If you lose your iPhone or have to revert to factory settings because of an issue then you lose everything installed on it. Music and Apps are recoverable from iTunes and AppStore. But what about Contacts which can be lost forever? To avoid such a situation it is good practice to backup iPhone Contacts every so often.
The simplest way to backup iPhone Contacts is through iCloud. To set it up:
1. Select Settings > iCloud. On the screen you will see your basic Apps listed with Contacts in second place.
2. Switching it “On” will bring up a message at the bottom of the screen asking you if you want to “Merge” your contacts with iCloud. If you select the “Merge” option all your contacts will be sync’d to the cloud.
3. To confirm this is happening correctly log in to iCloud.com with your Apple ID and select Contacts. You should be able to see your contacts appearing there. Wait for the sync to complete. If any contacts are missing, hit refresh.
You can use the above steps to merge your contacts with your other Apple devices, such as an iPad, and to restore the contacts to your iPhone. An iCloud backup takes place automatically if the phone is charging and has Wi-Fi connection.
You may want to, very sensibly, have more than one backup of your contacts. Until 2012 Gmail allowed you to save your contacts through Microsoft Exchange, but that support has been ended. You could, however, backup iPhone contacts on to your computer using iTunes. Follow the steps below:
1. Download the latest version of iTunes.
2. Connect your iPhone to your computer via a USB cable.
3. Select your iPhone from the iTunes window.
4. The bottom half of the window will display options to backup your iPhone fully to your computer (or iCloud).
5. Or you could select the “Info” tab on the top. This gives you the option to sync your contacts with the Address Book on your computer.
Once the data is on your computer you can transfer it to a mail system or other devices. Be aware that saving backup on the computer is not as safe as on the cloud, as a hard reset of the machine may result in the loss of all data.
Other options to backup iPhone contacts are Apps like DropBox which copy data on to their server or IFTTT which allows you to transfer contacts on to a Google Spreadsheet.
