I have messed up big time, I had a problem with my OS which was not repairable so I backed up all the data I thought I needed remotely (music, library file etc.) and installed a new OS on the partition.

I reinstalled iTunes, imported my library and checked to sync contacts with Outlook in the hope iTunes was going to copy from my phone to my PC. I must have pressed a wrong button because it deleted all of my contacts from my phone without copying them to the PC so they are lost.

Previously I had been syncing with outlook so using data recovery software I found my outlook.pst files which should contain my contacts, copied them off and ran them through scanpst.exe to repair them, I then imported into outlook but no contacts appeared.

I then copied off my old iphone backups by date modified (.mddata, .mdinfo, .plist files)and used iPhone Backup Extractor to extract the AddressBook.sqlitedb files, and DiskAid to overwrite my current AddressBook.sqlitedb file. For some reason there were still no contacts at all on these files.

So now I have 2 outlook.pst files from before everything went wrong but both seem to be empty, I have 3 AddressBook.sqlitedb files from before these problems (extracted from backup files) but they also appear to be empty.

Can anyone suggest anything else before I give up?

If anyone can help me retrieve my contacts they would be legends! Thanks in advance!