Lost contacts in Outlook

[TYJ]

I exported a file from my contact group (I have Outlook 2003, Windows XP) to
a csv. file. I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but the next
day, my Outlook contact file arbitrarily had shrunk from 144 contacts & notes
to 32.

I'm a novice, but use Microsoft Office Outlook for keeping track of all my
prospects. Please tell me how to retrieve the lost contacts. (How can I keep
it from happening again?)

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

It is very difficult to imagine that exporting Contacts correctly would lose
data, but then we have no idea what you actually did.
Do you make backups of your data? Changes made by exporting or
synchronization are permanent, unless you can find your missing data in the
Deleted Items Folder.