How to restore contacts data

Although E-Z Contact Book was designed with the idea of low or zero support, accidents on user computers do happen. Database file can be corrupted for number of reasons: abnormal termination of the program, hardware problems, creating duplicated contacts, and who know what else. If you are reading this, you probably have one of these issues.

In most cases, restoring database is pretty easy - you just have to rename the database file and re-import from that file, or from one of auto-backup files. Program database is a single file contacts.db, located in the user folder C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\E-Z Contact Book\ (put your actual user name instead of your_user_name):

There are couple of caveats:

• This user folder is usually hidden by default, in which case you won't be able to see it in Windows explorer
• The file contacts.db is shown as simply contacts, without extension .db because Windows by default hides known file extensions (and extension .db is one of them)

So the first step to find the file is to adjust Windows explorer View options as follows:

• In the Windows explorer top menu, click View option
• In the dropped down option panel, click Option (far right option), then click 'Change folder and search options'
• This will open the following Folder Options window:

• Adjust two options as on the screenshot, then click the button 'Apply to Folders', click Yes to confirm, and click OK

Now you should be able to navigate to the user folder C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\E-Z Contact Book\, and view containing files. Alternatively, you can access this folder by typing %APPDATA%\E-Z Contact Book\ in the Windows explorer address box. When you enter this address (and making sure the text is not selected) and click Enter, it will be translated to the same user folder, even if the folder is normally hidden.

Next step: rename the file contacts.db - for example, to contacts_bak.db. Just make sure it still has extension .db so the program can recognize it as a database file. Before renaming the file, make sure E-Z Contact Book is closed (File > Exit to close the program), otherwise operating system won't let you rename it.

Next, start E-Z Contact Book. It will ask you to create default groups, as if the program was first installed. You can skip this step. It will create new database file contacts.db.
In E-Z Contact Book, restore from the file you renamed in the previous step: either use Database > Restore menu option, or simply drag the file from the Windows explorer and drop it into the program window. When you see any dialog before restore starts, choose the option that suits you.

In case restore doesn't bring any contacts (may happen if the file is an empty database automatically created by the program when at startup), try to restore from one of the backup files. They are located in the folder C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\E-Z Contact Book\Backup, one level below the main database file. You should see here a bunch of files like this: CONTACTS_AUTO_BACKUP_20181005.DB. Number in the file name stands for the date when it was created, the date format is YYYYMMDD.

If you come to this, start from the most recently dated backup. But pay attention to the file size: if it greater than ~31 KB, then it contains contacts. ~31 KB file most likely is an empty database with no contacts.