Sudden disappearance of contacts on iPhone

Does that happen to be when you were in college? I’ve just had this happen for my last 10 years of contacts. For years I’d periodically get these bizarre pops about logging into a Microsoft exchange account. From what I’ve read around the internet somehow all the contacts were very geniously saved to a (now) nonexistent student email account from the time I first added my student email to an iPhone 10 years ago. Even dumber is that it kept somehow saving every contact for at least 6 years after to a non-existent and not-logged-in account and suddenly with one of the recent updates has decided to no longer associate itself with wherever that information was (no doubt) locally stored. Apple really showing what it means to be a trillion dollar company on this one 👍

I called Apple support about this same issue about a month ago and my inquiry was escalated to a supervisor who told me that their engineers are working on a solution and that I'll have to wait for an iOS update to come out. It's still a HUGE issue. I just texted someone in my contacts this morning and instantly his name disappeared and it just showed a phone number. Every day I'm having to create a new contact for people I've known for years. I get calls daily from phone numbers I don't recognize, so I have to let it go to voicemail, then re-create the contact and call them back once I realize they're a friend or biz contact. I've lost everyone's email and mailing addresses as well. FRUSTRATING.

I had the same issue and tried all kinds of things that were reco'd…. Glad I kept my old iphone, because i just airdropped the old contact list into the new phone…. a bit of a PIA on duplicates, but the point made. I at least now I know who is calling me!

Replying to several community members: I have tried everything to restore my contacts. Including speaking for hours with apple advisors on the phone and going to genius bar 4 times. The latte has told me they cannot fix the problem and basically, that they are surprised I keep coming back for a fix. This tells me they are saying: go away and don't come back about this. One of the genius managers told me that when I sign up for iCloud and anything Apple, I am signing up to leave Apple free of any responsibility when they loose data. However, and this is a big however: it would be appropriate for Apple to warn users that this is a continuing problem so that we can move to protect ourselves by getting our data off ICloud. Look at the Apple community complaints and you will see that users are complaining about this loss of contacts for much of August. I think it is connected to upgrading your current OS as Apple advises you to do. Once your contacts are moved to iCloud, they do not remain on your computer No one told me this before I signed up I would have gotten another backup like Verizon. Now, I cannot even find them on my external backups. You cannot use Time Machine to recover your backups either. Also, this kind of contact loss has been going on for years. I went to reddit and found folks complaining about this contact loss as far back as five years ago. Question: what can users do about this? Apple is not going to do anything. I think they lost the data and cannot recover it. That is why they let the data loss go on without warning their users. It is truly outrageous.

Yeah I've had this happen recently not just with an update I can literally take an unknown number save it to contacts see it in there where their name and everything is in a text You know I saved text then when I go back to put an email address or something in it not even 15 minutes later it completely disappears as a contact but the number in the text string is still there literally it's an unknown number again just out of the blue..

Wasn't after I synced my phone or anything like that it literally is there and then it disappears.. It is crazy how bad the contacts have been lately because now you can't block numbers like you used to be able to the one that you did block they're now unblocked even though they're shown as blocked like the blocking and the spam part of the software is glitched really bad it's still there but it doesn't work it's been like this for about three or 4 months now and it is a crazy thing that they think it's a little problem and it's a big problem some of us like you running a business through your phone have a lot of details inside the contacts and it's time consuming and then you save it again And now you have two repeating contacts because then it suddenly appears down the road a few days or a week and now you have redundant contacts but some of the information might be missing...ughh

They're gonna blame our phones and our updates and whatever else can happen but this is a glitch in iOS and no it's not after an update it's not after a phone sync or something with the cloud sometimes it's just flat disappears from the time you open and close your phone...

Happened to me too starting Aug 14. Slept, woke up and suddenly realized hundreds of contacts were missing. The missing contacts are completely random, nothing in common or particular order, the only relation I came to was MOST contacts from 2019 to 2023 and some from 2024.

Tried every possible solution mentioned here and elsewhere, nothing worked. Reached out to apple support, they tried to walk me through every possible solution I already tried, again nothing worked. Now escalated to apple software engineering team.

Hoping to find a solution with Apple soon.

Hi There

I have spent a few hours on phone to Apple support Mon and Tues this week, still no real results and they have indicated ludicrous things that it is linked to a work email I had 5 years ago. It all happened after an upgrade over weekend. I must say I am nervous about any future upgrades now. And when I went to icloud to use the back up before it happened it gave me nothing. So in essence I have been paying icloud storage for nothing. SMSs gone, contacts gone. My last iphone bought in Nov last year. They managed very clunkily I might add for the biggest tech co in the world, to restore from my old iphone but they still have 10months of info they can't get back and they said they would ring me back but haven't. I think it's too hard and they don't have an answer. My problem is this is my business so it REALLY affects me. They speak down to you too at Apple support. It feels like a culture there as I have now spoken to a few people with the same attitude. I just want answers and I don't believe them with what they think has gone on ie the link to the old work email from 5 years ago. Particularly with messages I read here on this community board where others have experienced something similar with no answers. What is particularly alarming is the steps they give to retrieve info, I believe has lost more info. So I noticed I lost the contact names to phone numbers yet the name appeared on an SMS. Then all the SMSs went and the names associated with them. I scroll down the SMSs and it takes me to messages from years ago. Anyway good to know there is a community to talk this through with.

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you were having trouble finding the settings for Contacts as you gave the incorrect path to that. It what you really meant is that you're trying to find the Contacts app, use Spotlight. Put your finger on any Home Screen anywhere but on an icon. Pull down. Start typing "contacts."

It's possible that you don't have it on a Home Scree but rather the it's only in the App Library.

My contacts…about 80% of them—disappeared beginning some time in early August or late July. I see from reading what others are saying and experiencing that this is a continuing problem. I have lost almost an entire 40 year career not to mention personal contacts and other significant contacts and information. I have spent hours on the phone with Apple and four genius bar appointments. Genius bar basically told me 2 days ago that they cannot fix it and that I should stop trying to get them to fix it. The info is gone. Shocking response. I saw that one person on this chain discussion was told that Apple’s engineers are working on this. Has anyone gotten a positive response in terms of working on recovery?

MtnHaven wrote:

I am having the exact same problem. Random contacts are disappearing. Yesterday, I texted two separate individuals in the AM. When I went to text one person again, their name had disappeared and only a phone number was there. In other cases, I found they totally disappeared. So strange and frustrating. I have checked all contacts, icloud, turned contacts in icloud off/on, nothing has restored their names and emails.

Are you by any chance sharing an Apple Account with anyone?

hamptonzeta wrote:

None of these responses have been particularly helpful. This seems like a big enough issue that Apple should be issuing a statement directly and not leaving it up just to the community to hash out.

This is a user-to-user forum. Apple doesn't participate here beyond making sure people obey the rules.

If you want to discuss the matter with Apple, there is a support link at the bottom left of every page of the forums.

I have been told by Apple advisors that once I opted into ICloud, all of my contacts were removed from my computer and moved to ICloud. (I thought they were protected by my backup drive, but if they are not on my computer, backup drive cannot back them up). Apple did not inform me that my contacts would be removed from my computer and put on ICloud. Had been told this, I would not have opted into ICloud. I Cloud is described by Apple in its pitch for the service as a backup drive. It is not a backup drive.

The commentor (name not designated) claim to hamtonzeta who states

that the issue of lost contacts has nothing to do with Apple is questionable. And I agree with hamptonzeta that this is a “big enough issue” that Apple should be issuing a statement directly. If you look at Apple Community, this issue has been a continuing one since August and during previous years. Apple knows this is happening and has happened. Apple did nothing to assist those of us Apple clients who have been going through the horrible consequences of loosing years of contacts. Apple should acknowledge this problem and do something to cure it and prevent it in the future.

Have you found any solutions? I am horrified as I have thousands of contacts missing overnight and a ton of information beyond phone numbers. None of the suggestions have worked - the contacts have just disappeared.

I have had all of my contacts disappear and have done what they say to recover on icloud but still they are not coming back. All contacts were on "on" in the icloud back up. I've restored to yesterday and I know there was a new Apple upgrade so that must be the reason why none of what I have done has worked and I am without my contacts. If I scroll through my messages and look at my id on my phone it's back over 5 years ago. My pic is up to date but the address details etc are very old. I need urgent help with this as this is my business. It's saying I have 673 contacts when I had over 1000 possibly 1500 it was 720 this morning now it's gone down. HELP

Agreed, there doesn't seem to be a common thread in what's missing. I did have a bunch of contacts magically come back but many still

missing. A majority of my regular text communication are missing the associated contact info. I also have since discovered my Outlook Calendar data is missing and none of that has returned.