iCloud contact labels changed with latest iOS 16 upgrade

Do you have a third party app for calendar or emails or contacts on your Mac, iPhone or iPad. If yes try to remove the iCloud.com account in those applications. It seems that this applications doesn’t support the labels. Now I am using only calendar, contacts and Apple emails and all is good.

I no longer have the Outlook app installed (removed one week ago) and it's still happening. I use gmail as my personal email / calendar and contact platform. My Apple mail app and calendar are syncing to MS Exchange for work and to Gmail for personal. I'm not using iCloud and have stopped backing up my data (about one week ago) and it's still happening.

The problem may be with the gmail plateform for your contacts. I think that third party contact storage are not compliant with apple contact labels. To confirm it could be a good test to deactivate the contacts with yours gmail or other external accounts. In my case. All is fine since my contacts are only on apple iCloud plateforme.

Same here.

The common problem seems to be Outlook, whether it is installed on desktop or installed on iphone. Personally I had it installed on iphone. I just had to delete the google account from Outlook (contacts synchronized on Google) and everything seems to be back to normal. However, among the Outlook mobile menus there is an option called "Focus Profiles" (I think they are the Full Immersion) from which it is possible to delete the synchronization profile by profile depending on what you want to combine. When in doubt, I totally deleted the Google account from Outlook since I had already configured it in Mail. ; )

Well, I wish you luck. I removed (disconnected) my google account from the Outlook app, deleted the Outlook app and reset my phone with Apple support. I ran without Outlook on my freshly-reset iPhone for over a week. This did not fix the problem. It took two days for it to show up again. Whatever is going on is very sneaky and persistent.

IOS 16.1.1 changed group to list. When I only want to text a group and select the first name my contacts revert back to all instead of staying with the list (former group). It is frustrating to have go back into list and select the next contact and then it reverts back to all contacts. This needs to be fixed.

I also have had this problem starting with ios 15. I thought maybe it has to do with my google contacts and my iCloud contacts being synced together but I can seem to resolve a fix even removing google.. I worked hard on my cutesy custom labels and they’re all goon… <sad custom label > which soon will revert to <phone>

Same!

This is ridiculous! I have no Outlook anywhere! Just updated to 16.1.2 awhile ago and it deleted all my custom labels in one Contact back to “phone.” How am I supposed to remember what went with what? Seems to screw up with software updates???

Update: I just went to edit one of my contacts and now all my custom labels are gone!

Outlook likely was the trigger for me, but turning it off didn’t help. Interestingly, the labels are intact at icloud.com, so it seems to have something to do with sync. But turning Contacts sync off & back on on a device didn’t help.

Doesn’t help that you inexplicably need a Mac to see Contacts at iCloud.com.

This defect is sneaky. I went the last three weeks with no problems, then on Friday custom labels came back. This time, only MOBILE and OTHER. It continues to overwrite my data randomly and without predictability.

I have the same symptoms, starting about 2 years ago. I think that does coincide with the installation of Outlook on my phone, so I can have my work calendar. I must have had about 50 custom labels. And gradually I am now down to about 10. I will not be able to recover about half of them, as I don’t know what they used to be. They have all been defaulted to phone.

I have also noticed another slightly different behavior I don’t see posted here. A couple of the numbers that lost their labels, have actually been altered themselves. It seems like the original labels have been appended to the number, along with some other characters. Now that is real data loss.

As much as I like having both my work and personal calendars in one app, so I easily see all appointments together, I deleted the iCloud calendar from Outlook a couple of days ago. So far so good. I’ll report back in another few days.

I only noticed this problem late Summer / early Fall. My previous employer required the use of Microsoft (and forbade the use of the Mail app) on our iPhones and I never had this problem under its employ. (I left there in March 2022.) My current employer does not forbid the use of Mail through an Exchange Server, but I installed Outlook on my phone for convenience.

If any data in my Contacts has been changed, it might be the addition of a +1 in front of the area code. I have a bugaboo about that, and always delete the +1 when entering new phone numbers so that I only have a ten-digit number for a contact. Other than that (and I'm not positive those +1s have been added) I've not noticed any data being overwritten or changed - just the Custom Labels.

I would LOVE to know from Apple where these custom labels are coming from because I've wiped everything - iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, etc. I've never created a custom label. Super-annoying.

Another clue this morning: Currently, I've cleaned up my contacts and there are no custom labels. I received a text (iMessage) from someone and clicked on their image to drop down and call them from the text chat. There were two numbers listed simply as "phone." I went and checked their actual contact card and the correct classifications were there: mobile and work. I have been backing up (and saving forever) my texts. I deleted the text chain and resent a text to the contact, then tried to call them from the drop down and the correct classifications (mobile are work populated from their contact card) were present. I'm wondering if once this custom contact overwrite "virus" gets in once, it just continues to circle. Or maybe it's coming through the iMessage (text) platform. I'm going to stop backing up my texts (iMessages) to iCloud to see if this puts this problem to bed once and for all.

I should admit the few labels I re-entered, after removing iCloud from Outlook calendar, seem to be staying. The address country codes are also remaining uncorrupted.

But this is far from declaring victory. There’s no guarantee it won’t happen again. I wasn’t even syncing contacts, just calendars. And bottom line is that I have lost most of the rest of the labels, which I cannot recover. I also won’t be able to see the two calendars in the same app.

I have some thoughts on this and while I think the issue goes back a few years, I think it still exists today. I have always synced with Outlook on my Win pc with iCloud. I do not have Outlook on my phone or iPad. I really like the custom fields on iOs but I think Outlook can't deal with these custom fields. A few years ago, after continuing to create new contacts (such as husband and wife in one contact) each with custom fields ; RE: Bob's email, Bob's cell, Cathy's email, Cathy's cell. It appears Outlook may attempt to sync this using field labels it thinks are ok and replaces the field names. Or it just loses the contact. I have had many contacts suddenly disappear. I have rebuilt contacts manually over time to adhere to Outlook and splitting the couples into individual contacts. That seems to work ok. So, If you are using MS Outlook, be aware.