Lost contacts, iPhone 4

if they are showing in the device as a ghost contact, your best bet would be to restore iPhone contact from the backup:

iCloud and iTunes can back up most data on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Backed-up information includes purchased music, TV shows, apps, and books; photos and video in the Camera Roll; device settings (for example, Phone Favorites, Wallpaper, and Mail, Contacts, Calendar accounts); app data; Home screen and app organization; Messages (iMessage, SMS, and MMS), ringtones, and more. Media files synced from your computer aren’t backed up, but can be restored by syncing with iTunes.

Backup of purchased music is not available in all countries. Backup of purchased TV shows occurs only in the United States. Previous purchases may not be restored if they are no longer in the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBookstore.

This just happened to me for the first time. Wife called and I thought it was strange it showed her number instead of contact info/picture. After we got done I checked and I have no contacts! I added someone last night. They seemed all there then. What happened over night??

How do I tell what happened to this???

previous suggestion succeeded in restoring them:

go to settings -> icloud and turning off backup of contacts (it did not prompt about removing anything)

turn off the phone

turn on the phone

settings -> icloud, turn on backup of contacts

a few seconds later it had restored them all.

Glad to get them back. That was scary. But what caused it???

My phone did this yesterday. Text message app went weird. Rebooted. All contacts gone. How can you restore contacts from itunes old backup to icloud and then to iphone??

Here's how I restored mine:

Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Import SIM Contacts>On My iPhone

It worked for me, I hope this helps someone else.

None of the discussions or Apple support tutorials have answered my question at all. There was only one relative discussion thread that some one gave what seemed like it was good advice, I was optimistic with the what he suggested, but....alas NO help what-so-ever! Frustrating, right?

Someone out there have any good tips that you can please share?

Thanks! ~Krisy Cole, SoCal.

Didn't work for me. Nothing in the sim card. Speaking of which, how do you go about actually "saving" your contacts from iphone to the sim card?

Nothing I found has worked. Lucky for me, I still had my iphone 3GS lying around, actually just use it as a music player on my BMW motorcycle. In any case, have all contacts on there (albeit 11months old) so shared each contact I wanted to keep in an email. Go into 4S and import/create new contact. Stupid but it works. As a separate backup I suppose you could share each contact you have with yourself (email to yourself). Can always go into your email history and re-import them to your iphone.

3rd party software is at least $35 to pull your contacts off itunes. In my case all versions of the iphone scanning software didn't find my contacts anywhere on the iphone. Completely gone.

Buddy of mine just said tons of people having their camera not working on 4S with latest apple iOS. Apple has no fix. Oh, wait, their fix is "you need to get an iphone 5". Whatever.😠

Ok, it appears as if on iOS 5.1.1 the contacts are stored in a database located at:

/private/var/mobile/Library/AddressBook/

I have a number of files in that directory, but I also have a hack to add photos to the contacts (Cyntact), so I may have more than what there is typically in that directory.

AddressBook.sqlitedb-wal

AddressBook.sqlitedb-shm

AddressBookImages.sqlitedb-shm

AddressBookImages.sqlitedb-wal

AddressBook.sqlitedb

AddressBookImages.sqlitedb

I'll add to the discussion that my images get all switched around lately as well, but I'm not sure if that's related or not. I suspect the main files of interest are "AddressBook.sqlitedb" and "AddressBook.sqlitedb-shm". The "AddressBook.sqlitedb-wal" has a file size of 0, so I suspect it's not all that relevant.

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Thank you kelzk. I had the same problem and tried your fix (I had to try a couple of times as it kept automatically turning off the contacts). It finally worked and everything is back to normal again 🙂

I reset all my setting by going to general - reset - all setting and after a few minuites all my contacts re appeared! Id not done anything out of the oridinary so not sure why they disappeared in the first place :-/

If you find that some contacts are missing and you had previously added a Gmail account via Exchange to sync contacts, check your accounts list to see if that had disappeared. That was the case with me recently. Took me a while to figure out what had happened.

If you downloaded the "backup assistant" you should be able to run this and it will add all your contacts back in. Normally when you get a new phone these days it suggests you download "backup assistant"

It just helped me out - hope it helps you!

Forgive my ignorance, but what is "backup assistant"?

I tried a couple of 3rd party pc software applications that both scanned the iphone and itunes for the required data files. It found nothing on the iphone (contacts).

No ignorance at all! It's an application you can download for free thru the App Store. But the only way you will be able to restore your contacts back is if you already had it and they were in there. I actually did it when I set my old phone up - it took all my contacts and backed them up and then when I got my new phone I just connected to my computer and they all moved over.

When I lost my contacts (out of the blue) yesterday - I didn't even have connect to the computer I just needed to hit the app and sync and everything came back within a minute.

I hope it helps.

Hmm... sounds almost like an icloud sync (merge). Since I lost my contacts, I still had my 3GS so simply "shared" each contact in an email which I opened in my 4S. Ya, took a few minutes but worked. However any new contacts I had were lost due to failing to backup the phone thru itunes (my fault).

I have backed up the phone and made sure icloud is working after this fiasco. I do feel sorry for that guy who lost 1100 business contacts! (and in same week his HD failed in his macbook pro where itunes had the phone backup)!!! Double doodie. I would have been ticked off bad if I had been on a business trip and lost all my contacts. You'd be SOL.