Lost contacts, iPhone 4

Happened to my iphone 4 while away on vacation. While connected to the charger the phone started to freak out in that it started to cycle through the connect and disconnected charging state over and over. After rebooting the contacts were missing.

Spirit's answer (page 10) is the way to go. Just do it and move on.

This happened on my phone about a month ago and then my wifes phone on Saturday. my phone fixed itself within 20min but some of my contact photos wer shifted around and all custom ring/text tones were gone. My wifes phone was worsemas ALL her phone numbers were gone but contacts were still listed on her phone mnus some of them. After reading through 10pages of this issue i went ahead and went to SETTINGS, Icloud and sure enough it prompted me to login. Once i did,*BAM*. All my contacts were back. Ishe was missing a few however. Hope this he

Ps some of you. Snce we have Verizon we both did the backup assistant right away. Good Luck to all.

happened to me too. i also dont use icloud because we have more than 1 iphone . i used the sync feature to backup my stuff. apparently the sync feature overides every time you sync. so once i plugged my phone in after the contacts were lost, they were also removed from my sync. i used the steps in this article http://support.reincubate.com/kb/general-support/is-it-possible-to-recover-lost- itunes-backups-from-my-operating-system-restore i copied the file from the day before i lost my contacts to a new folder, added an a to the end of the folders name, then put the folder back into the backup folder. i then used this software http://www.icopybot.com/itunes-backup-manager.htm to recover the files from the backup folder. the free version works for this, no need to buy the full version as of now.

Just tried the solution posted by Stryf and it worked! Thank you!

Re: Lost contacts, iPhone 4created by Stryf in iPhone Hardware - View the full discussion

happened to me too. i also dont use icloud because we have more than 1 iphone . i used the sync feature to backup my stuff. apparently the sync feature overides every time you sync. so once i plugged my phone in after the contacts were lost, they were also removed from my sync. i used the steps in this article http://support.reincubate.com/kb/general-support/is-it-possible-to-recover-lost- itunes-backups-from-my-operating-system-restore i copied the file from the day before i lost my contacts to a new folder, added an a to the end of the folders name, then put the folder back into the backup folder. i then used this software http://www.icopybot.com/itunes-backup-manager.htm to recover the files from the backup folder. the free version works for this, no need to buy the full version as of now.

Just happened to me again for the X times..

Looking at the diag application crash logs, I see it mention about: Application Specific Information:

..... was suspended with locked system files:

/private/var/mobile/Library/AddressBook/AddressBook.sqlitedb

So I guessing this must have something to do with lossing all the contacts.

Something must be looking the system files and causing all the apps crashing / failed to open.

But how to find out which system process causing this?

I just arrived here from

http://consumerist.com/2013/03/07/hey-what-happened-to-all-of-my-iphone-contacts /

The writer described my problem precisely:

"Recently I lost all my contacts on my iPhone. Everything else works fine, just that all contacts have been wiped. This occurred after the text message app crashed which led me to reboot the phone."

Genius Bar at store offers no good solution.

Had this problem today, April 2. IOS 5.1.1 (9B206) . AT&T .

Interesting to note that this entire thread started just a month or two ago and already hundreds of complaints. Clearly not "cockpit error", and hardware problem seems unlikley.

iPhone 4s, iOS 5.1.1. (Verizon)

Happened to me too twice in a week (second time was today)! Txt app crashed and then I lost my contacts after reboot (when I saw txt messages they showed only phone numbers instead of names). I had a backup the first time but was overwritten with my iPhone empty contacts upon auto sync (before I knew what happened). I managed to rebuild in some cases by reading txt messages and figuring out who they were from. Then it accidentally synched with computers Address book (read: nightmare) which was not even close to what was on my phone. I hate to say it but I miss my Blackberry right now, was super easy out of the box to sync contacts to whatever apps you wanted and back them up in multiple versions. iTunes is ignoring my turning off the "force sync when connected" option as others stated, I have to catch it each time before the info is transfered (cmon Apple!!!).

My phone was working great until I noticed a few apps in app store needed upgrades but I couldn't do it until I upgraded to iOS 6.x which I was refusing to do until they figure out the rampant battery/network issues that still plague the 4s. I hope this isn't an intentional force upgrade scenario. More and more strange things starting to happen...I don't use iCloud so that is not active. Not keen on having all my info out there honestly.

Before I try to restore contacts a second time, I am going read through the thread more to see what if anything has been working (especially STRYF's post). Just wanted to post my frustration after reading other posts.

Apple what is happening...A lot of people are suddenly having these issues...Coincidence?

I learned the hard way that iCloud contact sync does not serve so much as a way to back up iphone contacts, rather a way to push them to multiple iDevices. I have since created a full copy of my iphone address book as described here: Backup and sync iPhone Contacts

while i continue using the icloud contact sync "recreationally" 🙂

All - I had this problem today and with help from a techie friend have just been able to crack it.

If your phone syncs your contacts to icloud, they'll be in there so hopefully no problems. If they don't (like what happened to me), try the below:

Go to www.iphonebackupextractor.com. Download the Free version to check that you can extract files (you'll be limited to 4 contacts). If it works and you think it's worth it, buy the home edition which (fingers crossed) will allow you to extract all contacts as a CSV file. Check the file you've just downloaded them into to check they've come through. Then open up Icloud, go the contacts section, click on the cog icon at the bottom left, click on import vCard, and (hopefully) they'll all come back. Once done, sync your iphone with icloud.

Really hope it works for you - a real pain. I'm doing the above by memory so if I've missed anything out, please can someone more tech savy than me add what I've missed.

Good luck

Does it help if you go to your 'Contacts', then click on the 'Groups' button in the top left, and then select 'All Contacts' (rather than 'All on My iPhone')?

After I re-added some of my contacts, I noticed there were two names appearing when I received calls and then, when I did the above steps, my contacts reappeared.

I face this problem always, but the contact will appear again after few minutes, i believe is the cloud system got problem, because i store my contact into cloud. Maybe the cloud storage services have to be improve to handle alot of user.

The exact same thing happened to my Iphone 4S. Some apps including the phone app would not start and when cycled the phone (off then on ) all my contacts disappeared. Obviously this is not a "documented feature" and in my opinion is totally inexcusable ! with or without backups ! I could have been away at a seminar or on a beach away from home without any access to any posisble backups. I found that synching contacts were off by default on BOTH my PC and my MAC.

That said I got back my contacts by doing the following on my Iphone:

Settings -> ICloud - > Switch contacts to On (it was off for me). It prompted me if I wanted to merge contacts with last backup made to my PC and I said yes. It proceeded to restore my contacts. No sure if the contacts are somehow hidden in iCloud or on my PC or if I may have done a one time Synch in the past while playing with options. Also I am still not sure if it restored ALL my contacts and to what date.

Good Luck.

Boo this just happened to me now running 5.0.1 and a recently updated Facebook app.

I was in the middle of a back and forth Facebook message when the app suddenly started crashing so I restarted my phone. I didn't notice until later when I got a text it showed up as just the number. I went to check the other messages and all were showing just the number. Went into contacts and they were all gone :( I only have the Find my iPhone option enabled so any of that re-enable contacts on iCloud doesn't work. Going to try popping out the sim now.

Add me here. Ridiculous problem. I've always been super happy with all my apple products, but the constant updating of the phones and programs grew entirely fatiguing to me so once I was perfectly satisfied with my phone's performance I just kept it right there, and it's served me flawlessly until now. I mean, come on, from perfection to mass contact deletes? This was obviously done by someone on their end, as the one thing we all have in common here is that we all did nothing to cause this problem. You will be losing a decade-long customer and many others I'm sure if this is not taken care of promptly.