Question from Sham: I lost (or someone stole it?) my BlackBerry Bold (9900 model) when I was out partying last weekend. I don’t have any tracking apps installed, and I don’t think I will be able to find the device. All I want to know is if it possible to recover the contact information? I have very important phone numbers stored in the address book and it will take me ages to manually get them back.
Answer:
There are two contact lists on your BlackBerry smartphone — one is the ordinary list with phone numbers of your friends and relatives. Other is the contact list of your BlackBerry Messenger app. Both the contacts can be recovered.
Solution 1: For regular Contacts, you must set up the BlackBerry Protect app — it’s a free application designed to keep your information secure if your BlackBerry smartphone goes missing. There is always another option if you don’t have the app installed.
Solution 2: Search for the local backup on your desktop computer or laptop. If you have used BlackBerry Desktop Manager before, then there is a healthy chances that you have a local backup file stored on you machine.
Attempt to find the backup — sure, it may not be the latest backup, but it will at least help you get back some of the phone numbers.
If you have a new BlackBerry device, you can also restore the data through the backup file. Read this article on how to backup and restore data on your BlackBerry.
I don’t think you have the SIM card with you. If you do, though, then you can always retrieve contacts, messages, etc.
Solution 3: Say you have enabled Remote Backup in BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), and you have already associated at least one email address with your BlackBerry device. In that case, it is really easy to sync contacts. For this you need to find another BlackBerry device, from where you will navigate to the following menu (via BlackBerry docs):
- On the Home screen or in the Instant Messaging folder, click the BlackBerry Messenger icon.
- On the contact list screen, press the Menu key.
- Click Options.
- Click Restore.
- Click Restore using email.
- If necessary, select an email address. Click Continue.
- Click Continue.
- Click Continue.
These are the only steps that could help you recover lost phone numbers back from your lost / stolen BlackBerry handset. Unfortunate that you have lost your phone, as all of these solution require you to activate a feature or add an email ID prior to losing the device.
If you had a cell tracker or any other application installed, then it would have been a different story altogether.
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