A Special Report from a Special Guest

iPhone Update Horror “My iPhone Thinks I Don’t Have Friends” by Staci King

As you are all well aware, yesterday was the much awaited iPhone iOS6 upgrade. And I must forewarn all of you…I have limited technological abilities, so I’m hoping that this is a quick and simple little upgrade – requiring little or no input from me. So, after having been advised repeatedly during the day by our resident IT Genius to update my phone, I eagerly began the update process…even though I was not happy that it could take an hour or more – essentially cutting me off from the world!

Lucky for me, the update went smoothly, took only 45 minutes and was relatively painless for me, unlike my husband – his update took almost 3 hours! Anxious to see what new features were added to my phone during the upgrade, I went through the finishing process, setting up iCloud and all that good stuff and everything was great. Until this morning…I went into my contacts to get a phone number….and that’s when it happened…my iPhone update horror…there were no contacts in my list!!! Not a single one…Just my lonely phone number at the top of the page. Apparently, I no longer had any friends according to my much beloved iPhone.

And then the overwhelming feeling of panic begins to set in…my heart started racing, the language being uttered by me would have made a sailor blush, I felt faint and the prospect of rebuilding my list of contacts made a tear come to my eye…because out of the hundred or so phone numbers and email addresses stored in my phone , I think I only know 3 of them by heart!!!

Ok, take a deep breath, this has got to be fixable, right? I mean isn’t this one of the great reasons behind “The Cloud” that we have all been hearing for the last year or so? “The Cloud” is supposed to be the almighty backup server! And with a little help (okay, a lot of help) from a little search engine called “Google” I discovered the answer to my prayers! My contacts COULD be recovered – so long as I hadn’t made a backup since they were lost…and this is how it’s done:

Go to “Settings”
- Choose “iCloud”
- Where it says “Contacts” it should be at this moment switched to the “ON” position.
- Swipe the switch to show “OFF”
- It will ask you “Keep on iPhone” – Choose this option
- Now Swipe the switch back to “ON”
- It will ask you if you want to “Merge Contacts” – Choose this option
- And that’s it! It is really that easy!!!

At this magical point in time my contacts are now restored to my phone…And the shaking has stopped, the cursing has subsided and the world is good again…I have friends!! 