How do I retrieve my lost contacts?

Those contacts that you lost were associated with the Hotmail email address, as you already know. Deletion of the Hotmail account removed the contacts as well. The Good News is that adding the Hotmail account back to the iPhone should bring back all the contacts with it.

Double check the following on your iPhone:

Open Settings ➡️ Contacts ➡️ Accounts ➡️ Hotmail ➡️ Contacts: Ensure that this switch is set to ON.

Axel F.

Before you do that, you can check on iCloud to see whether those contacts exist there. See Below:

Use iCloud.com to restore and recover iCloud information

You can use iCloud.com on a computer to recover recently deleted files or restore an earlier version of information that was automatically archived in iCloud.

Review the following:

• Calendar: Restore your calendars and events on iCloud.com
• 👉Contacts: Restore contacts stored in iCloud on iCloud.com 👈
• iCloud Drive, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote: Recover deleted files on iCloud.com
• iCloud Photos: Delete and recover photos and videos on iCloud.com
• Mail: Delete email in Mail on iCloud.com
• Notes: Delete and recover notes on iCloud.com
• Reminders: Restore your reminders on iCloud.com
• Safari bookmarks and Reading List: Restore your Safari bookmarks and Reading List on iCloud.com

Axel F.

If you did not see the contacts on 👉 www.icloud.com , then those contacts are not on iCloud. One other place to check is by going to 👉 www.outlook.com and then signing in using your Hotmail credentials. This will work best if you use a computer. Once you are in your hotmail account on the web, then check to see what you see the contacts in the Contacts section. If there, then on your iPhone, sign out of the Hotmail account and then sign back in again to see whether that imports all the contacts. If there are no Contacts in the Hotmail web account, then I am afraid there is no place left to recover these from.

Axel F.