I've seen some similar posts but I have not found a solution to my issue yet.

I log into outlook.com using a hotmail account (which I've owned for almost 15 years), which was also used for Messenger (and now for Skype). and I haven't had any issues at whatsoever.

Until recently. A few days ago I noticed that all my Messenger contacts in Skype were shown as Offline, eventhough I confirmed that most of them were actually online. When I ask them to verify, they told me that they see ME as offline (and obviously I wasn't). And noticed that the problem occurred in multiple PCs (work and home),, on iphone, ipad... so clerly the problem was not client application related but account related.

I contacted Sype support but to be honest they were absolutely of no help. So, I had to keep "researching" about the issue... as I was performing several tests, came to realize that in Outlook.com ALL MY CONTACTS WERE GONE.

If I go to the People page, it says I have NO contacts.

If I try to recover deleted contacts, I received a message saying that I have no contacts.

Checked for virus or malicious sofware... I'm clean.

Just to make sure, I did try several browsers and PCs and even from iPad... only to confirm that it made no diference.

I've browsed throgh this community and tried several different suggestions... none of them has helped. My contacts seeem to have just vanished.

Could my account being hacked?  As I mentioned my account has been active for many years and I cannot afford to lose my contacts. How can I recover them? How can I get someone from Microsoft support to recover them for me?

HELP will be greatly appreciated.