Deleted contacts still there

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13 points

Deleted contacts still there

Today I discovered that my phone is still storing the contact information from contacts that I deleted months and years ago. If I type the name of a deleted contact in a new text, the contact still shows up. Now my boyfriend is furious and thinks that I've been in touch with my ex recently, as when I clicked the "i" icon next to my ex's name it gave me the option to "Remove from Recents."

I haven't had any contact with my ex in years, why is his deleted number (along with the deleted numbers of a bunch of other people I haven't talked to in years) still in "Recents"?

iPhone SE

Posted on Jan 20, 2018 6:00 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

brenden dv

Community Specialist

Jan 21, 2018 11:40 AM in response to tasatasata

Hello and welcome to Apple Support Communities tasatasata,

It sounds like you have some questions about deleted contacts appearing in the Recent list within the Messages app on our iPhone. I can certainly understand why it would be concerning to see contact information for people who were deleted from Contacts already, so I'm happy to help you out with this.

The good news is those numbers appearing does not indicate there is an issue with your iPhone. It's actually normal for those numbers to still appear in Recent even if you've deleted the actual contact, and haven't contacted that person in a very long time. To prevent this from happening, you'll want to select the "I" icon and then select Remove from Recents, like you mentioned doing already.

Your Recent list is also included in iTunes and iCloud backups as well. So keep this in mind if you do restore from a backup that was made prior to those numbers being removed from Recents, you'll have to remove them again afterwards. I recommend creating a new backup after those numbers are removed. You can do so following the steps here: How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch .

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Take care!

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