Contacts suddenly disappeared

Question

Level 1

12 points

Contacts suddenly disappeared

I have a lot of contacts on my iPhone (from my Mac Address book, about 2 or 4 thousand). They've worked fine for the two months or so that I've had the iPhone. This weekend, just a few days after installing the newest version of iPhone software, I my Contact list suddenly disappeared. It happened while I was adding a phone number on my "recent calls" list to an existing contact.

Fortunately, even though I was traveling, I had my Powerbook so was able to resynch successfully. This occurrence really bothered me, as I don't always travel with my computer. Has anybody heard of this happening, and are there any solutions or precautions if you don't have your backup computer nearby? I tried resetting the iPhone but that didn't help. All other data on the iPhone was intact and didn't disappear, just the Contacts.

Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jan 21, 2008 12:07 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

joevandyk

Level 1

9 points

Jan 24, 2008 5:09 PM in response to Matcha

Happened to me as well, on a week-old iphone with the latest version of the iphone software and Leopard. Annoying as ****. The contacts disappear once a day on the iphone. Syncing sometimes fixes it.

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Answer 2

Jan 26, 2008 4:57 AM in response to joevandyk

My contacts suddenly disappeared entirely a few days after upgrading to the new iPhone software. My "favorites" disappeared and are replaced by the phone numbers only (no descriptions). They were also zapped in my iMac versions... This really is a problem. Any solutions?

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Answer 3

Matcha Author

Level 1

12 points

Jan 26, 2008 7:41 AM in response to Matcha

So other folks are having the problem since upgrading to the newest iPhone software. It hasn't happened to me again. I think I'll travel with my (bulky 17") Powerbook for a while until I see this isn't re-occurring. Defeats one advantage of having an iPhone. I remember with my Palm III and V there was a nice application that backed up the Palm's address and other data to ROM on the Palm, great for such emergencies.

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Answer 4

Jan 26, 2008 7:57 AM in response to Matcha

I'm with you guys too. I had more than 3500 contacts in my iPhone. A few days after the update my iphone last the ability to sync y contacts. Interestingly enough, this is occurring on my XP machine as well as my iMAC.

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Answer 5

Jan 31, 2008 10:43 PM in response to Matcha

I don't have near that many contacts, only around 600. I noticed after the 1.1.3 update that changes made in the phone weren't syncing back to my Mac. I saw a suggestion to create a new group in Address book to see if it would jump start it. iTunes didn't see the new group, but when I synced, all my contacts became empty. Their names are still there, but there's nothing in them, and so the favorites show just numbers, no names (just like legal reported). I think it's a table of contents corruption thing, because obviously the numbers are still in there, and so are the names, they're just not associated together any more. Email addresses show up if I try to email someone, so those are in there somehow too.

I have deleted sync history as some have recommended, and I restored my phone, neither worked. I DID let it go to the backup, so I suppose the backup is corrupted as well. Only option left is to delete the backup and do a restore, but then I'll lose my notes since they don't sync.

very bummed,
Allison
NosillaCast at http://podfeet.com
A technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias!

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Answer 6

Feb 1, 2008 9:37 AM in response to Allison Sheridan

Took a big step BACKWARDS today. I restored not using the backup and now all phone numbers are 100% gone. Can't email anyone because all addresses are 100% gone. then I pulled an old Address Book from a week ago off of time machine, and that didn't fix it. email and calendar are fine.

really starting to get angry...

Allison
NosillaCast at http://podfeet.com
A technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias!

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Answer 7

Matcha Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 1, 2008 7:26 PM in response to Allison Sheridan

Sorry you are having such an awful time.

It won't help you at this point, but for others who had the problem you found of non-synching contacts after the 1.1.3 update...

I had the same problem. Found out that I needed to reselect the right options on the "info" tab (found when your iPhone is plugged into your computer, in iTunes, choose the iPhone from the Devices column on the left side of iTunes, and choose Info).

For me, sync all contacts was not checked, so I wasn't getting synching of contacts between my Mac and my iPhone. I thought it was really dumb that 1.1.3 installation messed that up.

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Answer 8

Feb 1, 2008 9:43 PM in response to Matcha

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1374011&tstart=15

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Answer 9

Feb 1, 2008 11:13 PM in response to arsmoriendi

w00t! That worked! You ARE my hero!

By the way, I did figure out today that this has nothing to do with the iPhone, because I got the same failure on my iPod Nano when I synced today. it's now fixed and so is my iPhone!

this fix is so odd. I had already deleted all in my Address book, deleted all preferences, logged out, deleted sync history, logged out, logged in and synced, and then restored from an archive, and it did not fix the problem! Why would deleting and then undeleting work? Computers...sheesh!

Allison
NosillaCast at http://podfeet.com
A technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias

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Answer 10

aangelaa

Level 1

4 points

Feb 2, 2008 11:53 AM in response to Matcha

My phone sync but not the correct list. When I select to sync just one group, it syncs the group below them on the list. I could name 6 other random things wrong too.

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Answer 11

aangelaa

Level 1

4 points

Feb 2, 2008 1:22 PM in response to arsmoriendi

thank you thank you soooo much!
now I get to have my saturday off again!

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