Contacts 'lost' from Sim card - were they there in the first place?

[Anonymous]

The upper keypad on my husband's old Samsung E250 stopped working and his contacts could not be accessed by any route to 'manually copy'.  I put his sim card in my phone - Nokia E5 - to copy and save his contacts. My phone asked if it should copy the contacts to which I said yes, but his contacts have not been copied.

He now has Blackberry Curve 9360 - old but 'brand new' (we oldies like our proper qwerties!). When putting in his sim card it just brought up all the usual O2 numbers in contacts.

I thought contacts were kept on the sim - not that I know much about mobile phones and would appreciate any replies taking this into account - have his contacts been totally lost?

Thanks

[MI5]

Sounds like the numbers were saved on his phone memory not the sim card.
Can you not connect old phone with a data cable to PC to copy the contact files?

[gmarkj]

can you not use the central button to enter the menu?
was the contact list put on one side from home as a shortcut?

[Anonymous]

Hello
The central button went first, not moving up/down/left or right - after that the whole lot 'seized'!
Fortunately at teatime I put the sim in husbands new phone and going into Text there were messages going back a few months - no contacts - but I was able to add the numbers to contacts. Don't think many are missing now. Thanks for your help.

[Anonymous]

Please see my response above thanks.

[MI5]

Glad you got them back in the end.