FP2 deleted contacts from SIM card instead of importing them - what now?

[Syntia]

Hi everyone,
since my old phone is broken, I (finally) ordered my first Fairphone.
After installing Fairphone Open, I wanted to import the contacts from my SIM card. Going through “Contacts” => “Import/Export” => “Manage SIM card contacts” => “Import all”, it did not import them, but instead deleted almost all of my contacts. Does anyone know how to recover them?
Thanks for your ideas!

[AnotherElk]

I’m on LineageOS (Android 7), so bear with me for the moment …

@Syntia

Going through “Contacts” => “Import/Export” => “Manage SIM card contacts” => “Import all”,

I looked for some confirmation of what this actually does and the manual for the CAT S60 (using a seemingly similar stock Android 6) says on page 13 that this would indeed be the correct way to import from the SIM card.

My personal impression is that Android doesn’t like to work with the SIM card much, so possibly this import function does not copy, but instead move the contacts from the SIM card for Android’s convenience.

2 questions …

Is there a way in the contact App to select which contacts are shown (the CAT manual hints at an ALL CONTACTS tab)?
If you are now looking at a list of only the SIM card contacts, and they got moved away, that would explain that nothing is shown.

If you are using Windows, you could have a look at all the contacts on your phone with MyPhoneExplorer to see whether any contacts are there at all without relying on the contacts App.

@Syntia

but instead deleted almost all of my contacts

Almost all … is there a pattern for the remaining ones?
Like … They are contacts which came with the SIM card from the start (e.g. provider numbers, the automobile club, etc.). Or badly formatted numbers. Names with unusual characters. Anything.

[Syntia]

Thank you for your fast reply!!

Concerning your questions:

There is indeed an ‘all contacts’ tab but that only shows the eight contacts that are left (and I am using MacOs, so I cannot use the MyPhoneExplorer but am still looking if I find something similar).

And I cannot really identify any pattern either, out of the eight contacts, seven have been on the phone for some years (but no provider numbers, I kind of inherited this phone and it had been switched off for some years before I started using it) but one of them I added during the past year. And also in their formatting, I cannot discern any pattern…

[AnotherElk]

You could contact #fairphoneangels in your vicinity (if there are any) and see whether they could help.