iPhone 4 Contacts Disappeared After Receiving Text Message

This worked for me. Thanks!

Doesn't work with Exchange contacts and says so when you try via iCloud. When trying via Exchange the only option is to delete your contacts. Now gotta figure out how to transfer Exchange to Sim card....

I tried all the mentioned methods and nothing worked. Not only most of the contacts are gone, but when I add a new contact, it dissapears within few minutes.

iPhone 4 with OS 5.0.1: Contacts homeported on MacBook and iMac. iCloud and MobileMe.

I have tried all the recommended fixes (except texting) and NOTHING has worked to restore contacts that first disappeared and reappearred randomly, and now seemingly have disappeared altogether. When connected to iTunes and syncing, Contacts never, ever appears on the iTunes screen, much less being synched.

Apple's apparent deaf ear to this apparent chronic problem is unworthy of them.

For me, losing contacts has reduced the phone's utility about 90%;

Ironically, the only way I managed to restore some contacts was by syncing with GMail via ActiveSync (double irony there, I guess). Few days later, I just put my iPhone on eBay and activated a Samsung Galaxy S that I already had.

Well, a kind person in my local Apple support community suggested that the problem "probably" arose because of Mobile Me and iCloud having a problem getting along. Because I cannot yet delete Mobile Me (my MacBook is not upgradable to Lion, and I have too many serious un-upgradable applications on the iMac), I chose Mobile Me and turned off iCloud in settings.

Voila!

All my contacts suddenly reappeared.

Do I have any more wisdom? No. And...I do not know what I will do after 12 June.

Thank you so much i have my life on this thing lol 🙂

Lost all but 3 of my contacts on Christmas Day. Didnt do much to phone for a couple of days hoping they would reappear...no luck. Started trying to rebuild my contacts yesterday and what a mess! Manually adding only to find them disappearing again with no rhyme or reason.

recently actived a mobileme...could this be the problem?

I don't think Mobile Me is the only root cause because I never activated Mobile Me when this happened to me.

This has happened to me three times now. I don't even know what MobileMe is and I only sync with Itunes on my pc. But I did find a quick fix to make the contacts reappear, but it probably won't stop it from happening again. Someone did do this halfway, but needed to take one more step to complete the process.

1) Swipe to the left of the homescreen to search your iPhone

2) Type in a name or however you save your contacts and your iPhone WILL find the contact (but it's still not in contacts list yet).

3) Select the contact (or any contact) that the search found (be sure it's within the "Contacts" icon to the left of the list).

4) Close out the contact, and then go back into your contacts list and all contacts should have reappeared.

As I said, I doubt that this will stop the problem from happening. But it will dispell all of the anxiety (momentarily at least).

If you use iCloud for your contacts then go into iCloud settings, turn off contacts, select keep on phone, wait a few seconds, turn on contacts, select merge. Problem should be solved.

I had the same problem, this happened cause of iCloud in my case.

Solution:

I didn't like iCloud so I delete it. So iCloud took my contacts with it, cause contacts box was 'on' instead of 'off' position.

So do the following:

Activated iCloud again:

Settings -----> iCloud----->activated your iCloud account------>you should have your contacts after activating iCloud.

If you want to delete/remove iCloud:

Settings----->iCloud----->Contacts------>turn off the contacts' switch on/off first, before removing iCloud----->go to the bottom of the screen and click 'Delete Account'.

Done! shoot me a text if this work for you.

vjbz

I lost over 750 No's!!! All I have have on my phone right now are my contacts in my email(hotmail) which is about 440 contacts. These are the same email addresses on my hotmail which I had keyed in the numbers manually the last couple of days. The funny thing is, there are a few, maybe less than ten that have their contacts No's with the email, which I clearly remember key-ing in. How is this even possible? Apparently, my icloud was not turned on but nevertheless, what does that got to do with the numbers disappearing? The ****** things is I have deleted all my other contacts while I was doing the transfer. You can clearly see, that even if I can recover the No's it would only be all that on my email addresses. What about the other 300 odd No's?

Thanks ridindirty2130 - just did this and it worked for me and restored all my missing contacts!

Thanks pinkibike! It didn't work for me though..I barely collected 100 Number so far from email replys. What a nightmare!!! looks like as I keyed in the No's, the icloud moved into the bermuda triangle!