Windows 7: Recover WLM Contact List After Reinstalling OS

I did a reinstall of my OS and neglected to copy my WLM contacts list. I have not as of yet deleted the Windows.old folder. Is it possible to find the contact list within that folder?



Thank you in advance for your time and any assistance provided.

C.B.

Try looking in here "C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live"

Where is Windows Live Mail address book (contacts) folder located?

Just a quick Google did the trick

Is this what your after?

I am not 100% what is inside the windows old folder if it's just pure windows files or user data. Check the %appdata% on your new windows install and the old, it may of transferred to your new user

Thank you for your prompt reply, Prof Kerfuffle. I've looked everywhere, in both the current and Windows.old folder, and found nothing. I received a reply from someone on the My Digital Life forum, informing me that the contacts are stored on Microsoft's servers and not locally; however, if that's the case the information has been deleted from the servers.

The thing I don't understand is that in the past whenever I've reinstalled the OS and then reinstalled WLM, the contact list always reappeared, which is not the case this time around.

Well, I found the Contacts list. I wondered why the contacts were stored on servers but I could not access the contacts from those servers through WLM so I tried an end run. I went to hotmail.com and entered one of my email addresses, clicked on "Contacts" and there they were. I don't know why the list didn't download to WLM when all the folders and their content downloaded to WLM.

Thank you again for your assistance. I do appreciate it.

C.B.

You were previously automatically "signing-in" to WLM so that you were using your "signed-in" contact list (the one duplicated on your SkyDrive at the website contacts.live.com). The first time (and each time) you "sign-in" to WLM with the same LiveID you will see the same contact list in the WLM contacts pane. If you ever fail to sign in you won't see that same list since you will now be viewing the "not signed-in" contact list which only contains the contacts you entered when you were not signed in.