My iPad contacts disappeared after adding a contact

This just happened to me tonight.

Last night I spent two hours entering our team athelete's contact information to the contacts list. About five of them were synced to my Google Contacts list, out of approximately fifteen to twenty in the list. In total, I had approximately 50 contacts in my iPad before using iTunes to sync my addressbooks (I also just upgraded my iOS on a new iPad 2). Sadly, not all of my team contact information was synched with Google Contacts.

Tonight, as I deleted a contact, the screen flickered and Contacts closed, and I was returned to the home screen.

Nothing to date has worked, and I'd really rather have my original iPad contacts back (they're in there *somewhere*, because when I added a test contact after the crash, the players' photographs popped up randomly).

I think I'll call Apple Support by phone if there isn't a solution posted soon.

I have the same experience. No contacts in the contacts app, although I still have the contacts in my mail app.

Thanks for the tip. I too lost my contacts, followed your method, and now they are back. Great advice.

This has happened to me twice in the space of a week! The first time, it happened as others described: I added a contact, and when I saved it, the app shut down and all contacts were missing when I reopened. Afraid of losing all my contacts from Outlook, I set my next sync to replace all Contacts on my iPad. Then I manually added the new Contacts. I did a routine sync last night because I had added apps...I had not added any Contacts or opened the Contacts app yesterday. To my surprise and disappointment this morning, ALL my Contacts are gone again!! I hope they were not also wiped out of Outlook as though I had deleted them all from my iPad. I will see when I get home tonight.

With the original post of this issue being so old, it's unacceptable that a fix hasn't been released for such a major issue. I thought it was a new problem with the latest software update since everything was working fine up to last week.

I will continue to search for a solution, but I figure there isn't one yet, based on the above posts

VERY frustrating and annoying!

Three options for restoring your Contacts -

1 if you can see your contacts in Mail or Search, you may have Groups set up in Contacts

2 shutdown

3 sync

If this has happened to you, please send feedback to Apple http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

Thanks for the link to submit feedback. I have just done so.

I restored my Contacts via iTunes the last time, and will do so again tonight, assuming iTunes didn't see the empty iPad2 Contacts and also wipe out my Outlook Contacts as though I had emptied the iPad2 data intentionally.

I don't think my setup is causing the issue. Everything was working fine until last week...no crashes or odd behavior with Contacts until last week. When it first happened, I tried shutting and reopening the app and doing a hard reboot. Neither action resolved the missing Contacts. When it happened this time, I hadn't even used Contacts all day yesterday.

Thanks again,

Linda

Thank you so much for adding the contact (pun intended!) hyperlink. I was thoroughly enjoying my new experiences with iPad 2, merrily went on to adding MANY contacts by hand since I couldn't figure how to sync them from my Palm, when all of a sudden after working for hours off and on these past few days the message flashed, "No Contacts"! What??? While I surely do empathize with each one I have read about here tonioght, I am thankful it is not just me! I have taken time to write a message to Apple, thanks to your help. My contacts have not reappeared but I feel better.

Thank you.

Admittedly, I have not read every reply posted, but after reading enough of them posted between this original one in May and mine on Aug 31st, to know this is an ongoing problem with seemingly NO "FIX" FROM APPLE SO FAR, I decided I'd make the issue better known so I posted my LOST CONTACTS info on my FACEBOOK page. I wonder if everyone who has had experiences with such did that, if it might help Apple pay more attention to our complaints since FB and other social networks reach many more folks than these limited messages do.

I do not want to be miles from home, depending on iPad CONTACTS for an address, open it, and find "NO CONTACTS" facing me! It was stunning enough last evening following hours of transferring my input by hand! Thankfully, unlike some, I didn't transfer from program to program and lose my info altogether. I just lost hours of work!

I am just one person, but multiplied by the number of FACEBOOK friends, the cautionary word I posted a few minutes ago will spread. I encourage you all to do likewise in the hope it will move APPLE to get the necessary "FIX" available to each of us.

How about it?

this has happened to me several times. ipad2.

i sync all my contacts with GMAIL anyway in case ipad is lost or stolen.

gmail contacts havent vanished, so i turn off contacts sync, then turn it back on and my contacts come back.

very frustrating, as i use my ipad to run my business.

Thanks for the bump idea. I hadn't thought about that. It worked for me.

I solved this by tapping on the search bar getting the keyboard to drop down, and hitting the delete arrow. All my contacts came back, including the last one I had entered when they all disappeared. If there is a space accidentally ttyped in the search bar, the app will "search" for "blank" and come up with nothing, making it look like they all disappeared. Delete the blank space and they all come back.

I lost all my contacts today when adding them into my ipad2 . I called apple support a few times. They were shocked and claimed they never heard of this before. It has been over three months since the first post on this discussion board described this issue. It is time for Apple to build a fix for this problem.

You can add me to the list of victims of this. I sent my feedback to Apple. I was also seeing the random pictures showing up when re-adding conacts, so some of the data was clearly still there, it apparently was just corrupted. Hours of work were lost, as I had not done a recent Sync.

Same thing happened to me. What are they gonna do to fix this? This is awful. I just lost 800 contacts. I'm going to the apple store immediately.

Did you try the solution I posted on September 7?

Put the cursor in the search bar, hit the delete key to return the cursor to the beginning of the bar. I did this and all my missing contacts came back.

There was a blank space in my search bar in the Contacts app. I had accidentally typed a blank space in the search bar after adding a new entry in the Contacts app. So my Ipad was searching for "blank" and, of course, was coming up with nothing, making it appear that the contacts were erased. When I deleted the blank space, the iPad stopped searching and all my contacts became available again.