iPhone 4 Contacts Disappeared After Receiving Text Message

I had the same problem,

I have a 4s running on IOS7, I'm not happy with the update for many reasons but this was the most concerning! I updated the iOS last week and then updated all my apps yesterday, all my contacts where there even first thing this morning, then at some point they vanished, so I did some searching and came across this thread, with it offering very little help and many complaints undecided to look elsewhere and came across something interesting...

I just read something that said to go into the contacts app icon from your home screen, then click on groups, then click on hide contacts, it then changes to show contacts, click that again they should re appear...

I did all of that and low and behold they all appeared again!!

Good luck! :)

I had just tried what you describe here and it didn't work. That was before I read this. AFTER reading your post I decide to give it another shot and IT WORKED!! IDK if I did something slightly different the 2nd time, but ur description did the trick :)

Please help me out. i lost all my contacts. actually my apps were not working so what i did, i installed new app and then all my apps started working again and then i restarted my phone. after that i was about to call my friend. but when i saw my contact list, it showed no contacts. i really need my contacts back. and yeah there is no backup in my pc. is there any way to get them back...

iPhone suckkkksssss....huh.. going to buy samsung android..

This just happened to me. I haven't backed up in a while and thought all my contacts were lost. I saw that the contacts were turned off in icloud. I went to iCloud.com and signed in, my contacts were all still there. I turned on the contacts button on my phone, and then it asked to merge contacts with iCloud, so I clicked merged and all the contacts reappeared. Hope this helps anyone!

This happened to me today....however not only were my contacts lost, they were replaced with 7 or 8 contacts of people I have never heard of...complete with local phone numbers. I have tried restore, bacup, etc. took it to best buy where i bought it and the geek squad was dumbfounded to the point they ordered me a new phone.

I've just had this happen. I sent a text at 11:28pm (AESDT) last night and Contacts was fine, then at 8:51am all my contacts were gone from my phone (iPhone 4S iOS 7.0.2). I didn't do anything with my phone between those hours other than put it on charge next to me. All my contacts still exist on my iMac and on my account on icloud.com. I've tried turning iCloud off and on again on my phone, and tried refreshing contacts on icloud.com but still no joy. I've tried a couple of tips from this thread but nothing has worked. I'm reluctant to restore from backup as my last one was a month ago. There must be a way to get my iCloud contacts to talk to my phone without having to do a backup. They still exist, they're just not showing up on my phone. Any ideas?

ETA Correction, I'm running previous iOS, updating to 7.0.3 now. Will see if that makes a difference.

Okay, after the software update they were still gone. However, I tried again to switch contacts off and on again over iCloud (in Settings in my phone). This time I was given an option to Keep or Delete contacts so I selected Keep. They turned up. Well, most of them. I had to drag some over from my Mac to my iCloud Contacts using Address Book. Those contacts haven't synched to my phone yet.

If it helps anyone, I had to go into icloud and turn off contacts, reboot the phone, then go back into icloud and turn them on before this worked for me. This thread was very helpful, and I thank you all.

Same thing happened here. I held down the on/off and the home buttons for a soft boot but it didn't help. Oddly, as soon as I reenntered a phone number back into contacts my entire contact list magically reappeared. Don't know if it's a fluke or what but the list is back.

I upgraded this morning had no problems before with my 4s then after it restart NO contacts tried an older backup but they keep going ? Not downloaded any new apps lately so not sure it is a virus more like the people doing the new software did not try it on all phones. I don't use faceboot at all dont even have an account so it is not that. I had to put the contacts back manuallly probably losing a few so now will get calls from i don't know who and message that i have to ask "who are you"

Oh thank you apple

I had the same problem. I hadn't backed up my phone in a while and so I was worried I would lose a lot of recent data. However I did this and somehow it helped.

I went to a recent call and clicked on a number that was there. I then went to add the number to my contact last. I first tired to add to an existing contact and I noticed that a lot of my contacts were there but not all. The contact I was trying to add, was not there, so I added new contact. After doing that, all of my contacts started coming back one by one.

I hope this is not confusing and that every single one of you get your contacts back. Its a scary and frustrating problem.

So oddly after trying to find out what makes your contacts appear then disappear, I still have no luck. However they did disappear and come back again. I basically did the iCloud backup, power cycled my phone, went to my contact list and then back to my text messages and all the contacts appeared.

I swear this is very odd and if apple really cares about it's customers, they should try a little more quickly to resolve this. I'm getting update notifications which seem to be doing more harm than good. Please fix this!!

This has been happening to me more and more frequently - PLUS - it erases the contact from my yahoo contacts as well!!! I've randomly lost contacts on my phone and in my mail contacts that I've had since before iPhone was a twinkle in Steve Jobs eye. Can't do this much longer, Might have to go Galaxy if this continues. There must be a fix.

People on this thread are confusing different issues.

Some people are seeing all their contacts go away but can usually get them back by restarting the phone and/or disabling then re-enabling iCloud contacts.

The bigger problem, that I've been seeing for months now, is that the phone is deleting contacts at random. When it happens it also gets deleted from any service you're syncing too which makes recovering the info rather difficult. Today, I saw two contacts that were missing but I was able to recover them by having Google restore my contacts from an hour previous. Then disabled and re-enabled Google contacts on the phone to get things back on the phone.

One thing I've noticed is that it deletes contacts that were recently seen or used. For me that means my girlfriend's contact info disappears at least five times a week. She didn't believe me when I said it was the phone but - Surprise! - now her phone is doing it too.

I've been tempted to switch to an Android phone for some time now but this is really making me want to switch ASAP. Having to add contacts over and over and over again is getting old.

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.