I logged on yesterday and I have lost all my contacts on my msn messenger list.

they are still in my hotmail.

how did this happen and how do I get them back.

I can add them one by one but this would be very annoying?

Only solution (atm) is unfortunatly to add them back one by one unless you made a backup of your contacts earlier (contacts > save contactlist). Another thing that might help you (if contacts are still in allowlist etc) is Noroom's Listmanager. With that program you can easily add people to your contactlist again from the reverse list.

As to why and how this happend: maybe somebody logged onto your account and deleted them..i advise you to change your password (and secret question).

By any chance can you still see the icons of the contacts? (like that shown in the screenshot below)

Click for full size