Address book recovery is performed in two stages. The first stage is extracting data from the damaged address book file (WAB file) or the formatted/damaged disk. Each contact extracted from the WAB file or the disk is saved as a separate .VCF file in the folder on your hard drive. The second stage is importing of the extracted VCF files back to the address book.

Recovering contacts from the damaged Address Book file (WAB file).

Right after startup, Actual Address Book Recovery opens the default address book (WAB) file. However, you can open any other WAB file. After opening the WAB file, the program reads its contents. All contacts which can be recovered from the address book file are displayed in the contact list. To view detailed contact data, double-click it.

After you have opened the WAB file and scanning is over, you should save contacts found and recovered there. To do this, mark the contacts you want to save. In most cases, it is enough to select the "Select all (without deleted)" menu command. To save the contacts from the WAB file, select the "File"->"Save recovered contacts" menu command or press the "Save recovered contacts" toolbar button. The program will prompt you for the folder on your hard drive where you want to save recovered contacts. After you have specified the folder, the program will save all selected contacts.

You can extract contacts one by one. To do this, right-click the necessary contact and select the "Save current as VCF file" item in the context menu.

Tip: To view the contents of the VCF file, double-click it.

Recovering contacts from a formatted or damaged disk.

Note. Under the "damaged disk" term, we mean the damage of the file system on the disk, not its physical damage. The file system could be damaged, for example, as the result of a virus attack, power outage and many other causes.

Recovering contacts from a disk is similar to recovering contacts from a damaged WAB file. To scan the disk and recover the lost contacts, click on the "Scan the entire disk" tab. Then select the disk you want to scan and select "File"->"Find and Recover Lost Contacts" menu commend or click on the corresponding toolbar button. The application will carry out the scanning and recover the contacts it finds. After the scanning process is over, click on the "Save Recovered Contacts" toolbar button to save the contacts that have been recovered.

Importing extracted VCF files back to Address Book.

To import recovered contacts (VCF files) back to the address book, do the following:

1. Move the default WAB file to some other hard drive folder. As a rule, the default WAB file is located in the following folder:

In Windows 2000/XP

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\

In Windows 98/ME

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\

Usually, this folder stores two files: UserName.wab and UserName.wab~ (or UserName.wa~); move both of them.

Note: The folder where the WAB file is stored is hidden, i.e. you should enable the option which controls the display of hidden files and folders in the folder view configuration.

2. Click "Start->Run" and type "wab.exe" (without quotes). The empty address book window will open. Click "My Computer" and browse to the folder where you stored VCF files. Press Ctrl+A to select all VCF files. Now just drag the selected VCF files from the Windows folder to the Address Book window.