Contacts lost on iPhone SE. Tried to restore from iCloud but didn’t work

Question

Contacts lost on iPhone SE. Tried to restore from iCloud but didn’t work

My iPhone SE has lost many of my contacts. I have run thru several scenarios online to try to fix this issue including turning Off and then back on Contacts from Settings and tried restoring them from the iCloud. Neither on helped. I’ve also recently had major problem with Apple mail app on this phone which caused me to delete and reinstall the App. Not sure if the two are related. At this time I’m trying to focus on the lost contacts. Has anyone had any luck in restoring lost contacts?

iPhone SE (Gen 3)

Posted on May 23, 2022 12:38 PM

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Answer 1

May 23, 2022 4:17 PM in response to SravanKrA

Addie ally if my contacts are not stored on my phone but are merely “synced” to an email account as you say, then why do my contacts show up in my phone app and not in my email app? Doesn’t make any sense.

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Answer 2

May 23, 2022 5:37 PM in response to edwardfromcentennial

Go to Settings/Contacts/Accounts. This will list your accounts that support contacts. If you removed an email account all of the contacts associated with that account will disappear, because as you have been told contacts are synced to email accounts. Recovering contacts using iCloud will only work if those contacts were synced to your iCloud email. Otherwise you have to restore the email account that the contacts sync to. In Settings/Contacts there is an entry for Default Account. This is the account that new contacts will be saved into.

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Answer 3

May 23, 2022 2:00 PM in response to edwardfromcentennial

Unlike some Android devices, contacts are neither stored locally on an iPhone nor in SIM. They are synced to an email account that you had Google, iCloud, AOL, Exchange, Outlook, Yahoo or any Other

If Contacts were on iCloud, try this --> Restore contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and more using ...

Else Add the email account that stores your contacts in the IOS mail app and enable Contacts.If you have a corporate email account added through a profile on your device, please check with your organisation's system administrator.

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Answer 4

May 23, 2022 2:11 PM in response to SravanKrA

The link you provided is the the same that I mentioned in my initial discussion, i.e. restoring my contacts from iCloud didn’t work. From what you say my contacts are somehow linked to my email account. I sort of suspected that since I had a email issue prior to losing my contacts. However when I tried to restore my contacts from iCloud I chose a date furthest in the past before my email issue. That did not work. It appears to me that the contacts are lost for good. If so that is very unfortunate since they were built up over years. Also you say that contacts are neither stored locally on an iPhone or in a Sim. If this is so then what is being restored in the link you provided that claims you can restore contacts from the iCloud?

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Answer 5

May 23, 2022 5:32 PM in response to SravanKrA

This is from apple.stackexchange.com (I assume this is an Apple corporate site):

”iPhone stores contacts in the location set by Settings → Contacts → Default Account. New contacts are stored on the internal storage of the device, and then synchronised with the account selected here. This can be iCloud if activated and selected. Contacts can be imported from the SIM, but not saved to the SIM”

This is not the same as the answer you gave that “contacts are neither stored locally on an iPhone nor in SIM. They are synced to an email account”. Please clarify or correct as appropriate.

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Answer 6

May 23, 2022 5:43 PM in response to edwardfromcentennial

StackExchange is NOT an Apple corporate site. It is a highly respected independent site for developers. ALL Apple corporate sites end in apple.com. Thus, appleid.apple.com, support.apple.com, discussions.apple.com, etc, are Apple corporate sites. Any URL that contains “apple” anywhere other than the end of the URL is NOT an Apple corporate site. Scammers take advantage of this to trick you into going to their scam sites with URLs like “apple.support.com”, which is not an Apple site (it’s an example; there is no such site).

And what you quoted does not contradict what you have been told; that contacts are synchronized to the selected account. “Synchronized” means two way; if you remove a contact from your phone, it will be removed from the email account. And if you remove the contact from the email account, it will be removed from the iPhone. And if you remove the email account entirely all of its associated contacts will be removed.

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Answer 7

May 23, 2022 5:59 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thanks for the reply. I still don’t understand why Apple would do it this way. I have many contacts that are not associated with my e-mail account, they are in my contacts solely to be used for phone numbers. Additionally how does Apple know what contacts are associated with an email, which are associated with both email and phone, and which are phone only? The correct answer should be that Apple doesn’t know and all contacts should be preserved in a separate file regardless, they should be the users responsibility. As it is I have lost many of my contacts with most likely no way to restore them.

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Answer 8

May 23, 2022 6:07 PM in response to edwardfromcentennial

That is also explained in this thread and StackExchange. Your contacts when added are stored in the default account. If the default account is not iCloud then the contacts will not be stored in iCloud, they will be stored in whatever account you had as the default. If you don’t change it the default account will be the first email account that you added to the phone.

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Contacts lost on iPhone SE. Tried to restore from iCloud but didn’t work

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