Data Deleted -- Personal Information 'Name' field

Last week, Plaxo Online changed it's functionality and as a result I lost data.

There used to be two 'Name' fields, one for Business Information and one for Personal Information. I used these fields appropriately for business and personal contacts. Last week, Plaxo Online started defaulting the Personal Information Name field to the Business Field Name. As a result, any contacts that had only a Personal name now show up as "[no name]".

What am I supposed to do? Type in all my contact names again? Are there other data changes that Plaxo Online is planning? How am I supposed to trust that my data is safe and secure here if changes are made without any notification and I lose data?

Upset Customer

The same thing just happened to me--I am furious? Were you able to rectify this problem?

No, they haven't. I have been emailing the customer service group for a week, but they have been extremely slow in getting back to me and absolutely useless in trying to understand let alone solve this problem. I tried to update my contacts manually, but it's a huge waste of time and will end up me losing critical data.

I am baffled when Plaxo would make this kind of change -- delete the only information they are in business to store -- without notifying users or providing a way to rectify this problem.

True - it is now only possible to manage one name for a specific contact. We've actually been phasing this in for some time now. For example, it's been a while where the response from an update request only supported one FullName (ie: the person was only able to respond with 1 fullname for both their personal and business information).

This was done to ensure that Plaxo can better synchronize with various email clients and services. Most address books only support 1 name for a contact. Plaxo Online was actually the rare exception that previously allowed people to specify different FullNames for Business and Personal, respectively. This then created sync problems when syncing with a service that only supported one name, as we had to determine which FullName to sync. So the decision was made to only support one fullname for a contact

As for the loss of information - fortunately, no information has actually been loss. What you are seeing is actually a presentation bug in Plaxo Online. Plaxo Online is currently only showing the Business Fullname field. If this was blank, but the Personal Fullname is filled in, Plaxo Online is currently showing the entry as <no name>.

We have a fix for this that is currently being testing and should be out into the production environment later this week (Friday?). Basically, if the business fullname is blank, but the personal fullname is filled in, Plaxo Online will show the Personal Fullname.

Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com

Thank you for the update.

Once the fix is in place, should I copy the Personal Name data to the Business Name data?

Are there other data changes you're planning on making? Is there a way I can be informed of these, so I'm prepared in the future?

Thanks