folder

When you delete a contact, it's moved to the Deleted Items folder in your mailbox just like a deleted email message. The Deleted Items folder is the first place to look if you're trying to find a deleted contact. If the contact is there, here's how to recover it:

1. In Outlook, go to your email folder list, and then click Deleted Items.
2. Use the Search Deleted Items box (or press CTRL + E) to find the item you want to recover. Or you can sort by the Icon column to group all the contacts in your Deleted Items folder.
3. When you find the contact, right-click it, and then click Move > Other Folder.
4. To move the contact back to your list of contacts, click Contacts, and then click OK. **Tip:**You can also move deleted contacts to a subfolder in your Contacts folder.

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Tips for recovering contacts in your Deleted Items folder

• If you delete a subfolder from your Contacts folder, it's moved to the Deleted Items folder and appears as a subfolder. To recover a subfolder (and all the contacts it contains), just select it in the folder list under Deleted Items, right-click it, click Move Folder, and then select Contacts to move the subfolder back to your Contacts folder.
• To recover a deleted contact in Outlook.com, see this topic.
• Your admin may have set up a policy to delete items from your Deleted Items folder after a certain number of days. Just like when you deleted an item from the Deleted Items folder, items deleted by a policy are moved to the Recoverable Items folder. So if you can't find a contact in your Deleted Items folder, look for it in the Recoverable Items folder. The next section shows you how.

Recover a contact that's no longer in your Deleted Items folder

If you can't find a contact in the Deleted Items folder, the next place to look is the Recoverable Items folder. This is a hidden folder, and it's the place where contacts are moved when you do one of the following things:

• Delete a contact from the Deleted Items folder.
• Empty the Deleted Items folder.
• Permanently delete a contact by selecting it and pressing Shift+Delete.

Here's how to recover contacts from the Recoverable Items folder:

1. In Outlook, go to your email folder list, and then click Deleted Items.
2. Make sure Home is selected, and then click Recover Deleted Items From Server.

**Important:**If Recover Deleted Items From Server is grayed out or isn't there:

- You might be working in offline mode. To work online, see [Switch from offline to online mode](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/switch-from-working-offline-to-online-2460e4a8-16c7-47fc-b204-b1549275aac9).
- You might not be using an Exchange account. To check, see [How do I tell if I have an Exchange account in Outlook](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-do-i-tell-if-i-have-an-exchange-account-in-outlook-0e2ff2d5-82ed-45f7-9c7e-e0712efc4c43). If you don't have an Exchange account (for example, you're using Outlook to connect to an IMAP or POP account) you can't recover a contact that's been permanently deleted or deleted from the Deleted Items folder. If you are connected to an IMAP account, you might be able to recover contacts from the Trash folder. See how: [Restore deleted messages when using an IMAP account](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/restore-deleted-messages-when-using-an-imap-account-4559a297-4d46-47e7-bfbf-71287b1935ed).

3. To help you find a specific contact in the Recover Deleted Items window, click the Subject column header to sort items by that column. Look for the name of the contact. You can also sort by the From column and look for blank entries because contacts don't have a value in the From field.
4. Select the contact you want to recover, click Restore Selected Items, and then click OK.

Where do recovered contacts go?    When you recover contacts from the Recoverable Items folder, they are moved to the Deleted Items folder. So after you recover a contact, you can find it in your Deleted Items folder and then move it back to your Contacts folder. To find recovered contacts, just search for them in the Deleted Items folder.

Referenced link: Recover a deleted contact in Outlook - Microsoft Support

Hope this helps,

Sincerely

Khou Sun

Microsoft Community Moderator