Disappeared contacts in Live Mail

All my contacts in Live Mail disappeared this afternoon ( Feb. 4 2016 ). I always work "signed out", but tried signing in to see if there were any contacts there: only 2 there and I didn't put them there. I signed back out, closed LM, reopened, still no contacts. I shut down the computer, waited, then restarted. Opened LMail, still no contacts. I tried going to Connections, to ensure I was still signed out, it was greyed out, so I assume I am. I navigated to something like Users/AppData/Local/Windows Live Mail Contacts. It said it was an empty folder. I right clicked on the folder, Properties, this is what was there: so surely the folder can't be empty! These are about 300 mostly business contacts and I really need them back, as I have no other copies, except an old folder of Outlook Express .contacts.