Question about Outlook Express

Hi

I was looking at my phone on Friday morning and noticed that all my phone numbers had reverted to being displayed as only numbers and not as 'names'. I thought this meant that my phone had lost the contacts but it turned out that Hotmail (with which I sync my phone contacts) had 'disappeared' all my contacts. Over 200 contacts that I had built up over 15 or so years as a Hotmail user, both social and business contacts, just disappeared. I have tried contacting Hotmail support by email but they first said that the contacts had been deleted more than 30 days ago, which was untrue - they were present before 9am on Friday and then disappeared around 10am.

When I pointed this out to the email support team they suggested that the contacts had been deleted because my account had been inactive for more than 365 days. This was also untrue because I use my Hotmail account for both social and business purposes almost every day. I also pay an annual subscription for extra storage which should at least indicate that I am likely to use the account. When I stated to the support team that I had used my account actively and very recently they simply stated that "Based on the investigation, we didn't find deleted contacts at our end. Therefore, we cannot retrieve any contact as it appears that they're not deleted". Well clearly they have been deleted or hidden or disappeared or something - whatever you call it. BTW - they cannot be restored or retrieved by me from the People page of Outlook (which I tried initially, of course).

I have seen elsewhere on this forum that some people have provided MS with their details and that their contacts have been retrieved for them - I would be so grateful if someone could help me in this way. I have been in tears a couple of times this weekend just thinking about the work involved in gathering all this data and the loss of all the information.

Many thanks, if you can help me.

Carla