I am missing hundreds of contacts....how to I restore contacts from an older time when all my contacts were there?

I just noticed this afternoon that many of my iphone contacts are missing...some that I used this morning

Posted on Sep 15, 2023 2:08 PM

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Posted on Sep 15, 2023 5:58 PM

There are a couple of possibilities. Contacts sync to email accounts. So if you have an iCloud email, a gmail account, a Yahoo account, a business Exchange account, etc, contacts might be associated with each account. If you have deleted an email account or lost communication with the email server for it you might lose the contact associated with the account.


If you have iOS 16 when you open contacts you can tap on Lists at the top and it will list all of the email servers that you sync your contacts to. Unfortunately, this feature is not available in earlier versions of iOS, but if you go to settings/Contacts/Accounts you can see which accounts sync to your phone.


If all of your contacts are associated with iCloud you can revert to an earlier contact list. See→iCloud: Restore contacts, calendars, and more in iCloud Settings

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Question marked as Best reply

Sep 15, 2023 5:58 PM in response to YourAcuraGuy

There are a couple of possibilities. Contacts sync to email accounts. So if you have an iCloud email, a gmail account, a Yahoo account, a business Exchange account, etc, contacts might be associated with each account. If you have deleted an email account or lost communication with the email server for it you might lose the contact associated with the account.


If you have iOS 16 when you open contacts you can tap on Lists at the top and it will list all of the email servers that you sync your contacts to. Unfortunately, this feature is not available in earlier versions of iOS, but if you go to settings/Contacts/Accounts you can see which accounts sync to your phone.


If all of your contacts are associated with iCloud you can revert to an earlier contact list. See→iCloud: Restore contacts, calendars, and more in iCloud Settings

I am missing hundreds of contacts....how to I restore contacts from an older time when all my contacts were there?

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