iCloud contact labels changed with latest iOS 16 upgrade

I don’t have a single contact in MSOutlook or Gmail and therefore no custom field information in those platforms to sync back and override those in Apple Contacts. It’s odd to me that the custom fields come in ALL CAPS. And when this problem randomly appears it comes in various forms - sometimes just two custom labels, sometimes three and not always the same custom label field. Baffling.

I think that is also a connected issue. Seems like iOS has its own problem as well, acting similarly. I’ve been having issues for years likely caused by me using custom fields on iOS in which Outlook can’t deal with. Or tries to make a substitute. So I stopped using custom labels. My wife is having issues in which when she texts it is choosing a landline # instead of mobile when both appear in one contact and are properly labeled. This appears may be the iOS issue. She did have a iOS custom field issue the other day. She only has a few contacts with it. It was fixed by renaming the custom field back to something standardized. But iOS sending a text to the landline # seems like a iOS issue unless Outlook messed with the standardized field. I’m reading that may be the case in this thread and others. Apple and MS have stopped working well together a several years ago. I identified a calendar problem with repeating events. Apple does it one way and MS Outlook does it a different way. Only sometimes. For WEEKS I talked with upper level people in both companies. A MS upper level tech supervisor finally mentioned the two companies are not sharing teams any longer. Hope this gets fixed soon. Also, I do not have Outlook on my iPhone. I only have it on a Win 10&11 pc. Re: calendar refreshing. I’m finding I have to press the blue refresh button in Outlook app menu bar on the pc version yo force an update. Ordinarily, the data change would flow without doing that in less than 10 seconds. Messy stuff…

Hello,

so on friday i removed the icloud account from outllok and fixed all the broken contacts and everything was fine until last night. this morning I found out that the contacts labels are being rewritten again!! I called Apple support again and they told me that they don't have a solution for me at this time and that they are passing the problem on to engineers.

I am seeing a similar issue since maybe two weeks. Labels in my contacts seem to change randomly from "Mobil" (german label) to "MOBILE" or from "Arbeit" to "WORK" and similar. I see this effect for all kind of phone numbers, mail addresses and postal addresses. During last days I fixed the issue several times and at point in time it reverts back. I don't know when it happens. I am synchronizing one iPhone, one iPad, one MacBook Pro and a Samsung S10 to a Google Workspace account. During correcting this issue, I changed some information in the contacts. I checked all devices afterwards and on all devices there were current contact information. When it reverts back to "MOBILE","WORK"... it changes are also reverted. So for I example if I removed a postal address it is back again with the label change. I am not using Outlook in any kind. This happens for my Google Workspace contacts. I am not using iCloud Contacts. I have only one iCloud contact and it is me. It does not always happen to all accounts. Sometimes it is only few contacts, sometimes almost all.

Currently I have deactivated most of the devices for sync and only synchronize my iPhone contacts. I am excited what is going to happen in the next days...

I've had the same issue of custom phone labels -- even standard ones like "mobile" and "iPhone" -- reverting to "phone" repeatedly since mid-December. Usually overnight. I have two MBPs, an iPhone and iPad and the only Internet Account with Contacts turned on is iCloud. I use Outlook for iOS and MacOS and have deleted the iCloud accounts to no avail.

In addition to the custom labels wiped out, I'm also now getting duplicate phone numbers syncing across devices. So contact cards won't sync/update other contacts but rather append existing cards with duplicate data. I have some contacts with 10+ address entries where they normally would just have work and home addresses; the rest are duplicates.

I've spoken with Apple Support, even provided logs, and I've heard nothing for at least a week. I'm contemplating moving my contacts to Google but I have 2300-plus and that is going to be a chore. Hopefully Apple's engineers get it together. I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention at-large (via MacRumors, etc.).

I’ve cleaned up my contacts and eliminated Custom Labels like MOBILE and WORK. I was texting a contact today in iMessage who has two phone numbers in Contacts: iPhone and work. I was texting her and decide to call, so I clicked on her contact picture and clicked the telephone graphic. What popped up was her two phone numbers, both labeled as “phone.” This is what labels usually return to after being overwritten by Custom Label and cleared/reverted. I went to quickly check to see if the Custom Labels had come back, but no. I’m wondering if somehow the polluted data is cycling through the 30day back up of my iMessages, which is about the only thing I’m now backing up to iCloud. I tried deleting the text and rebooting my phone, but accessing her phone numbers through iMessage in this way still showed different labels than what’s actually in her Contact card. Maybe this is a clue? I’m going to turn off backing up my texts to iCloud to and delete her texts to see if this fixes the problem. Apple, there is definitely a glitch in your system, please help us.

It seems for me that disabling iCould contacts sync did fix it for me. However I'm not really using iCloud contacts. The only contact that I have, is me. All other contacts are Google contacts in my address book. So the question in this case is, why does iCloud contacts sync destroy my Google contacts. Should be answered by Apple...

Couple of comments: I don't think "mobile" would/should be considered a "custom field". I think custom fields would be, ie., "Bob's mobile" and "Cathy's mobile" for when you had a couple in one record. I'm having the same problem as you and many others. I am seeing "iPhone" as a label and I don't think I created that as a Custom field...possibly I did. I'm also having Outlook issues regarding some things and I don't have enough data to determine if it is an issue with MS or if it is part of Outlook syncing. I talked with Apple today and all they were able to find was yes, they are working on it.

I would guess no one else here thinks “mobile” should be a custom label/field, either. But something somewhere is overwriting standard Apple field labels like phone, mobile, home, work, etc. as MOBILE, HOME, WORK, etc. but re-mapping them so original data is lost. Then, once you delete custom labels it re-maps them back to something it wasn’t before. E.G.: mobile becomes WORK and then phone. Or home (email) becomes HOME and then email. And almost never the same way each time.

Feel your pain! This sucks. And as you mention it is not breaking in the same manner all of the time. Its like someone is trying to fix code in a live environment and keeps re-coding testing and looking for the correct solution!! Very bizarre! Yes, I want it fixed fast as well. It has been going on since iOS 16 came out. That is like almost 4 months! With no solution! Very "un-Apple-like. Not only am I having this problem but I am having similar problems with Outlook syncing with iCloud. This has been a problem for a few years. However, lately, its doing different stuff as well. Almost every calendar item is duplicated in the past 4-5 months and cant be deleted. And one of my favorites was the way MS and Apple handle repeating calendar events differently. Complete data quality collapse. I found this 18 months ago and still not fixed. MS blames Apple and Apple blames MS. Come on people, do the right thing and get together to fix this stuff. Still point fingers at each other. We should be past that junk soooo much by 2023...<sigh>

I have read a lot of these posts and there are several in which users stopped using iCloud for syncing and relied on Google contacts and possibly other contact tools and the contacts remained stable and unchanged after the move. I am not entirely convinced MS Office (whether 365 or newer Outlook app) is without some level of blame in this situation. I have had numerous issues going back a year or two in which the two have displayed syncing problems with repeating calendar events as well as contacts, in which the user created a custom, personalized field to store phone #'s in which Outlook did not know how to handle the Apple latitude of creating custom fields. That being said, this whole iCloud contact mess may have come out of an effort to work around Outlook contact syncing with Apple iPhone custom fields. Or Apple just wrecked it and still doesn't know how to fix it. It has been going on since iOS 16 was released.

However, there are many posts here in which the users have indicated they do not use Outlook. Which clearly points to an Apple problem.

I removed iCloud account from Outlook and it appears to have stopped the changes. However, is there any way to restore previous contacts so you have the proper home, work, mobile phone assignments? Thanks!

Sadly, it appears Outlook on iOS is not causing the problem for me. I deleted my iCloud account from Outlook on my iPhone and iPad, and I'm still losing labels in my contact cards.

I wonder if Outlook for MacOS is also causing trouble?

As predicted and described above, the data overwrite has come back. Looks like my last post was 16-JAN-2023 and it looks like the last screenshot I took of the problem was 06-JAN-2023. Just today (I check regularly) MOBILE and HOME came back - two months since the last time it happened. For those of you still plagued by this issue, this marks the longest period of "normal" operation since I first noticed the problem. I've installed no new apps nor made any changes to my phone over the last two months. This time, only "MOBILE" and "HOME" are new CUSTOM LABELS; two months ago, it was both of those, plus "OTHER." It's never consistent.

I am currently running 16.1.2.