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iPhone 4 Contacts Disappeared After Receiving Text Message

This morning when I woke up to a text message it showed the full name. Literally just about an hour later I received another message from the same person, but it only showed the phone number. When I went into the Contacts I saw it was completely empty. All of my favorites and recent calls are there but they're just the phone numbers, no names or anything else. How did this happen? I didn't change anything and I have no idea what to do.

iPhone 4, iOS 4

Posted on Nov 8, 2010 6:34 PM

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243 replies

Apr 28, 2011 7:37 PM in response to amaule05

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..

May 12, 2011 10:04 AM in response to amaule05

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!

Jun 6, 2011 11:33 AM in response to amaule05

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

Jun 6, 2011 1:22 PM in response to amaule05

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.

Jun 10, 2011 6:51 PM in response to amaule05

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?

iPhone 4 Contacts Disappeared After Receiving Text Message

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