iPhone 4 Contacts Disappeared After Receiving Text Message

This is an iCloud problem. Periodically, my whole list of contacts just disappears. There seems to be no one single thing that triggers it. The contacts do seem to remain in memory. This is what I do to restore the list. Since I am not using iCloud, it is normally disabled. Go to settings, general, iCloud. Select contacts, and turn it on. Then, turn it off again, and when system gives you a choice, select keep contacts on iPad. You should now be able to access your lost contacts. This has happened three times in the last couple of months, and each time I was able to recover the contact list without restoring from my desktop computer.

Same here! I too have an iPhone 4S running on 5.1.1 which I never upgraded – lost all my contacts after turning phone off/on. Strange though that they still show up with names and all in the left-swipe search function! But when going back to contacts, text messages, or caller list or > NOTHING!

Seems countless users are experiencing this nuisance > the view counts in the respective forums are constantly going up (see also this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4776038?start=0&tstart=0)

Tried contacting Apple Support online, but all they told me is that my Apple Care Protection Plan has expired... go figure!

Very helpful Wordpress Link. Also I went through the other thread on similar subject and wrote about similar conclusions -

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4776038?answerId=21769600022#21769600022

pdroth wrote:

Not having same problem, but rememer reading about this a while ago. Dug up the article - hope it helps someone out:

http://www.seangw.com/wordpress/2011/10/ios-5-upgrade-lost-my-contacts/

LRud

Go to Settings; then go to mail, contacts, calenders; then go to wherever your contacts are (iCloud is where mine are), turn off contacts, then select keep on phone; then wait a second, turn it back on and select merge. Your contacts should be back! Hope this helped!

Thank you so much! It worked. I turned off iCloud as soon as the contacts reappeared so this won't happen again!

Thank you!!! This worked perfectly for me. All my contacts are back.

Re:

TonyW61

Currently Being Moderated

Re: iPhone 4 Contacts Disappeared After Receiving Text Message

22-Jan-2014 5:58 PM (in response to amaule05)

I have found a solution - at last!!!!!!

I tried EVERYTHING from this forum and nothing worked. Then I found another apple user site. They had a suggestion form replacing names one at a time, but mysteriously, you do it once and then everything comes back.

Here's what you do:

- go to messages

- start creating a message by typing in the name of your proposed recipient. Here's the first odd thing; although your address good is largely gone, it will still prompt with a name if you've sent them a message previously.

- then tap on the "i" button in the circle at the end of the line where the suggested name appears

- save the name as a new contact

- and then...hey presto, all your contacts reappear. Utterly weird, but it worked.

Shows how crap and full of bugs the whole thing is, and how singularly unhelpful apple were but never mind.

My contacts just disappeared on me today as well.

Happened completely at random - I went into the address book, saw a contact up that I recently edited (added an email address), then it shut down.

When I went back into the contacts app, it was completely empty - I couldn't even access my company's exchange list (the GAL).

I powercycled and was able to access the GAL after that but the 'contacts from my mac' were still gone.

Syncing back with iTunes restored them but now the profile pics are mixed up. I'm going to try syncing again (overwriting the previous info) and see what happens..

Same here. Today I received a text message and suddenly I no longer see the name of the person but his phone number. At first I thought, hm, I must have done something weird. Then I discovered all of my contacts had disappeared. I thought, maybe something went wrong while synchronizing yesterday- but realized that wasn't possible as I had still had all of my contacts this morning, I sent text messages this morning as well. So, what's going on? Has anyone gotten anywhere with this?

Luckily I just synchronize my osx address book with my phone, so after a sync the problem was gone, but if this keeps happening it will be a serious problem. If I've added a contact on my phone during the day, I won't be able to recover it, which means this phone is no longer a reliable work phone for me. Since the first post in here is from november, I'm not very hopeful. I need a reliable product!

I'm having a similar problem, I do use Mobile Me however I'm not losing existing contacts, only new ones I enter directly to my iPhone 4, and not all of them just the odd one here and there, it will be in my contacts one minute and then after either a text message or a call the contact disappears leaving just the number in it's place. However if I enter the number via Mobile Me on my PC, well so far so good. This is highly frustrating as I'm rarely near my PC and do everything on my iPhone. Has anyone come across a resolve?

Many Thanks

Sarah

I take it back, I've just checked Mobile Me on my PC and the new contacts I entered there have now disappeared, please Apple can you sort this out ASAP, it really is not acceptable, I really dont want to have to revisit the 90's by carrying a bulky address book and pen around in my handbag!!

Many Thanks

Sarah

Today must be a bad day for iPhone contacts. I opened the phone icon, then contacts, saw the last one I had used yesterday, and then all my contacts disappeared. Only my phone number appears at the top. When I open the Contacts icon my phone number does not appear, and no contacts. Names are missing from phone numbers in Favorites and Recents inside of Phone. When it first happened names briefly flickered (in both Phone/Contacts and in Contacts), then went blank.

Experiencing the same thing. My contacts are there one time and then disappear with them reappearing after a short while. It takes about 10 minutes for all 4000 of my contacts to repopulate. This has happened at least 10 times that I know of. I do not use MobileMe, just sync OTA with GMail. This is frustrating. Does anyone have any ideas as to what caused this or what can be done to keep it from happening? The trouble is that it uses data each time it pushes my contacts, which is data from my plan I could use for other things. Thoughts?

To Apple CEO Steve,

Sir as you know that this is a very ongoing issue with IPhone & your team has not yet done anything to resolve this issue, please look into this mater ASAP. Sir Apple say’s to compete with BlackBerry in cooperate world but this is a very serious issue which Apple has to look into this first, as you know, contacts are the most important part of the cooperate world.

We in our small business were planning to change our entire Blackberry with IPhones but now have to wait & see. 😕

From your valued customer.

This is most strange. My phone (3gs) just lost all of my contact names during a sync after downloading the pre lion system update. Everyone's (383) phone number is there but their names have just magically disappeared. What is going on. I did not download anything or do anything but just use the phone as a phone. Wow!! How does one fix this. Obviously the numbers are in there but the names just disappeared.

I used the textnow app this morning then later when I got a call there was no name or ringtone so I checked my contacts and sure enough they were all gone! Any fixes yet? Has anyone contacted apple or gotten a response from apple?