iPhone 4 Contacts Disappeared After Receiving Text Message

Happened to me Friday night, spent 2 nights to try to restore the contacts from my last backup and upgraded to iOS 6.1.3. (was running 5.1.1). (Don't have enough free space on my notebook was also frustrating because iTunes create an additional backup file when you do restore!, I needed 60GB to hold the 3 different backup files each about 20GB for my 32GB iphone to complete the task)

I think the whole problem of disappearing Contact is related to the Facebook app which caused a disable contact sync action which will delete all contacts in the iphone for whatever reason. It usually happens when the Facebook apps or other messenger apps such as Whatsapp crashes. I recommend not to install the Facebook apps on iOS 5.x if you have WhatsApp also installed. (iOS 6.1.3 has Facebook support buildin whereas 5.x does not. Also iOS 6 added authorization before the apps can access the address database on the iphone which might have prevented this from happening)

Here's what I did to just recover the contact database from my last backup without losing all my latest messages and photos. (I did not sync my contact list to iCloud nor my notebook Outlook which I regretted, luckily I did a full backup a month earlier)

1. Use iBackupBot trial version to export the address database from the last backup.

Library/AddressBook/AddressBook.sqlitedb

Library/AddressBook/AddressBookImages.sqlitedb

2. Move the last backup folder to another location (This one with contact database)

3. Use iTunes to do a full backup of your iphone. This backup will have an empty contact (AddressBook) database

4. Use iBackupBot to import and replace the 2 previous AddressBook database file exported in Step 1 to the current backup

5. Upgrade the iphone to the latest iOS firmware

6. Restore the latest backup back to the iphone

If you buy the full version of iBackupBot, its much simpler, just resync the contacts in the software back to the iphone from the last backup. The trial version does not restore anything you did on the PC to the iphone

In case you have lots of photos and videos and the backup process prevented you from restoring because not enough space in iphone, you can go to the iphone directly on your desktop and delete all photos from the iphone first before you restore.

I have the same phone - now on the OS 6.1.3 and have plenty of memory on the phone. I have two contacts who disappeared from both the phone and from Outlook due to something that threw a wing-ding into the contacts on the phone. These contacts are used across various email accounts that are on the phone via imaps, but both have noted information that has gone missing. This is not just annoying, it is unacceptable. I have to be able to keep contacts synced across multiple emails and particularly there for phone calls and address lookups, etc. In this case, in order to restore these two, it costs me literally 2 hours of aggravation - two hours that in terms of cost of time = 1 new Galaxy or 1 new iPhone 5 - neither of which ought to have any place in my current purchase plans... Apple - wake up and solve this bloody issue before your lose further credibility.

First - correction of the last sentence - '... before you lose credibility.' {least I lose it myself! 😀}

Second, I wanted to note that I was taking advantage of the ability of creating Groups that is available on the iPhone 4S and 5, which in my mind ought not create any problems - the segregation is a great help, but if it means losing contacts I rather go back to ungrouped contacts. It really would be great if somebody from Apple would look in here and add a bit of advice to what is clearly a thorny issue where their expertise could help us make good decisions on how to backup as well as protect ourselves from disappearing contacts. One note previously from ima.charmer indicated that an Apple Rep "unsynced" the contacts from the emails. On the iPhone 4S I don't see an option to execute that suggestion. In any case please keep posting here any additional advice to get us working without the need to leave the world of Apple.

This worked for me. I use gmail and all of my contacts appeared on it. After several hours spent in talking to apple representatives, I was transferred to a head-position holder and he said the problem came from gmail. Sure enough, I went on gmail, clicked the MORE tab, then RESTORE CONTACTS, and restore from a date before the problem occured. As the ocntacts appeared back on my email, they came back to my phone as well.

Just happened to me as well (iPhone 3GS, iOS 5.1.1, using iCloud). As soon as i received a message, the phone rebooted and my contacts were all gone.

Fortunately for me, I just had to re-sync contacts (upper-left button in Contacts) in order to have them back. No deletion on iCloud.

Anyway, now the option for me to save contacts on the iPhone (as a data source) is available again. It had disappeared by the time I had connected the device to iCloud, but now it appeared again, and I can't find a way to disable this.

I have an iPhone 4S, and over the last few days my contacts have been slowly and randomly disappearing.

They appear in my 'recents' but not in my main contacts list. I've synced my phone to my PC and it's made no difference.

Oddly enough, I don't even have the facility to edit what contacts are left.

Can anyone help ?

My wife's iphone just did the same thing. Sorry to pile on; but I updated to OS 6.1.3, didn't help. Sync'd the phone, and as someone pointed out; this was the wrong thing to do. No contacts on the iMac or phone.

I bought all Apple products because I was sick of the Windows mess; spending hours maintaining my technology products. Deja Vu all over again.

When I went into the Contacts I saw it was completely empty.

I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that you received the txt message. In 2010, when this question was asked, there wasn't a solution, unless you had a backup. Without a backup, you'd be screwed.

Later on, several companies appeared, that could recover deleted iPhone contacts etc. Here's an example: Get your lost iPhone Contacts. I don't have personal experience with this, but I do know it's possible. You said, the numbers were still visible somehow? OK, that's weird, but another thing you can do is:

- Call all numbers and explain the situation

It's a big hassle, but hey, it all depends on how important your contacts were to you.

Furthermore, always keep a paper written record of your most important contacts.

This same thing happened to my wife, contacts lost that is. We were getting ready to move her to a new phone after 3 months of trying everything including multiple restores. Her phone eventually started locking into some weird mode so I did a hard reboot by holding power and home button in until the phone reset. After that, I went in to look at the notification services that were running under settings. Lo and behold, she had more than 20 notification services running from programs like "space blaster" and other such apps. Left the notifications on for Facebook, Mail, etc that are fairly robust and supported apps but disabled all the other questionionable ones. I reset the phone using the power button only this time and when the phone came back up all her contacts were back and she could see who sent what text for the past 3 months. Gained another couple months of use out of the phone until she's ready to upgrade again but not sure if we're going to go the iphone route on the upgrade. Cheers and hope this works for you.

i had the same issue but i didnt even have numbers my contact list was completely empty, however i knew the contacts where still there because when i went into recent calls it still had names etc.. what i did to fix this was i went into settings>icloud> and then turned of syncing my contacts to icloud and selected to keep the previously synced contacts on my phone, i went back into contacts and all my contacts had reappeared 🙂 hope this helps

I don't know where you found a Groups button, I don't have one.

As with everyone else posting here I lost my contacts on my IPhone 4S with iOS 5.1.1, this appeared to have happened after I received a text message. I first noticed something was wrong when I went to my favorites and the names were no longer there just phone numbers. Unfortunetly I only had my home, my wife and my mom saved there. Some time back I had changed my backup from my computer to the Cloud but for some reason I have nothing selected to back up there so turning that off on on doesn't do me any good.

I have spent tonight reading through the 14 pages of everyone posting this problem since March and not once has anyone from Apple offered anything to the community for this problem. Makes me thing that maybe Android or Windows may not be that bad. If I am going to have to start over might as well start over with a new phone.

This has happened to me twice. The most recent was a couple minutes ago and I am on iOS 7.0.

What I found happened - not sure why, but Contacts under Settings\Mail,Contacts,Calendars\iCloud and Settings\Mail,Contacts,Calendars\Work had turned off somehow.

I turned them back on and voila! 😁 My contacts re-appeared on all my text messages!

~Nubi1

Thanks, I followed your instructions and easily fixed the problem, plus I got rid of those pesky Facebook contacts, too!

Open "Contacts."

Press "Groups" button.

Select Show "All Contacts" (and unselect "Facebook Contacts")

There you go!

This just happened to me where I received a phone call from a number I know was in my contacts but it had no name. When I was done with the call I checked and all my contacts were gone but my favorites were still intact. I did some researching on here and none of these tips helped. I have an IPhone 4 with the new upgrade of IOS 7.

I figured I better start adding the contacts for the ppl I had in my favorites. By the time I had picked a photo for my 2nd contact, all my contacts were restored. I don't know how or why but that is what worked for me. Good luck!

I just had a similar situation. I had just showed a coworker a picture that came in as an iMessage, put my phone down on my desk. 5 minutes later I received another iMessage from a contact that was saved in my contacts but there was no name associated with the number, hence it displayed the phone number rather than the name. I viewed the main text message screen & there were no names associated with every message, only phone numbers. I went to Contacts & it displayed 'No Results'. I went to my Mail. I do have multiple email accounts setup on my phone including my corporate Exchange account. When I went to that exchange account to view my email, it displayed 'No Mail'. All other pop accounts had mail visible. About 1 minute later, all the email in the exchange acct started to display. I went check Contacts again & all my contacts were back. I did notice that after this happened it cleared the custom ringtones & text tones that I had setup for individual people. Very strange.