What!?!? You're not familiar with Plaxo's Backup/Restore feature! Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if many members were unaware of this extremely valuable and useful feature of Plaxo. The Backup/Restore feature is really a by-product of how the service works (don't tell engineering I said that), so we probably don't make as big a deal of it as we should. But I can tell you it's one of my favorite features of Plaxo.

I can point to testimonial after testimonial where Plaxo's Backup/Restore feature has helped to save the day for a member in distress. The story is always similar - the member experiences some major happening and loses EVERYTHING on their local system. Sometimes it's a system failure, a lost laptop, or stolen system. Any IT expert will tell you that these things do happen and unfortunately, most people do not backup their data so they are left to piece back together their important information.

While we can't help them to restore all of their lost local data, in most cases Plaxo can help to restore their lost contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes information within a matter of minutes. For many, this is some of their most important information that would be nearly impossible to rebuild.

Basically, here's how Plaxo's Backup/Restore feature works.

Imagine that member Bob installs the Plaxo software on his local system. The software helps to keep his local information synchronized with his Plaxo Online account. Bob has a 100 entries in his local address book which are automatically synchronized with his Plaxo Online account. The software regularly checks in with the Plaxo service to make sure the information is always synchronized. The sychronized copy is necessary in order for Plaxo do it's primary magic, but it also has the additional benefit of keeping an up-to-date current copy of Bob's information (there are other benefits, that I'll discuss in later posts).

Now imagine Bob has a system crash and loses all of his local data. Normally Bob would have to remember the 100 people he previously had in his address book. But because Bob is a Plaxo member, he can simply reinstall Plaxo onto his new system and reattach to his existing Plaxo account. Within minutes, Plaxo will restore the 100 contacts existing within his Plaxo account to his local address book. If Bob also had any calendar, notes, and task entries, these would also be restored locally.

Quick, easy, and automatic.

Have you used Plaxo's Backup/Restore feature? We'd love to hear your story too.

Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com