Q: Searching in Contacts doesn't work after iOS 9.1 update

This is the best solution if you don't want to reset your phone settings and it can literally take 1 min to do it from any pc. the actual solution is just to click on a group in your contacts but if you don't have any group, creating one in your icloud is so easy and it solves your issue. Again, without reseting your settings!

went to try to do the groups option, only there is no groups button in my contacts in  my iphone 4s under 9.1... there is a refresh arrow.... The glitches in this update are really making me crazy!

Click CONTACTS on the icloud home screen.

Click on the + sign in the bottom left of the screen.

Click  "NEW GROUP"

It is very easy, simple and well-working! Many thanks!!!

Worked for me.  Thanks. 

Can anyone confirm, that after deleting the self created empty Group under contacts in iCloud and killing the Contacts App the Problem still persists?

For me, the groups option didn't exist... it only had a 'refresh arrow'.. I ended up having to reset my settings... which is a royal pain in the behind. Seems to have at least fixed the search issue. Still having issues with CNN  app, which crashes on my iphone 4s since the update. Also seeing some issues with messages and tilting the phone.. it is either slow to react or gets confused.. I go to type and it seems to orient the opposite of what I want at times... but will be upgrading to newer iphone in the next month or so, thankfully.

Well, I have phoned to Apple support three times. and I have resetted as suggested by the customer service, my iphone settings twice, I have resetted twice all the iphone settings and restored two different back-up but it still didn't work, The customer service suggested me to reset the iPhone as new and than if the problem had been solved I could download again all the apps, without restoring the back-up because probably those arre "sick".

I was scared to do and that pushed me to search a solution in english...and I have found this thread. So now I have a group as suggested, I put all the contacts in this group, and it works. thanks a lot.

That is a temporary solution, as soon as you switch to the telephone keypad and back again to your contacts the search function doesn't work anymore

DO:

1. go to icloud.com

2. logg in

3. go to Contacts

4. Click "+"

5. Choose "New Group" and put what ever name of it

6. Click "Options" - on the left from "+"

7. Choose "Select all"

8. Drag all selected contacts to a new group

DONE

Now you should see, in the left up corner in your Contacts list on Iphone - "Groups"

Thank you so much for this!! This has been driving me MAD for days!!!

The reset doesn't work but this simple thing did!

Cheers!

Thank you!  Apple should fix this bug, but your suggested work-around seems to have resolved it for now.

Hi

Thank you. It worked. I closed and reopened the contacts and its working

Thanks - this did the trick. Now stil have to solve that icloud contacts  syncs with iPhone 6S.....

Definitely fixed! Without resetting the iPhone

I had multiple contact sources on iPhone 5s, iCloud Gmail and Microsoft Exchange, I tried to disable the sync with them one at a time until discovering that Exchange was the root cause of the problem.

Unfortunately to avoid to have that issue again I've had to keep it disabled