How to Recover Deleted Contacts in Office 365?

Read time 5 minutes

Being a widely used cloud platform, Office 365 holds almost every bit of email data of an organization. Users even store contacts and calendar information in their Office 365 accounts. Storing contacts in Office 365 is very helpful as it makes sending and receiving emails easier. But, users need to delete some contacts that are unnecessary, and while deleting these contacts, they often delete some important contacts unknowingly.

Now, recovering these contacts can be tricky if you don’t know the exact process of recovering deleted contacts in Office 365. So, here we have mentioned some practical ways to recover deleted contacts from Office 365.

Methods to Recover Deleted Contacts in Office 365

Recovering deleted contacts depends on whether they are still in Deleted Items folder or no longer available in the Deleted Items folder. Considering the need of users, we have covered both these scenarios in this blog. Also, recovering contacts is possible for end users via MS Outlook. So, your Office 365 account must be configured with MS Outlook to retrieve deleted contacts.

1. Recovering Contacts that are Still in Deleted Items Folder
   Every item that is deleted from Office 365 account directly goes to the Deleted Items folder. So, if you remove a contact, it will still be available in the Deleted Items folder. Follow the below steps to recover contacts from the Deleted Items folder.
   1. Open MS Outlook and select Deleted Items in the mailbox folder list.
      
   2. Now, in the Search Deleted Items section, find the item/contact that you want to recover. You can also sort all contacts as required.
   3. Once you find the specific contact, right-click on it and select Move> Other Folder.
      
   4. Select the Contact list from your Office 365 account and click OK.
      
      Note: You can also move recovered contacts to a subfolder.
2. Recover Contacts That are Not Available in Your Deleted Items Folders

   If the deleted contacts are not available in Deleted Items folder, then you can find the contacts in the Recoverable Items folder. Deleted items/contacts often move to Recoverable Items folder when you remove contacts from the Deleted Items folder, empty the Deleted Items folder, or permanently delete contacts with Shift+Delete.

   Follow the below steps to recover the contacts from Recoverable Items folder.

   1. Open MS Outlook and go to the Deleted Items folder.
   2. Select the Home tab from the menu, and then click Recover Deleted Items from Server.
      
      Note: This option is only available if you’re working online and using an Exchange account in MS Outlook.
   3. In the Recover Deleted Items wizard, you can find specific contact with the help of Subject column. You can also use From column to sort blank entries as contacts don’t have a value in the From field.
      
   4. Now, choose the contact that you want to recover and select Restore Selected items, and then click OK.
      
   5. The recovered contacts will be moved to the Deleted Items folder. You can quickly move the deleted contacts to your contact list using the 1^st method.

Recover deleted contacts in Outlook on the Web

The user can configure the Office 365 account in Outlook on the Web also. The environment will remain the same with smaller differences. If the contacts are deleted in it, then you can recover them using the following two methods.

1. Recover contacts from Deleted Folder.

   When the contacts are first deleted, then they go to deleted folder like all the mailbox items. You can recover them from there.

   1. On the People page, go to Deleted Folder.
   2. If the Contact is present there, then you can choose it and click Restore. The contact will go back to original place.
2. Recover contacts from Recoverable folder.

   When the chosen retention period for deleted items is expired, then they are moved to recoverable folder. You can recover the contacts from there also.

   1. On the People page, go to Deleted folder.
   2. At the top, click Recover deleted.
   3. Choose the Contacts and click Recover.

Alternative Solution – Kernel for Exchange Server

Exchange Recovery is an effective solution to restore deleted contacts or data items from Office 365 account. It allows users to recover even permanently deleted items or contacts from Office 365 account.

Conclusion

Recovering deleted contacts that are necessary for your business is very crucial. Therefore, we have mentioned some effective methods in this article that can help you recover even permanently deleted contacts from the Office 365 account.