Contacts App - Disappeared?

Hi All - wife ran out from our computer room complaining that her contacts had disappeared, i.e. in the Contacts App on her iMac (spring 2013 model w/ most recent Mavericks update) - I sat down and she had only 7 listings (closer to 200 usually); SO what to do?

First, I simply signed out of her account and came back in - NO effect; then brought up Time Machine and restored to the most recent backup - her 180+ contacts were restored, so she was happy.

My question, is why did this happen in the first place, and are there other options to correct this issue the next time? Thanks all - Dave

Is there a camera set up at her computer? If so, you can try to find out what she did just before coming out of the room screaming. If not, who knows what happened? I'm being silly, but in reality, you need to know what she was doing at the time it happened, which might not necessarily coincide with when she noticed it had happened.

My question, is why did this happen in the first place, and are there other options to correct this issue the next time?

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It's hard to say why it happened without knowing exactly what was going on at the time the contacts were removed. Another option you can use to restore contacts in case they're inadvertently deleted is to keep a backup of them in Vcard format. Export her entire contact file as a Vcard.vcf file and name it something you can identify with. That same file can be imported back into the contacts app and will immediately restore all the contacts in the correct order.

You didn't say, but is she syncing her contacts to an iPhone or iPad using iCloud?

Hi Guys - thanks for your responses - now, I would ask her what she was doing but I already know the answer - ;P

She has a 'dumb' phone and neither of us use iCloud - good question, though! I'll give the export feature a try just as an extra precaution - now, I don't go into the room and use that computer much - is there anyway to 'automate' and schedule the export function of Contacts using Automator or Apple Scripting? Just curious - thanks again. Dave