My iPhone 16 Pro Max was working fine, until the 18.6 update that occurred last night. Now today I’ve lost critical contacts like family members, longtime friends and my boss! Anyone else having this issue? How can I resolve it?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: Lost Critical Contacts after 18.6 Update
iPhone 16 Pro Max, iOS 18
Hello Bewaretheldes,
I understand your frustration over losing all your contacts. Were your contacts stored in iCloud or another cloud service such as Google or were they only on your device? I suggest checking settings to see if by chance Contacts is disable for iCloud sync and if it is, try turning it on and seeing if your contacts reappear.
Enable iCloud Contacts
Open Settings
Tap [Your Name]
Tap iCloud
Tap Show All
Enable Contacts
Open your Contacts app or the Phone app to check if your contacts reappear.
Another person seems to have experienced this issue as well so I presume more are experiencing it as well. If your contacts don’t appear, I suggest contacting Apple Support for further assistance and to report it to Apple.
Sincerely,
Captain
Hello Bewaretheldes,
I understand your frustration over losing all your contacts. Were your contacts stored in iCloud or another cloud service such as Google or were they only on your device? I suggest checking settings to see if by chance Contacts is disable for iCloud sync and if it is, try turning it on and seeing if your contacts reappear.
Enable iCloud Contacts
Open Settings
Tap [Your Name]
Tap iCloud
Tap Show All
Enable Contacts
Open your Contacts app or the Phone app to check if your contacts reappear.
Another person seems to have experienced this issue as well so I presume more are experiencing it as well. If your contacts don’t appear, I suggest contacting Apple Support for further assistance and to report it to Apple.
Sincerely,
Captain
Appreciate the input. I spoke with two different Apple support techs and both indicated that this was not likely to be fixed. In my particular case, even though I thought all of my contacts were being backed up to iCloud, there is a specific place that you must go to make sure that contacts default to iCloud. I have been at different roles where I used their email accounts on my phone. Apparently, the phone then defaults all entries under that account. To clarify, I personally entered these contacts in my phone, thinking they were saved there, not on a work account. When I left those jobs, it never presented an issue because I could continue to access my contacts until this last update. Now the techs are saying that unless I can log back into those work systems, there’s no way to retrieve those contacts. I pointed out that these were personal contacts, not work associates in most cases, and those contacts contained a plethora of information that was private. It’s now in former employers’ hands without my knowledge or agreement. To me, this is a significant breach of privacy. I would think that if personal information, which I stored under contacts from blood type to Social Security numbers, is compromised by my former employer then Apple is liable. As I pointed out, there’s no way the average user would understand or know that this personal information is being stored on a work server, nor is there anyway that the average iPhone user would know that there was a special place where contacts had to be designated to go back to iCloud as a necessary step to save them. Besides the privacy issue, there’s no way that I’ll ever be able to rebuild 20+ years of phone numbers, birthdates, addresses, private data, doctors, etc., not only for my loved ones, but for people who are highly recognizable and my interaction with them was only within that moment of time. This will seriously impede my professional work. To me this is a catastrophic failure to perform by Apple.
I have a feeling more people will be looking for a fix for this, trust me I tried a lot including contacting Apple.
Support at Apple was helpful but didn’t fix the problem yet.
it took them 3 minutes to diagnose which I assume it’s not a known problem.
Open a message, start typing the name of a missing contact. Does it try to auto complete from cache? If it does, you have the same problem I do.
it will show just the number in your list of messages, it will auto complete but the contact isn’t there.
Apparently a fix is coming.
me too! but I have an iPhone 15. I even restored to a pervious backup from a month ago those contacts are still missing. Did a search and other people are having this issues. it happened right after the update. It looks like any contact add within the last 5, possibly 6 years is missing. Support didn't help.
I agree with BeawaretheIdes. I went to Apple and was basically told the same thing. Apple is blaming this problem on Microsoft. I have the exact same problem. I have an old work email account that most likely doesn't exist anymore. I am being told my only fix is to open that old account. I am very disappointed in the "blame game" position that Apple is taking up to this point. I too have lost numerous phone contacts. Interestingly, many of my contacts were added after I retired 2 years ago. How did they end up in my old work email account which I am unable to access anymore?
I’m dealing with the same issues I’ve done everything. I had a deactivated university Outlook account and after reinstating that account I had some contacts come back however, I thought I fixed it all by finding the context through WhatsApp in telegram and other platforms however, I still have some other ghost contacts that are saved in the Siri cache? I’ll have a contact pop up when I start typing in the name and it says found an apps. However, the name is found in Messages however, I would never spell out the name that I have in their contact in the messages so Siri is remembering what name was there but it’s not popping up in my contacts. I really need to fix for this. It’s starting to make me go crazy. We need updates ASAP.
Anyone find a fix for this? I have a lot of contacts missing and looking at other boards we are not alone.
it’s easy to see on the contacts I remember, start typing their name and it does show up. But it’s not on the list of contacts and the ones I don’t remember the name, I have no idea who they are.
By any chance, were these numbers saved from whatsapp or directly to your contact phone book?
Yes, they were all entries directly in my contacts—not any downloads. Plus many were before or after the work accounts that Apple says are the root of the Microsoft problem.
Fix isn't coming fast enough. Ugh.
Any news on this anyone? I still don’t know how many contacts I lost after the update. Cache works but haven’t found answers in how to get it back.
How can I recover lost contacts after updating my iPhone to iOS 18.6?
