One or more contacts randomly gets deleted from iPhone and iCloud

I am having the same issue and I am definitely not accidentally deleting anything. This is really not helpful to understand why after 10 years of using the iPhone this problem suddenly arose. Also these are personal phone numbers of close friends and family members, so the explanation that it is due to people changing jobs and email accounts makes no sense at all.

This has been happening to me for ~6 months now, particularly after I text someone - the contact just gets deleted after the message is sent.

It is extremely frustrating that Apple hasn't sorted a fix yet.

Hello RamezFahmy,

If a contact was deleted, here's some possible ways to restore it:

If you have the contacts on your device synced with iCloud, you can use these steps to try and recover it:

1. On iCloud.com, click  in the toolbar, then click Data Recovery.

2. Click Restore Contacts.

Available versions are listed by the date and time they were archived.

Tip: If you recently deleted a contact either from iCloud.com or your device that you now want to restore, it may take up to 24 hours for the archive to appear.

3. To the right of the version you want to restore, click Restore.

There may be more versions than can be displayed. Scroll to see them all.

Restore contacts stored in iCloud on iCloud.com

If you have your contacts synced to a 3rd party email account, you can try checking directly on your mail providers site to see if they have any options for contact recovery.

If you just have the contacts stored directly on your device, you may be able to recover the contact through a backup. Check in Settings > name at the top > iCloud > iCloud Backup to see the time/day of your last backup. If the backup was done while the contact was still on the device, you can restore the backup to recover it.

Restore from an iCloud backup

if the contact is not synced anywhere and is not available in a backup, then you'll need to manually enter it back into the Contacts app.

Cheers!

I am having the same issue. Have called apple and they haven’t been able to figure it out.

this is a serious issue. Apple needs to fix this issue.

now I need to setup a backup mechanism for my contacts so I don’t lose them because of these issues from iCloud.

Hello RamezFahmy,

Thanks for the info. Since it's randomly a contact here or there, it might be you are inadvertently tapping something to delete them, or an issue with the account they are with.

First, check what contact accounts you have: If your iCloud Contacts, Calendars, or Reminders won’t sync - Apple Support

"If your contacts, calendars, and reminders are in iCloud, then iCloud automatically updates your information. If your information is in a third-party account, like Google or Yahoo, you can change your default account to iCloud. Changing your default account to iCloud won't move your existing information from a third-party service to iCloud."

This is a very common issue, where people do not know they are getting some contacts from a work email account, others from iCloud, and maybe even some from a third-party email account.

When they change their email account, or it needs the password updated, or they leave that job, all those contacts are removed because that old account is not longer syncing with the device.

Once you see where your accounts are coming from, turn them off. See what contacts get removed. You can turn them back on later. Or, go to your individual accounts online, like Gmail, export the contacts to a Vcard, then import them into your default account, or make iCloud your default, and import them all to iCloud: Import or export a vCard in Contacts on iCloud.com - Apple Support

Thanks.

I'm having the same issue since 1.5 years and is really annoying. Normally I loose the 50% of my contacts from Icloud and my phone without doing anything. It happens every week or every two weeks. Yesterday I had 170 contacts and this morning I had only 30. When tried to recover them from Icloud (last backup was March 6 and there were 170 contacts before I did it after entered every single one my self) I only could recover 61. I trired to restore all the backups which were available and all were the same. I don't know what is happening with my icloud but it's very frustrating and time consuming.

Regards.

Did you have any luck in finding out how to stop it deleting? Have you turned off the sync to iCloud? I am having same problem and drives me nuts as keep loosing important contacts randomly. How are you backing up if not to iCloud?

I have had this problem for about three years now (it started after I had accepted sync with the Outlook app on my phone. I turned the Outlook sync off, but the problem persisted.) The issue has been absent for 4-5 months now, but today, I realised that 1539 contacts were deleted. I had to go back a few days to find a "restore" with about the right number of contacts, and I have, of course, lost the contacts I have registered in the past few days.

PLEASE, Apple, fix this!