iCloud restore from backup

IF you are sure that the contact are in your iCloud backup, follow the instructions here.

Restore your device from an iCloud or iTunes backup - Apple Support

Contacts are not contained in an iCloud backup. If you are using iCloud to sync your contacts, then they would be in iCloud, not in your backup. Go to iCloud.com on your Mac, and open your Contacts to see if they are there. If they are, then on your phone, go to Settings>iCloud and turn off the Contacts button and then turn it back on. If they do not push to your device, then sign out of iCloud and then sign back in.

If the Contacts were in Outlook, then you would have to retrieve them from there, and I'm afraid I have no experience with Outlook on a Mac.

Best of luck,

GB

If you have an iCloud backup, you do not need the device connected to iTunes to restore. You restore from the device itself. I believe the Restore from Backup button is supposed to be grayed out if you are using iCloud for backup instead of iTunes, since the button exists in iTunes.

Unfortunately, restoring from the iCloud backup would not affect the Contact situation.... 😟

But good point about why the iTunes backup is greyed out! 🙂

GB

gail from maine wrote:

Unfortunately, restoring from the iCloud backup would not affect the Contact situation.... 😟

Duh.... I forgot, as Steve Martin used to say..... 😊

Thanks. I'm good with Outlook, however on Windows. I find there are certain things that Office products do differently on the Mac than Windows. Outlook has an Archive setting, and depending on the user's setup, could contain the contacts if setup correctly in advance. I did not know that iCloud does not backup contacts if not using iCloud contacts, since I still use iTunes for my backups. Only use iCloud on occasion, generally when swapping devices.

EDIT: After reading the iCloud backup info, it can be a little confusing. It says it backs up nearly everything stored locally on the device, except for things already stored in the cloud. Now I realize this is being the devil's advocate here, but what if I don't use iCloud contacts, shouldn't the contacts be backed up then, since they exist on the device? A question of curiosity.

Sathya1977 wrote:

But that menu item is disabled. I am pretty sure iCould has backups

As you now know, my answer was incorrect, but I was talking about iTunes. You asked about iCloud which has nothing to do with iTunes on your computer.

ChrisJ4203 wrote:

Now I realize this is being the devil's advocate here, but what if I don't use iCloud contacts, shouldn't the contacts be backed up then, since they exist on the device? A question of curiosity.

If you're syncing contacts with an email account (e.g. Gmail) they are not part of the backup. If you sync contacts via iTunes I'm pretty sure they're not part of the backup either, only "where to get them" is backed up (as with email contacts).

If you're not syncing contacts with anything, i.e. they only live on the device, my understanding is that only your Favorites and recents are backed up. Apple doesn't explicitly address this ... the support articles on this subject used to mention Favorites and recents, now they avoid all mentions of contacts:

About backups in iCloud and iTunes - Apple Support

iCloud: iCloud storage and backup overview

I was aware that contacts synced with another account are not backed up. And, I had read the other support documents. I was referring to where you say that you are not syncing with anything, and the support documents are rather vague on that. It doesn't say yes, but it doesn't really say no, since it mentioned what is only on the device. Thanks for your thoughts as well.