[elendail]

Hi, I have recently lost my Nokia phone and I've had to start using a new Nokia phone. Losing my phone also meant that I lost a lot of important information stored in it, including reminders and contacts.

Unfortunately, I hadn't made a backup of my lost phone information, so I can't recover the lost information using backup restauration. However, I had my old mobile synchronized with PC Suite, meaning that at least some of the lost information is in my PC. I have seen that the folder C:\Documents and Settings\<User name>\Application Data\PC Suite\(filename) contains two files with information that was in my lost phone. The files names are Contacts.dat and (filename).db. They are encoded in some obscure format that mixes normal text with special characters. They contain the list of contacts in my lost phone and some more information that I can't decipher.

What I need to do is copy the information in those files to my new phone. Doing it by hand would consume a lot of time and be error prone, and I might be missing some information from the parts that I can't decipher. Do you know how to copy this information with PC Suite or other program? Also, do you know if there might be more files in my PC that contain information from my lost phone?

Thank you,

Elendaíl

Moderator note: IMEI number removed - it is unwise to publish unique serial numbers on the web.

Message Edited by michaels on 03-Mar-2009 08:04 PM

[petrib]

If you've synchronized the data via PC Suite to, e.g., Outlook. Then a new (Nokia) phone can be synchronized with the same PC and same PC Suite installation in order to get the data to the new phone.

[elendail]

I think that I haven't used the word "synchronize" the right way here. What I meant is that I connected the phone to PC Suite and it looks that PC Suite automatically "synchonized" itself with the phone, storing some of the information from the phone in the PC. Hence the two files with information from my old phone. But I didn't synchronize in the sense of using the Nokia PC Sync feature. Thus, I need another solution. Thank you for your reply, anyway.

[al_lea · Accepted solution]

For the *.db files, they're SQLite3 database file. You can use any free SQLite3 parser to open it.

The contacts are in the PCCSContact.db file.

I use a free tool: ABC Amber SQLite Converter. It works well for all my  *.db files.

p.s. Some file only contains change log (without the entries' content). 

[siseyorda]

what is the version of PC Suite you have instaled on to your PC

[desperatejohn]

Hi,

I recently had the same problem... I got a new phone and was trying to transfer the contacts via nokia PC suite to my new phone and lost the whole lot - 5 years worth! After reading your message I have found the PCCScontact.db file and my contact list is definately in there, but the problem is that there is all gobbledegook in there with the numbers and names all over the place. I have tried the software that you suggested, the ABC Amber software, but I'm not sure if I am doing it right. I have tried to convert it to various files but still get nothing readable. Could you please advise me as to how to get a readable list of contacts from this .db file, either by using the Amber software or by some other conversion/reader??? Many thanks in advance....

[al_lea]

ABC Amber SQLite Converter can read the file. But it cant convert the file to a proper format.

You need to select "table name" to view different tables in the database. For the converter doesn't connect the tables, you can only view different data (names, numbers etc) in different tables.

You can try to search other SQLite reader with more features which might be able to do a full conversion.

[elendail]

My version of PC Suite is 7.1.18.0.

[elendail]

Hi again,

After some more investigation I have discovered yet another file related to my old mobile phone in my PC, called PcSync2.sml. Thus, so far I have found the following files that have or might have information from my old mobile:

C:\Documents and Settings\[User_name]\Application Data\Nokia\PCSync\SynchData\[IMEI_number>\PcSync2.sml

C:\Documents and Settings\[User_name]\Application Data\PC Suite\[IMEI_number]\[IMEI_number].db

C:\Documents and Settings\[User_name]\Application Data\PC Suite\[IMEI_number]\Contacts.dat

I don't have the file PCCSContact.db of my lost mobile. I only have the one of my new mobile.

I opened  [IMEI_number].db with the database program you suggested, and saw the following tables: contact_numbers, mms_messages, mms_folders, sms_messages, sms_folders.

sms_messages has been very useful. As the name suggests, it contains all the messages that I had. It's not really the most valuable information from what I have lost, but I'm glad to have retrieved it. I had to save it in CVS format, though, the general Excel format loses the message text. 

contact_numbers might seem the most interesting table. It contains the phone numbers and an id for each, but not the name of the contact, so the table is basically useless (maybe I can use its data in combination with the data in the other files).

Regarding the other two files, I still don't know what I can do with them.

Contacts.dat definitely contains my contacts, but in such an odd format that is really difficult to use. Do you know how can I open this file in a more readable format?

PcSync2.sml is completely unreadable with a text editor. It only displays a lot of special characters without apparent meaning. Does this file contain any important information? And if it does, how can I see it?

Thank you,

Alonso 

[desperatejohn]

Hi ,

Thank you for getting back to me. I'm still not having much luck. I have loaded the file successfully into the ABC Amber program, and the "table name" drop down has the following options... "folder_data", "number_data","string_data" and "changelog_data_ex" but when I select any of these, nothing seems to happen. Am I doing something wrong??

[al_lea]

If the table is empty, it usually means the PC Suite has never sync with the phone - it hasn't build a database on the pc side.

[desperatejohn]

Hi,

There are no numbers on my phone or sim because they are now deleted and there lies my probelm.... but when I open the PCCScontact.db database using, for example notepad, I can scroll down through it and see my numbers and names there, amonst all the other unreadable characters... so I think this is a record of when the numbers were originally there on PC suite, just after I first synched the phone. Then the phone somehow synched again (when I didn't want it to!) and when there was nothing on the phone or sim card, hence I lost all the contacts out of PC suite. But they are definatelt there in the PCCSContact.db file, if I could just find a way of seperating the useful info from the unreadable...

[al_lea]

You can try other SQLite 3 database readers - they might extract more info from the .db file.

[elendail]

Hi again,

Summarizing my previous post, what I need to know is: How can I read the data in the files PcSync2.sml and Contacts.dat?

Thanks

[alpu]

I liquified my 6125 without having a backup of any of the contents, except for the sync file [imei].db in ...Nokia\PCsuite\[imei] directory. So, the new 2760 couldn't read the old sync data, phone overrides PCSuite, even if the IMEIs have been changed to match the new phone. Importing contacts somehow seems to be the only alternative.

The file [imei].db contains both contacts data and sms data, this is how I restored contacts - the hard way:

(1) export the four tables in [imei].db to for example .xls format, by using, again for example,  DB Elephant SQLite Converter.

(2) open the tables contact_general and contact_numbers in some spreadsheet, I used OpenOffice

(3) get rid of extra, empty columns. Don't delete the two id-fields or any other fields you think you need. I saved ids, first and last names, and phone number

(4) export a sample csv of contacts from PCSuite (& phone), so you can check the required fields (see above) and import that into a spreadsheet

(5) create two tables in OpenOffice Base, that have corresponding fields to the spreadsheets', I created table: Numbers (fields: id (number), number (text)), and table Names (fields: id (number), first (text), last (text))

(6) using copy and paste transfer the data from the spreadsheet into the database, seems to be the only way in OpenOffice, consult OpenOffice Help for importing into Base

(7) create a query view, where you add the two tables and make a relationship using the id field

(8) copy the, now joined, data back to a new sheet, this was somewhat tricky, trial and error works

(9) copy the correct columns from the new sheet to the exported (4) sheet template, and save it in csv format

(10) edit/replace (I used  UltraEdit 32) commas->semicolons, add quotation marks, etc formatting, to match with the original csv in (4)

(11) use PCSuite to import contacts.csv back to the phone, back to (10) if doesn't succeed

It took a while, but it really can be done - the hard way.

Message Edited by alpu on 08-Apr-2009 11:21 PM

[cjard]

@desperatejohn

"There are no numbers on my phone or sim because they are now deleted and there lies my probelm.... but when I open the PCCScontact.db database using, for example notepad, I can scroll down through it and see my numbers and names there"

This may be of little help to you now, being 6 months on but I created a program to extract the contents of the PCCSContact.db

A few days ago someone wrote to me saying he had opened Communication Centre with his empty phone connected, and saw all of his contacts for a brief moment before they vanished. Would I be able to help him get them back? He mailed me the database and I added support for extracting anything that looks like a business card from the dead file.

You may have embarked on a manual process by now, but you can use the software I created, if you didnt find any other way to retrieve your numbers.

The software is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/noknokwhosthere/ - in your case, you'll need to select the PCCSContact.db and when the app finds 0 contacts it will suggest you tick the "Treat DB as RAW File" on the Tools menu. The app will extract as many business cards as it can and PC Suite will be able to import them again

[desperatejohn]

Hi cjard,

Thanks for making this software available! This is exactly what I was looking for at the time. I tested it just there and it is really impressive but I did go the route of manually writing down each number I could find in the file back then... If this was available then it would have saved me a LOT of time. Well done and thanks again!

[cjard]

Hi John

No problem remember - if there was anything more in your contacts list, like emails, addresses, other numbers then it will restore all those as welll as sms and mms..

To be honest, after I wrote this.. I didn't even bother re importing the names - I figured it'd be a good clean up!