If you’re anything like me, you have some contacts that have been saved to your phone’s SIM card and some that are stored in its memory, and you’ve lost a few contacts when moving to a new phone.

But did you know there’s a way to ensure that never happens, ever again? And that Google has the answer you need?

I was rather pleased when I found this out, and thought I’d share it here in case it helps someone else.

Are you ready for it? Here it comes: all you need to do is add your contacts to your Google account and sync it with your phone. That’s it.

Well, that’s the idea, anyway. Here are the actual steps.

Step by step:

1. Log into your Google account from a browser on a PC or Mac.
2. Fire up Google Mail and click on the Gmail button in the top left corner of the screen.
3. Click Contacts from the drop-down menu; this takes you to the contacts that are currently synced with Google. Here, you can add, delete and edit contact information to your heart’s content.

Now on your Android smartphone, do the following:

1. Press the Call button, then choose Contacts or simply go looking for its icon in your Apps. It’s also called “People” on some phones.
2. Once there, press the Settings button and choose “Contacts to display”.
3. Select your Google account. This sets your Google contacts as your phone’s contacts.

And now, when you sign into your Google account on whatever Android phone you happen to be using, all of your contacts will appear correctly. If they don’t appear at all, follow the “On your Android smartphone…” steps above, and they will.

Also works on iOS

Should you use an iPhone that runs iOS version 7 or later, you can do the same thing by following these steps:

1. Open Settings, then go to Mail, Contacts, Calendars and press on Add Account.
2. Enter your Google account name and password.
3. Be sure that Contacts is set to the “On” position.
4. Now press the Home button and press Contacts; contact info should sync automatically.

And there you have it. Follow these steps, and you’ll never have to freak out over missing contacts ever again.