iPhone contacts do not sort properly

nd1965, I have a work-around/fix.

Go to settings, click on Genereal, click on International, and then click on Language, and then change it from English to something else. I chose French.

After a few seconds the iPhone will be in French. Then check your Contacts app to see if they problem is still there.

Next, finally, change it back to English using the same steps.

For me, after I changed it back to English, the incorrect sorting had vanished. All entries & new entries are now sorting correctly.😀

-Paul

I have this problem too and it seems like a bug.

On the preferences settings on my iPhone, the contacts are sorted as:

Sort Order: First,Last

Display Order: First,Last

I have hundreds of contacts and all of them sort as-expected, except for any new contacts which I try to add.

For example, I just added a contact with only the first name as "Test" and in the contact list is sorts all the way at the top, like this:

*** T ***

Test

**** A ****

Aaron Rogers

Aislyn Corr

Ajey Shetty

Alan Rose

Moreover, if I try to jump to any entry by tapping the letters on the right side of the screen, any attempt to skip to any letter between A-T will cause the phone to jump to that entry called "Test" entry at the very top!

Lastly, I'd like to add a few more details:

- reboot of iPhone and sync with Mac didn't cause this to issue to resolve itself.

- I use iCloud to sync contacts across iPad, iMac, and iPhone. I wonder if this is the issue?

- this is only a problem on my iPhone it seems. The iMac and iPad sort the contact called "Test" as-expected once the contact is sync over iCould to those devices.

Grr

Have you tried:

- closing all the apps manually

- restarting the iphone

- resetting?

You could also have an issue caused by data defects. This is normally less pleasant. Then you should restore without reusing andy user data at first and then step by step resyncing your contents always checking if the issue returns to identify the defective contents. For the restore see: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4137

Make sure you fill the first and last and company name information into the correct fields and then navigate to settings>mail,contacts>calendars, scroll down to the contacts section and select the desired order for sorting and displaying your contacts.

The best app out there (to sort by COMPANY NAME) that nobody knows of is called "EasyContacts". Be sure to search for it was written in the app store. It is money well spent. Every person I show this app to decides to buy it. I use Card Scan still to scan business cards and then export the contacts to Outlook. I then sync my iPhone via iTunes to read my Outlook contacts. PERFECTION!!

Paul, I had the same problem but it fixed itself for no apparent reason. Now, thanks to you, I know the reason.

I work a lot in both French and English. Sometimes I change the phone language, for doing emails where otherwise words self complete in the wrong language. In doing so, I did exactly what your workaround suggested.

Searched for ages, nothing would work but your tip did the trick. Huge thanks.

Happy it worked for you. :)