Most of my contacts are missing

Contacts can be associated with multiple sources (email accounts). It is likely that the "missing" contacts are still present but hidden:

1. In the Contacts app, tap "Groups" at the top-left. Do you have sources that are unchecked?
2. In Settings/Passwords & Accounts, look for email accounts which have had Contacts turned OFF -- turn those back ON.
3. Did you delete an email account from your iPhone? Perhaps some of your contacts were associated with that deleted account.
4. Some apps can also be a source of contacts, perhaps the app is having a problem or you've removed the app.

These are just some of the things that can trip users up. Typically it is #1 or #2 that is the issue.

Your iCloud account is the "keeper" of your contacts, so it should not matter that you add another device using the same iCloud account. A couple things you can try:

• Are all your contacts on your iPad? (since it is synced to the same iCloud account).
• Log into www.icloud.com from a computer, check your Contacts there to see if they are complete.
• If your contacts look good on iPad and iCloud, sign out of iCloud on your iPhone, restart it, then sign back into iCloud.

Just FYI things cannot sync directly from an iPhone to iPad or vice-versa, you can only sync from email accounts or iTunes.

So it sounds like your iPhone is syncing to iCloud, and the two are in agreement (but both missing some contacts). There is nothing that can magically erase contacts from iCloud, so the missing contacts must have been associated with some other source and that source has been changed in some way.

Have you ever had more than one iCloud account? Is it possible that you changed accounts, and your missing contacts are in the other iCloud account?

Did you ever use a non-iCloud account for managing contacts, like Gmail or Yahoo? If so check in those accounts using a computer.

Did you ever sync contacts from iTunes? Perhaps they're still there?

If your contacts were ever "just on your phone" then (a) you must not have had Contacts enabled in iCloud or any other email account, then (b) at some point you enabled Contacts with your iCloud account, which would send new contacts to iCloud.

When (b) happens it is not clear what happens to the contacts that were already on your iPhone. Maybe they continue to reside only on your iPhone until something triggers your iPhone to recognize that only iCloud contacts should be used, Apple is not really clear on this fine point.

While contacts resided only on your iPhone, they would have been part of your iPhone backup. Normally contacts aren't part of your backup because they're somewhere in the cloud (iCloud, Gmail, etc.) but locally-saved items are in a backup. The trouble is, have you backed up your iPhone since your contacts went missing? If so, they may be toast. If not, then you might try restoring your iPhone to your last backup. This may recover them, it depends on when you turned on iCloud Contacts. Restoring to a backup may recover things, but you lose anything that happened on your iPhone that happened since then.

Unfortunately there's only one way I know of backup the current state of your iPhone as it is now and preserve your old backup. You'd have to be backing up to iTunes, not iCloud, and you'd go into iTunes and archive the old backup. Then perform a new backup which should not overwrite the archived one. Now restore to the archived one to get the contacts back (if they're there) and export them off your iPhone using a 3rd party app ... turning on a cloud service like iCloud may not force them to sync to iCloud. You could then restore your iPhone again to the newer backup you made to recover anything since the archived backup was made. Very complicated, I know ... but I don't know how else to recover your old contacts if they were only on your iPhone.

I've asked for assistance with senior members here, they may chime in.

Did you ever use iTunes to sync your contacts? Just curious how they got (literally) on your iPhone since they are normally synced via an email account.

annastrom wrote:

The only way I've ever added contacts to my phone was by manually adding them as i get a new number.

I see, but if you had iCloud contacts enabled on your iPhone, your manual entries would be saved in iCloud. It would be somewhat unusual to have contacts saved only on the iPhone itself, you'd have to have a very specific set of circumstances for that to happen (e.g. no email accounts on your iPhone, or at least contacts not enabled for them).

I then do backups via itunes of my whole phone. Though unfortunately I havent backed up since December (i know, my bad!)

Yes I'm sure you've learned that frequent backups are highly recommended. If you go to iTunes and NOT connect your iPhone, I'd recommend that you open iTunes Preferences and select the Devices tab, then where you see your December backup you right-click on it and select Archive. That will prevent it from being overwritten if/when you backup the current state of your iPhone. Once you archive the old backup, create a new one (and optionally, back the new one up too). You can then try restoring your iPhone and load the older backup to see if your contacts are present -- if they are, then get a 3rd party app to export them for safekeeping. If you're able to do that, you can restore again, but this time choosing the newer backup. This is what I recommended above, with more specific instructions.

Ive just discovered though when i go to icloud storage> manage storage, that 'contacts' arent one of the categories listed there as being uploaded to my icloud storage.

Also, when i log into icloud on my computer and select 'restore contacts' there are literally no previous versions of 'contacts' to select from. So it seems contacts were never saved to my icloud. Does that make sense at all?

It does not make sense if you've always had iCloud contacts enabled. But I suspect that you did not always have contacts turned on, and your manually-entered contacts were just saved to your iPhone. Once you turned contacts ON in iCloud, that's what you see today.

Good luck!

After discussing your situation with another contributor around here, it was suggested that you simply try signing out of iCloud entirely on your iPhone, then restart it, then sign back into iCloud. This may work, but if not it certainly can't hurt.