Lost contacts, iPhone 4

Wow...

Okay... same problem... my best guess:

Apple (and their friends??) wanted to get access to my previously private list of contacts. I NEVER enabled the iCloud (via intentionally using WRONG password) so as not to allow this. For years, no problem (relative to contacts *held hostage* by apple).

Just received the attempted apple push for 7.x but wanted to keep my 5.x for same reasons as everyone else in this thread!

Within the last 1-2 months, Apple was recently holding my phone hostage by refusing to allow any of my APP updates to my phone until I clicked on *accepting* their new TERMS and CONDITIONS to absolve their board of any wrong doings... and unilaterally rewrite anything they wanted 😟

Since I needed my Craiglist updated... I had to get partial control of my iphone back by click on the *accept*.

Viola, a few days later I get the ol' unable to open phone dialer without it immediately closing issue. Reboot the phone and contacts gone.

Again, these contacts were NEVER pushed to cloud before, but I had to enable the cloud w/valid password for first time. Next enabled the Contacts ("on"), did merge (god that hurt from a privacy violation), and then Disabled the Contacts-to-cloud ("off"), electing to keep them on the phone.

Viola #2: Yup, my contacts are back -- and apple has their copy of them now! 😟

That ^^ pretty much sums up my experience

Contacts just disappeared after a random outburst from the phone where it just seemed to be trying to turn off for about 10 minutes, then back it came with no contacts.

I was using 5.1 and had not wanted to update.

I've tried a few of the things such as giving in to the iCrime er I mean iCloud and pressing the contacts button and merging etc but no luck so far. But when I tried to re-add an entry it showed up with a photo of another person that was in my contacts previously, so the data is SOMEWHERE right?!

A phone company that can't manage software as simple as a phone directory ... thanks Apple, you made my next phone choice very easy.

This just happened to me a few days ago. I thought my contacts would come back and they never did. So, I called Apple and they wanted to charge me $19.99 for service. No way. Then, I googled it and found this forum and some others. I went into my Cloud and did what they said and it didn't work. I realized I had some updates and included in those updates were Facebook. The minute Facebook updated I could see my contacts changing before my eyes. Before my favorites were all gone, couldn't see who was texting me, all contacts gone. Then, I updated Facebook and they all came back. Try it. I hope it works for you. I feel so much better now. Good luck!

Hi, just had this happen to me and not if it will work for anyone but went into

Settings

Mail, Contacts, etc

Scrolled down to button

Import from SIM card

& they're all back now

Hope this works for others - good luck

This happened to me and it was a simple fix. Somehow my contacts got switched off from icloud. When I turned them back on, in Settings, they came right back. They were in the cloud the whole time.

Don't worry. You can easily get your contacts back. iPhone contact recovery is the best assistan can help you, a reliable and intuitive program that enables you to recover lost, deleted, missing iPhone contacts, SMS messaages, notes, calendar, notes, photos and call history.

Look at this tutorial for how to retrieve lost contacts on iPhone: How to recover deleted contacts on iPhone

If you want to recover Contacts on iPhone,you must to use a iPhone data recovery, the use guide about how to recover deleted iPhone Contacts also become popular.Next,let's shows you the way to recover iPhone Contacts:

Way 1: Recover Lost or Deleted Contacts from iPhone directly

1.Connect the iPhone to computer
2.Scan your iPhone device with iPhone recovery
3.Preview and restore iPhone Contacts

If you have iTunes backups, just recover the deleted Contacts on iPhone from the previous backups.

1. Connect the iPhone to the computer with a USB cable.
2. Open iTunes.
3. If you have a new or erased iPhone, iTunes will prompt you to restore from backup.
4. Otherwise, Control-click on your iPhone under DEVICES in the left menu.
5. Select Restore From Backup...
6. Choose the backup you wish to sync and click the Restore button.

Tips:You better backup iPhone data to computer,avoid losting Contacts on iPhone.

Had you backed up the iPhone 4 before you found the contacts were lost?

If yes, try to restore the iPhone 4 with the previous iTunes or iCloud backup (if iCloud backup is enabled);

If you have iTunes backup and don’t want to go back to iOS 5 again, just extract the contacts from the backup using iPhone Backup Extractor.

If you have neither iTunes nor iCloud backup, there are still 3 ways to retrieve iPhone contacts:

1. Find you old phone’s SIM card, and copy the contacts to the iPhone 4;
2. Use an iPhone data recovery tool to scan the iPhone 4, and get the lost contacts backup;
3. Sync with Google Contacts or other cloud service if you had previously synced with.

Yeah sick of iPhone issues I'm going back to samsung phone

After lots of searching and turning icloud on and off I came accross this fix and hey presto it worked! Have now hastily backed up my iphone. It's the second time it's happened to me 😟

this was the page I found the fix... http://www.seangw.com/wordpress/2011/10/ios-5-upgrade-lost-my-contacts/

This seems to be the most popular solution if you can see your contacts in your text messaging:

1. Open a recent Text Message
2. Tap the top of the screen (scrolls to the top of the message)
3. Tap “Contact”
4. Edit the contact in some way (add an email, new fake phone number or something, you can delete later
5. Hit the “Back” button

You should have your contacts back. Please delete the “edit the contact in some way” if you don’t want it.

OH THANK YOU! That worked great 😀 phew, thank you so much 😀

My phone did this and this was how I fixed it.

I went to settings/icloud/contacts. Turned it to off. Restarted my phone (turned off the phone, waited to the count of ten then turned it back on). I went back to settings/Icloud/contacts and turned it back on.

Finally, I went back to my texts and all the names started to pop back up. Nothing was lost. Took less than 5 minutes.

Hope it helps.

i had this exact problem. i still had numbers in my recent calls so i saved that as a contact and then all of my contacts came back after a few minutes. really wierd but it worked for me!!

Yeah, i've had the same problem and this makes me so angry! my contacts erase on my phone every now and then! if this problem isn't fixed soon i think i may have to ditch apple iphone and move to the galaxy s4

This has happened to me for the third time. Any idea why this even happens?