spotlight search iOS 9 contacts not showing in results

I had the same issue. Here is what I did.

1. Open Contacts

2. Click on Groups

3. At the top of the menu see if you have" Show All Contacts". If you see this, then click on it to see the message "Hide All Contacts".

4. After that make sure that the required contact (such as linkedIn or Contacts or Exchange ) is selected.

5. Now search for the contact and you will be able to get the contacts.

This fixed mine Go to your contacts app and click on groups. Do nothing, just click DONE.

Here is how I got mine to work. Go to Contacts on your MAC computer and click on "All iCloud", then click on "File >New Group" and create a small test group by clicking and dragging a couple of you contacts into the test group. Now go to contacts on your phone and do a search for the two names you placed into the test group. The names should show up when you search for them. I then clicked on "Group" in the upper left on the contacts window and unchecked both "all contacts" and "test group". Then checked them back again and closed out of the contacts app. Then I went back to my MAC and selected the "test group" and deleted the group. After doing this, I went back to my iPhone and the spotlight search was working in the contacts app.

Hope this works for you.

I tried every iteration of solutions offered here for the 15 pages I read and nothing worked until I pressed the HOME and SLEEP button together until the phone rebooted.

Once the phone came back on the spotlight worked again perfectly with contacts..

Its my opinion that it is some sort of indexing or caching issue as well but nothing helped the phone to reindex like the hard reboot.

hope this helps someone else like it did for me,

Thanks to those who have submitted the helpful info.

Hope Apple fixes this so a hard reboot is not the way to fix this.

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I tried all of the previous selections:

1) turning on off groups, selecting all contacts, etc..

2) removing contacts from phone entirely and resyncing

3) rebooting phone

4) messing with icloud settings

5) adding/removing new contacts

6) editing existing contacts

Interestingly enough, after removing ALL contacts from the phone spotlight still showed results of contacts that did not exist on the phone anymore.

I going to try backup and restore

Same here, and I still don't understand why I have the problem only on my iphone 6 plus and not on my 6, even though I tried to restore the 6 plus with the backup from the 6. No, I did and will not try it the other way.

Apple support asked me to completely restore the 6 plus and try using it for a few days to see if the problem came back, it didn't so after 3 days I restored my backup because I needed my messages and calls history, and I had the longest respite since the first occurrence of the problem: almost 10 days! but now I'm back to hard rebooting every day or so since it is the only solution that works every time.

Here is how I got mine to work. Go to Contacts on your MAC computer and click on "All iCloud", then click on "File >New Group" and create a small test group by clicking and dragging a couple of you contacts into the test group. Now go to contacts on your phone and do a search for the two names you placed into the test group. The names should show up when you search for them. I then clicked on "Group" in the upper left on the contacts window and unchecked both "all contacts" and "test group". Then checked them back again and closed out of the contacts app. Then I went back to my MAC and selected the "test group" and deleted the group. After doing this, I went back to my iPhone and the spotlight search was working in the contacts app.

FGCallie:

You didn't indicate in your post if you tried my steps that resolved the issue for me. I have not had the issue come back since I went through the steps outlined above. Let me know if this works for you.

Thank you! I tried repeatedly to add a contact manually but it never showed up in Contacts.

I tried what you suggested and BINGO!

I have an iPhone 6S Plus using iOS 9.3.2 and am shocked that this bug hasn't been fixed by now. All the other replies seem to be from 2015!! I had never looked into Spotlight Search when I upgraded, so the defaults were all still turned on. All I knew was that starting about 2 weeks ago, half of my contacts weren't coming up when I searched for them by name. They also didn't show up when I scrolled thru the Contacts list alphabetically. I thought it might be related to the iCloud link but hadn't had a chance to research it. Finally found this thread & tried Afriel's fix from almost 10 months ago, & VOILA -- all my contacts are back! Apple, I'm so disappointed in you! And Afriel is my new hero!

Contect not searching

Just switch off and then switch on your iphone

T

Hello,

I've just upgraded to iphone 7 with ios 10 and since then I can't search any contact in my Phone/Contacts apps. I have tried many things like switching on/off spotlight search for contacts+couple of restarts, but it still does not work.

I really don't want to factory reset my iPhone due such a stupid bug.

Does anybody else have the same issue as me?

Pls help APPLE

thanks good solution!