Contacts on iTouch missing unexpectedly

Where did you save your contacts and will you sync them to iCloud? This sounds strange. Did you disconnected some account on your iPod touch recently?

Is Contacts turned on is Settings>iCloud?

If you go to icloud.com, sing in and go to Contacts are any contact shown?

Been there, done that!

You are correct, the problem is not the iPod, but your Yahoo account. Since the information syncs back and forth between the computer and iPod both are effected. You will have lost mail, not just contacts.

Fix your Yahoo mail on the computer.

Yahoo does have an option to restore your mail account to an earlier time. Hopefully you are acting soon enough to retrieve everything.

I had to reset and fix an iPad recently. I didn't think to turn off all devices so they would not sync blank info from the iPad. Oops. I was lucky, Yahoo restore worked great.

Oh well, then I have totally no idea. Are you free to take your iPod touch to an Apple Store and ask for help from the genius...? (Umm... Just make sure you make an appointment before you go)

Sorry about that I can't help you as this sound too strange and I have totally no idea about what happened...

Posting as this just happened to me too!! Went to add to my Contacts on my iPod and they were all gone! I have not used the cloud for my contacts, nor do I sync often with my Mac as I have different contacts on each. I don't use Yahoo mail.

This happened to me on 07/03/2013. Like the original poster, I too am running OS 5.1.1. I have not synced in 6 months and do not use iCloud - so this issue did not occur because of a sync or have anything to do with iCloud. The only thing I did within the day or so before all the contacts disappeared from my Contacts app is to delete a few unused/unwanted apps and then update a few apps - Facebook and Google Voice were 2 of the ones I'd been avoiding updating for quite a while that I included in my selective app updates in the past week that make me wonder if one of them is the culprit. I noticed Facebook crashing a lot after the app was updated, as well as the FoxNews app (another of the apps I updated this past week). I don't recall Google Voice crashing after its update.

The strangest thing: I think my data is "in there" in the iPod somewhere because when I eliminate all calendars except for the "Contacts' birthdays and events" calendar, I do see some of my Contact's birthdays... and when I click on one of the events - a friend's birthday, under Event Details there is a field that says "Accepted" with "Contacts" beneath it and an arrow... and when I click the arrow it takes me to a screen titled "Invitees" where the word "Contacts" again appears with a green checkmark beside it and another arrow... and when I click that arrow, it brings up a screen titled "Info" which looks like a Contact app entry, except the picture is the default gray person form, the word "Contacts" appears next to the default gray person, and below that is a long string of gibberish next to the field name "Work", which reads in part: 4dhmurjkc5hn8sq0ctp6utbg5pr2sor. It is the same long gibberish character string no matter which event I select for a given Contact in my calendar birthdays. Makes me think the data is there but scrambled or corrupted somehow. Curious if any other users having this issue see the same thing as me, down to the sequence of the gibberish characters? (If the same, maybe would point to a virus or repeatable malfunction of something in the iPod touch??)

Bottom line: short of trying to re-sync from my 6 month old iTunes backup, is there any hope of getting my contacts back?? I have added a lot of info w/in the last 6 months that I know I cannot recreate or get back any other way. Would hate to think it is lost forever.

Apple: are you listening???

Okay - I clicked the gibberish and it opened a new email and this is the full address: 4dhmurjkc5hn8sq0ctp6utbg5pr2sor1dhimsp31e8n6errfctm6abj3dtmg@virtual. I googled this and looks like some folks were having some kind of repeating birthday issue on their calendars which had this same string of characters associated... but I don't have that issue... my issue is that all my Contacts are gone from my Contacts app on my iPod Touch 3rd Gen running OS 5.1.1 for no apparent reason.

Any suggestions on what caused this and how to get my Contacts back (that doesn't involve doing an iTunes sync since that is 6 months old) and how to prevent this from ever happening again would be MOST appreciated. If anyone paid the Genius crew at Apple and they were able to restore your Contacts, or even if you paid a non-Apple "genius" who fixed it, would appreciate details on how much it cost and what was done & by whom so I can seek the same assistance.

Thank you.

Did anyone find an answer to this issue of missing contacts on an Ipod Touch (3rd gen.) IOS 5.1.1

I had the Contacts "app" disappear and after a ton of work found that somehow it had been dragged into one of those subgroups (don't know the official term) where you can combine like programs into "a folder" and there were 3 apps in one icon called utilities. Dragged them out and they're all there though they have lots of duplicate entries (I've always had that problem with Contacts. After the update to 6.1.6 which messed up everything and required 6 tries to get my touch back to life, ALL the Apps are randomly tossed around the the old backup being restored won't work as it was a different OS.

and my friends can't figure out why I stay with MS and Outlook....

This has happened to me multiple times and really freaked me out. I was worried about losing contacts entered since my last sync. It may not be related but seems to happen after charging on an old speaker dock. After reading these posts, i thought"i wonder what would happen if i just add a new contact". I added a new bogus test contact and after it added, the rest showed up again without having to sync. I have a third generation running 5.1.1.

Hi Chuck - I tried your "add a new bogus test contact" tip and it did not work for me. All my contacts are still missing. :-(

Odd thing though: when I added a bogus test contact, I thought at first it had worked because the picture associated with the newly added contact automatically showed up as my neice's photo that had been the photo I had on her contact entry before they all disappeared.

Can I ask: exactly what fields did you use when you created your "new bogus test contact"? (I only filled in a first and last name.)