Contacts missing from iPhone after restoring from backup

Again, contacts are tied to an email account. If Midway made a change to your account, which their IT folks could have done, they likely wiped the contacts, which were tied to the account. You should have dealt with this like 9 years ago. I don't there's anything anyone here can do for you. You could contact the IT department, but you may have lost the contacts with no way to get them back. We typically advise people to NOT mix their work email account with their personal iPhone. It can lead to things like this.

One other thing that lobsterghost1 did not mention but can be very important if you ever take a job where you have a work email and contacts. When you are using a work account and are collecting information in that account that is connected to your work you must understand that all of that content belongs to your employer, not to you. As you have unfortunately found out, when they restrict your access to that account, you lose all access to those contacts, any notes you may have made, or especially your email. That is all company property. A note then, in the future, make sure that you keep all of that separate.

ChrisJ4203 wrote:

One other thing that lobsterghost1 did not mention but can be very important if you ever take a job where you have a work email and contacts. When you are using a work account and are collecting information in that account that is connected to your work you must understand that all of that content belongs to your employer, not to you. As you have unfortunately found out, when they restrict your access to that account, you lose all access to those contacts, any notes you may have made, or especially your email. That is all company property. A note then, in the future, make sure that you keep all of that separate.

This Chris. Yes, this is a point I should have made. We see this happen a lot to people, unfortunately.

While when you restored, it attempted the link back to your exchange account. I may have seen cache, but I don't know enough about those types accounts to know, but I'm guessing your account expired or they decided when doing a check deleted things. But for the most part, you no longer have permission to access the account. You could check back with the company, the worse they can say is no, and you are already there anyway. Good luck.

nbrinsden wrote:

Update:

I called my old company and spoke with IT. They said the account was deleted almost immediately after I left the company. If it was deleted in 2016, why did my contacts stay on my phone for so long? And why would they just now go away? If I restore my iPhone again, is there a way to store or sync my contacts from that account somewhere so I can add them to my iCloud contacts?

There's no way we could possibly know if the contacts will be restored or not. My guess is they won't. You have little to lose by restoring the phone from backup again. Let us know if it works.

Confused? Are you still employed with Midway? If you're not and your contacts were tied to them, if your account is no longer active, your contacts would be gone from that email account.