Missing contacts with iPhone iOS 17 update

I’ve had the 13 Pro about 1 1/2 years and my sim card went bad in Sept! I couldn’t use the phone at all only iMessage! I had to go to Verizon to get a new one installed but what the heck if I were out of the country? I would have been up the creek! No one has any idea why it happened either! My Apple days may be coming to an end!

A restore with NO from backup is not DONE for me ... to many apps and other stuff related to work (MFA) that should be reinitiated etc ... I don't have the time for that!

Apple should have a fix ready. I have logged multiple cases - apple support called me to walk through everything and also said factory reset, but can not guarantee this will work.

I'm having the same problem. I've tried soft resets, deleted and recreated my Exchange account. Email and calendar syncing fine but cannot see contacts at all - those from iCloud and Exchange both missing (before I started this, I could see the summary number of each list of Contacts but couldn't access any of them - now I get 0 contacts for each list).

Can you confirm I need to do a delete / reset and restore from an iCloud backup, but select an older backup to restore from? Problem is that this happened when I upgraded to ios 17 which was several days ago (maybe a week or longer). Backups are likely to have been made since ios 17.

Help anyone? Thanks

Thanks for your suggestion - I had already switched off and on iCloud sync on Contacts and have just done it again but sadly not fixed. May hsvevtry try restoring my phone from backup in a few days when I have time but others suggest restoring the phone but not the backup. That’s depressing it the only solution :-(

My husband is having the same problem. He just switched from an Android phone to 14 Plus a few months ago and hadn't created an iCloud set up yet. Now his contacts are gone because they were not backed up to the cloud. 17.1.2 was what caused the problem, so it is not the fix in this case. I fear everything is lost forever. This is ridiculous, Apple.

It's December 15 and I have tried restoring 3x from icloud; keep getting contact list that is like 12 years old, rather than current one that was eliminated. So frustrating as unable to mail packages and cards or call as there's no current names, addresses, phone numbers.

I spent over an hour with apple care to try and get my contacts back to no avail. They actually said to contact yahoo as I had an old yahoo contact file. The contacts that disappeared were those entered in not my phone over the past year. Big blunder indeed.

I've only lost SOME contacts - people I text with regularly started showing up as phone numbers only - then when I tried to check the Contact info, they were GONE! I didn't get to my iCloud backups in time - they only keep 10 in archive, so they were all useless. I don't even know how many contacts I've lost and even the ones I was able to identify from recent texts, I've lost things like email and address info. HORRIBLE experience! Scary and frustrating to try and rebuild from scratch. And why just some of them? I am definitely going to be much better about backing up my phone locally more often. And much less trustful of Apple...

Agreed. This also isn't the first time it's happened. Seems weird to me they didn't fix it from when this question was posted in September, to December, when my 17 update was available...

I can't type anyone's name to text, I have to find their number redo the contact. Problem is, it shows IN EVERY text string, unless I delete and start over. So If I try and text person 1 and end up re-doing their contact to show up with their name -- but then I have a thread with person 1 and 2, person 1 only shows up as the number AGAIN in that thread. When I click on the info, it shows their proper contact.

Same thing happened to me after the update. All contacts are now only on iCloud, but some of them are missing entirely! I did a hard reset, which corrected the missing names in text messages, but did not put my contacts back on my phone. They are still only on iCloud and the one contact I was looking for yesterday is still missing. I use this phone for work and now some of my professional contacts are missing. I won't know how many more are missing until I try to contact them. This is huge and Apple needs to fix it ASAP!

So... what is happening on my phone is that the phone app no longer has the contacts button and no longer stores the contacts within the phone app. However I have a contacts app where all my contacts are stored. This is a catastrophic event to put it in apple terms.

I'm having this same problem!! I now have texts from phone numbers with no contact info--even though many are very old contacts that have withstood every iPhone I've owned. Apple has been telling me it's a google or email problem but I'm not buying it. Even "mom" and "dad" were gone...ummm, Apple, they were in my life long before you or any email provider.

And, 17.3 did not fix it either. This just started in the last week or so. I'm at my wit's end.

i lost most of my contacts. my dad's phone number is just a number without his contact information or name. many others are similar. i have to scroll through text messages to find my friend's numbers or scroll up a thread to figure out who sent me a message. this is awful!

Earlier today, I discovered that almost 80% of my contacts have disappeared from my device. Despite attempting various troubleshooting steps, such as toggling the contacts off and on, signing out and back into my account, and even logging into iCloud via my MacBook, I have been unable to recover any lost contacts.

This sudden disappearance occurred within a few hours, as everything was functioning normally before this unexpected event. Given the critical nature of these personal and professional contacts, this situation has become nothing short of a nightmare for me.

I seek your urgent assistance in resolving this issue as soon as possible. I would greatly appreciate any guidance or support you can provide to help recover my contacts.

Thank you very much for your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Kareem

Apple wants $1200 from each of us for their newest phone, but my 14 can't keep my phone numbers? Isn't a phone number the most important part of using a phone? My 14 does all sorts of "magical" stuff, but it won't store a phone number?? REALLY?? BEST?? designers in the business and they can't handle the basics? Maybe we all need to move to someone else? I'm still collecting contacts from the few friends whose numbers I have memorized but if you're my friend and I don't call, maybe ask Apple how to reach me.