You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Contact and Userid Images Disappearing

So I have seen some have experienced this issue already with no solution. I am seeing contact images disappear with a random string being added at the end of phone numbers or in the country field that starts with X-IMAGEHASH or X-ABADR. It also changes any numbers marked as "Mobile" to "Phone". It messes up using Siri to make calls or just trying to call someone with an impacted record because often it adds the string to the end of their number. I should add this can occur even if there is no image associated with the contact but interestingly it seems to be the same contacts every time despite there being no real commonality between them. A restore of contacts back to a time before this began happening had no impact. The next day the same thing occurred. To make things even more complicated my Userid picture on the Mac which references Photos also disappears at the same time. It seems to have something to do with anything that references Photos on the iCloud for the most part but why I could not tell you. Nothing (no third party apps) has access to my contacts or photos. It happens on all devices - iPad, iPhone, Mac M1 Max, Watch.

Posted on Jul 12, 2022 3:06 PM

Similar questions

119 replies

Jul 26, 2022 5:27 AM in response to jexpo20

jexpo20 wrote:

Very disappointing. I updated everything Sun night, and re-installed Outlook yesterday. As of right now, everything is good, but waiting for the “blow up” to happen. Tried Mailspring, and hated it. I could probably continue on just using the Apple email client, but cant stand the fact that emails get “read” just by clicking on them and previewing. Outlook has so much email/calendar functionality and the look is good. Cant believe this cant be fixed…..As I stated, waiting on the “bomb” to drop in contacts sometime today.

Are we saying this is outlook driven? I have outlook at my phone, but not my mac.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Jul 26, 2022 5:37 AM in response to Netnemesis

I didn’t mention Outlook. Just the fact that I had OneDrive issues after updating to 12.5 MacOS and I had to nuke it at the same time as the update. They were the only things I did and the issue went away.

Jul 26, 2022 5:42 AM in response to Netnemesis

forgive my ignorance, as frustration with the situation is probably clouding my mind lol

I have outlook/one drive on my phone, but neither on my mac. The problem only started when I signed into icloud on my mac (laptop just came in a week ago, started soon as it did). I am having the exact same issue as you it seems, but with neither outlook or onedrive on my computer, so it appears to have no correlation to the MS services?

Or i cam completely misunderstanding , in which case i apologize. I would nuke any app I could at this point to resolve this. I hate having missing contact photos (as silly as that seems). Especially with mine being one and i see it everytime i wake my computer (as empty account image).

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Jul 26, 2022 5:58 AM in response to scott.w.uhl

All I can share is my experience in the hope it helps others. My issues didn’t really seem to originate from my devices but I cannot be 100% certain of that. All I know is that in one day there was a MacOS update, a MS office update and after that I had a OneDrive issue that necessitated a total wipe and re install of OneDrive. After that my issues went away. Which of those steps resolved it I do not know. Best I can offer.

Jul 26, 2022 6:23 AM in response to Netnemesis

ah i gotcha.

Yeah its weird. On my end contact changes sync immediately. If i create a new contact/change one it instantly syncs across all devices fine. And its fine the next day. However if i change the contact image, it initially shows updated across all devices, but it resets the image the next day. Not to previous image, but to nothing.

zngve

Level 1

8 points

Jul 27, 2022 9:05 AM in response to scott.w.uhl

Based on this discussion, I just closed my Outlook app on the Mac (still using Outlook on phone and iPad). Been more or less 48 hours now and my iCloud profile picture is still there. Started using the Apple mail and calendar on the Mac.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Jul 27, 2022 1:40 PM in response to zngve

Timeline wise I am starting to see this has happened to most in just the last few weeks like it did to me. Obviously something happened then to cause it and it seems the only thing we may have in common is MS Office. I use MS Teams, MS Onedrive as well along with Signal and Messages frequently. Of all of that along with 12.5 MS Office updated the same day, MS Teams not long after as did Signal and I had OneDrive issues with only 1 account after the 12.5/MS update so I blatted it completely (just deleting it didn't work) and started it all over again and I am fine since. If the rest of you can find a common cause then maybe you can find the solution. Also the HASH string it puts in records seems to indicate something is accessing Contacts when it happens because you might notice if you have set a contact record up with a picture, it changes some item types from "mobile" to "phone" as well. At first I looked for things that accessed Contacts like Signal - try the same - disable anything that accesses contacts for a while and try that. Other than that I dont know why I am working now over the rest of you.

Jul 27, 2022 1:45 PM in response to Netnemesis

i am disabling all apps that have access to contacts now as well, will report what i find.

I dont know if its mac driven or not, it just started when i got my mac in, no issues prior. It could be pure coincidence that there was MS updates around the same time (do you have the date when those were by chance?), and maybe that is clouding my judgement since i only run MS apps on my iphone/ipad

Jul 27, 2022 2:03 PM in response to Netnemesis

right but i never had any MS stuff on the Mac. My Mac just came in the mail the other week, 0 installs of outlook/onedrive/teams/etc. Unless there were updates on the MS stuff across all devices

(just trying to play devils advocate and not narrow it down prematurely if so)

Jul 28, 2022 6:22 AM in response to Netnemesis

any contact ive added profile to since getting my Mac the other week continues to lose the profile picture. I have disconnected ALL apps from accessing contacts on any device, removed microsoft apps across the board, and nothing.

Really, really wish Apple would chime in and help here. I 100% believe there is something wrong on the Mac OS side driving this. And its really driving me crazy.

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Jul 28, 2022 1:03 PM in response to scott.w.uhl

Sorry all - then I am at a loss as to why my started working after all the updates. I haven't had an issue since and I cant see any commonality between us. The only thing is I had a case open with Apple which went up a level or 2 - unless they did something and didn't tell me?

Aug 1, 2022 9:43 PM in response to Netnemesis

same problem here on iPhone13, MBP 16 2021, Mini M1 and online accessing Contacts online in Safari. All devices using the latest OS available. Behaviour since a couple of days. Had Signal installed but deleted it a couple of weeks ago, OneDrive deleted. IMAGEHASH etc message systematically added in 1 or more fields of a record, weird... Where is this coming from?

Spoke to Apple, promised to escalate and they will ring back in 48hrs - hopefully sorted soon as I rely heavily on those icon/images in contacts! Was great to read your experiences on here and to know not something just weird on my devices but you having exactly same issues some probably an iCloud sync corruption issues.

Fingers crossed, he!?

Netnemesis Author

Level 1

17 points

Aug 4, 2022 5:42 AM in response to Netnemesis

Well I spoke too soon. I updated some contracts today and it all went pear shaped again. Plan to restore contacts to before changes and the log all devices out of the iCloud and back in again in the morning.

Kamiezak

Level 1

8 points

Aug 4, 2022 9:02 AM in response to ChrisMacke

Same here as ChrisMacke I am about three days without incident and now going from daily issues. Fingers crossed!

Edit: I also didn't do anything else after removing OneDrive and Outlook from everything and the issue still happening it just stopped after a few days.

Kamiezak

Level 1

8 points

Aug 4, 2022 9:15 AM in response to scott.w.uhl

I haven't updated any since the problem first started happening; one thing I did notice was if I was messaging with a contact that had their picture shared in iMessage, it would ask me to update their info even though it was up to date already (the picture in the header matched what was in the update window) and then the issue was happening immediately after I saw this.

I wasn't sure if this was the trigger causing it or if it had lost the information, but the iMessage thread hadn't lost it yet; the timing was odd on it.

Contact and Userid Images Disappearing