Contact photos are disappearing across all of my devices. Also, some contact fields are garbled

Conclusion

As of this morning, all my changes to my contacts are in tact, and I do not see any further corruptions. I believe the issue was caused by Outlook syncing with iCloud contacts. Once I removed Outlook's "application-specific-password" at appleid.apple.com, all the contact corruptions stopped and have not returned for over 36 hours. This solution should work for folks who don't require Outlook to sync with iCloud contacts or mail. Note: I actually had the 'sync contacts' feature turned off in Outlook and it still created contact corruptions.

Day 3 Summary . . . Yesterday I revoked Outlook's "application-specific-passwords" using appleid.apple.com (Described in my prior post), then corrected 25 contacts (as described below). As of 10:30 AM this morning 100% of those corrections are still there. I'm cautiously optimistic, that Outlook sync was, in fact, the root cause, but I'll wait until tomorrow to close the book on this. Fingers crossed!

Recap:

1. Disabled iOS Device/Mac Sync: To rule-out any possible corruptions caused by syncing phones, iPads, or MacBook with iCloud, I disabled iCloud contact syncing on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pros, on 3 days ago. In retrospect, that didn't seem to make a difference. Corruptions continued even after they were disabled for days. In any case I decided to leave it disabled and It remains disabled today. If the solution described here works, I'll re-enable it tomorrow.
2. Revoke Outlook App-Specific-Password(s): Yesterday I revoked Outlook's "application-specific-passwords" using appleid.apple.com (see prior post for instructions).
3. Repair: After I revoked Outlook's app-specific-password, I went back to iCloud.com and corrected all the corrupted contacts I could find.

• • Phone Labels: I fixed the labels so that "iPhone" was next to the phone number for someone's iPhone phone number, and not, for example, next to the customer service phone number for my insurance company. There were many errors like this.
  • Country: I fixed all the instances where "United States" was replaced by "United Statesitem1.X-ABADR:us"
  • Company: I fixed a couple of instances where a business' company name was replaced by "X-ABShowAs:COMPANY"
  • Pictures: For this iteration I didn't worry about missing pictures. Most of them had been stripped on Day 2 and I didn't try to replace them. Note: I did replace the picture on my own contact card (aka "My Card" in iCloud contacts) and that photo remains today.

Initial Result: As of today everything looks right. All changes I made yesterday are still there and I don't see any new corruptions.

Working Theory (To Be Confirmed): My working theory is that when Outlook syncs with iCloud, which happens in the ether whether or not it's installed on your phone/iPad/Mac, it somehow corrupts the iCloud contact data, resulting in all sorts of unwanted changes to contacts. Disabling outlook access to iCloud by revoking the outlook application-specific-password seems to have resolved the problem. Again, need to see it stay for a couple days to be sure.

• Note: This fix will work for folks who don't require Outlook/can live without it. It doesn't really solve the problem for folks who must use it in an iCloud application. It seems like more work has to be done for these two systems to play nice with each other.

Tomorrow

• I will keep an eye on the contacts in iCloud today. If they remain in tact, I will believe that we have discovered the root cause, ie Outlook syncing with iCloud. I will no longer use Outlook, but plan to continue to use MS Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, which don't require iCloud access.
• I'll report back here tomorrow!

David

I have the EXACT same problem. My theory is that was caused as a result of installing Outlook (Office365) on my MacBook Pro (2021). I won't describe the symptoms because they are essentially identical to what CincyTriGuy describes above. I've tried a bunch of things to resolve it. Here is my latest effort:

1. Uninstall Outlook Everywhere: I removed Outlook from all my devices and from my MacBook Pro - Theory being that Outlook was altering my contact fields and photos and custom ring tones when it tried to sync. Note: Prior to removing Outlook, I turned off all the contact syncing features in the iOS app and in the MacOS app, which didn't fix the problem.
2. Fix Contacts in iCloud: I logged into iCloud.com to make the changes I will describe below. I wanted to be sure that iCloud had all the correct contact info, as all my devices sync to the iCloud.
3. Identified Corrupted Contacts: I made a list of all the contacts in iCloud that had corruption of one form or another (e.g. Country had gibberish after it, or a phone label had reverted to "home" or "apple watch". . .or pictures where changed). Note: Some contacts were unaffected. I couldn't every figure out why some got corrupted and others did not.
4. Created New Contacts/Deleted Corrupted Contacts: I then methodically created a new contact for each bad contact, and deleted the original.
5. Stop iPhone/iPad from Syncing Contacts: I then went to Settings>AppleID>iCloud> and toggled "contacts" "OFF" on all of my devices. When iOS asked me what to do with the contacts on my phone (or iPad), I chose "delete". I know this is ok because I have a clean copy on iCloud.com, and when I turn 'contact syncing' back on on the phone, they will all port back over.
6. Stop MacBook Pro(s) from Syncing Contacts: I then went back to my MacBook(s) and went to System Preferences>AppleID and toggled "contacts" off there as well.
7. Shutdown MacBook Pro Completely: Finally, I shut down the MacBook Pro that I had installed (and then uninstalled) Outlook onto.
8. 
   

I did all that last night about 10:00 PM. As of today at 2:00PM. . .all my changes and corrections have remained in iCloud.com. It's still too early to see if what I've done will continue to work, as sometimes the changes stay quite a while before getting recorrupted. I'll keep an eye on it for the next several hours. If it does solve the problem then I plan to take the next steps.

Next Steps

1. Day 1: Enable iPhone Contacts: If my iCloud.com version of contacts remains intact tomorrow. I plan to go back to my iPhone into Settings>AppleID>iCloud> and toggle "contacts" "on". I will only enable the contacts on my iPhone (Not my MacBook Pro) to see if the iPhone is causing problems.
2. Day 2: There are at least two possible Day 2 Steps:

• • If iCloud.com Contacts and iPhone Contacts are in Tact (No garbling/lost picts/changed labels/etc), I will conclude that the problem was with my MacBook Pro.
    • At this point, I will back up my MacBook Pro files, make note of all my log-in info, and reset my MacBook to factory settings.
  • If iCloud.com Contacts and iPhone Contacts are not in tact, I'll conclude that the problem is with my iPhone.
    • At this point I will likely restore my iPhone to factory settings and re-set it up.

I will come back and let you all know how things worked out. I'm hopeful that what I did yesterday at least preserves my iCloud.com Contact. But. . .I've tried a bunch of other things that didn't work, so I can't be sure.

Hey CincyTriGuy,

We this is happening on multiple devices. Since that is the case, we recommend contacting Apple Support here: Get Support.

Take care.

Day 2. . . I thought everything was good when I went to bed last night, but when I checked my contacts at iCloud.com, most of the corrections I had made on Sunday night (36 hours prior) had errors again, including one with the country error: United Statesitem5.X-ABADR:us that CincyTriGuy noted in his first post. Note that it took almost 36 hours for some to get corrupted. Which means that whatever is causing this happens over night or in the evening (though I've seen changes in the daytime as well so it may not be happening on a consistent frequency). I may have finished updating the contacts on Sunday so late at night that they missed the cycle, and didn't get hit until it happened again on Monday night. Not 100% on that, but it makes some sense. Sooooo...to recap:

Recap:

1. I had no iOS devices syncing contacts to iCloud.
2. I had no MacBook Pros (or other Mac's) syncing contacts to iCloud.
3. iCloud was operating by itself. . .none of my personal devices were syncing, pushing, etc with iCloud contacts.

Initial Conclusion:

1. This problem isn't being caused by a syncing issue between Macs/iOS devices and iCloud.

• • Something else must be causing the issue. Either iCloud itself is sick, or some other app is still synching data with iCloud.

New Working Theory:

1. Outlook? - I was racking my brain this morning as to how this could still be happening. I can't be sure, but everything still points to Outlook. . .However. . .I don't have any devices running outlook anymore, and when I go to Outlook.Live.com (online Outlook access for mail, contacts, etc), it shows what I would expect it to show, which is nothing (No e-mail, and no Contacts). So I was stumped. Given that none of my devices were running Outlook, could Outlook Online still be talking to iCloud at some level? I remember that when I was running Outlook on my computer, I could log into my account from Outlook.Live.com and see my contacts, calendars, mail, etc. And. . .in order to enable this functionality, I had to set an application-specific-password in iCloud, giving Outlook access to my iCloud data, including my contacts.
2. iCloud Application Specific Passwords: As I was walking this morning. . .this App-specific-password thing occurred to me, and I realized that I never disabled it. So I disabled it in iCloud a few minutes ago. You can disable specific app-specific passwords if you've created them for multiple apps, or you can delete them all. As it turns out, I had two in there (One for Outlook on my phone, and the other for Outlook on my Mac). Here's how to disable app-specific passwords (in case this works and others want to try it):

• • Sign in to appleid.apple.com.
  • In the Sign-In and Security section, click App-Specific Passwords.
  • Click next to a password you want to delete, or Revoke All.

So. . as far as I know. . .Outlook can no longer access my iCloud accounts in any way.

Ok. . .Here's my plan for tonight and tomorrow:

Tonight

1. 1. I will keep all iOS Devices and Mac's from syncing contacts with iCloud.
   2. I will go back and fix a few of the corrupted contacts in my account at iCloud.com.
   3. I will say a little prayer that I have gotten to the root cause before I go to sleep :)

Tomorrow

1. 1. I will keep an eye on my contacts in iCloud.com throughout the day (remember that sometimes it takes hours to see a corruption).
   2. Hopefully, they will be blissfully static!
   3. In any case...I'll report back here!

Have a great evening!

David