Sudden disappearance of contacts on iPhone

Sounds frustrating, especially since you’ve already tried the main iCloud synch steps. If contacts have suddenly disappeared, it’s probably due to a sync source issue rather than deletion. Here are some tips:

Go to Settings > Contacts > Accounts and check if you have multiple accounts (iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, etc.) Sometimes contacts are stored in a different account, and toggling iCloud wont affect those. Turn each account’s “Contacts” toggle off and back on one at a time to refresh.

Login to iCloud.com then press Contacts. If the missing contacts are there, they just aren’t syncing to your iPhone. Trying signing out of iCloud (iPhone Settings, > your name > Sign Out) and back in.

On iCloud.com, click your name at the top then press Data Recovery and select Restore Contacts. You can roll back your entire contacts database to a previous date.

Open the iPhone Contacts app and tap Lists or Groups in the top left. Make sure all groups are checked, some can be hidden because their group isn’t selected.

If none of the above worked, it may be worth contacting Apple Support directly. They can check your iCloud server logs to see if there was a sync error.

Hello everyone! I have never posted before but I figured after successfully getting my contacts back it would be worth sharing with you all because this was VERY frustrating to say the least.

I found out after all of the previous options had failed, you must:

1. Go into your contacts settings
2. Click Contacts Accounts (which may include iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, Exchange and any other email accounts)
3. iCloud should already have contacts selected so continue through the others
4. When I clicked into my other accounts, there was something at the top to click which said along the lines of "email not authenticated"
5. So basically, you must re-sign into each of your email accounts through the Contacts settings and then your contacts will basically start flowing back into your phone! (or at least mine did). And I did have to sign back into all of my accounts but this MUST be done through the contacts accounts settings

Hope this helps!!

After talking with an Apple tech and walking through a number of options, the final conclusion was that the missing contacts were linked to an old work email that I no longer have access to. Because they were never loaded to Icloud, the restore wouldn't recover them.

The fix would be to contact my previous employer to see if they can share a Vcard of my old contacts to reupload to my phone and then save under my personal email address.

It is unfortunate that the contacts were still showing, even though I no longer had access to the email account they were associated to.

Hopefully this helps,

I panicked when this just happened to me. All I did to fix it was go to phones icon on main screen. Click on contacts then hit lists in top left hand corner and then hit all contacts and they came back.

Me too. Tried all of the solutions given below. (Thank you!!) Then I had the bright idea to reboot my phone.

Duh. It worked :)

Alexmagebob wrote:

Does that happen to be when you were in college? I’ve just had this happen for my last 10 years of contacts. For years I’d periodically get these bizarre pops about logging into a Microsoft exchange account. From what I’ve read around the internet somehow all the contacts were very geniously saved to a (now) nonexistent student email account from the time I first added my student email to an iPhone 10 years ago. Even dumber is that it kept somehow saving every contact for at least 6 years after to a non-existent and not-logged-in account and suddenly with one of the recent updates has decided to no longer associate itself with wherever that information was (no doubt) locally stored.

Contacts are not stored locally. They are stored in whatever account you've chosen. You need to go to Settings>Apps>Contacts and check to make sure that your contacts are being saved to the proper account. I usually check this after a major update, just in case.

rjlee1980 wrote:

I have concluded that this is what happened with my contacts; an old work email account that can no longer be authenticated. But I have family members contact info and other personal contacts that was lost having nothing to do with my work. Seems that Apple would have given notification or heads up before they took action that is now causing me quite a bit of time to re-enter those contacts.

Apple has no control over or knowledge of the status of your old work email. Once the account fails to authenticate, the data becomes inaccessible. Apple can't force your phone to retain data that doesn't belong to you. And once you stored those contacts in your work account, it became their data.

Make sure that you go to Settings>App>Contacts>Default and check to make sure that the default account to which contacts are being saved is on that is under your control.

H3lio wrote:

I also face the same issue that happened from 7 to 8Sept2025.

I log into my 4 accounts and random contacts including all last contacts are missing on all of them, iCloud, Microsoft personal, Gmail and Microsoft business.

I have a backup that’s is 3 months old in iCloud but I didn’t manage yet to restore due to missing spare phone. I wonder if it will bring back those deleted contacts up to my last backup 3 months ago. Has anyone tried a restore to previous backup? if yes did it resolve the issue? Did you manage to see all deleted contacts to the backup date?

On a side note, I see no logic on these deleted contacts, I have contacts older then 5y ago deleted but also all recent contacts and I have no clue about a rational to justify this which is the worst, hundreds people with same issue and no rational to explain it? Support can’t check update logs? I work with software teams and this is mind blowing! While a bug or human mistake are bad but at least it could justify this issue, the worst is still not knowing the root cause, it totally shakes my trust over apple.

The issue is always caused by adding accounts to mail and failing to turn off all accounts except one (iCloud is my favourite) then moving all other account contacts to that one account.

Multiple contact accounts is a disaster waiting to happen.

Does that happen to be when you were in college? I’ve just had this happen for my last 10 years of contacts. For years I’d periodically get these bizarre pops about logging into a Microsoft exchange account. From what I’ve read around the internet somehow all the contacts were very geniously saved to a (now) nonexistent student email account from the time I first added my student email to an iPhone 10 years ago. Even dumber is that it kept somehow saving every contact for at least 6 years after to a non-existent and not-logged-in account and suddenly with one of the recent updates has decided to no longer associate itself with wherever that information was (no doubt) locally stored. Apple really showing what it means to be a trillion dollar company on this one 👍

I called Apple support about this same issue about a month ago and my inquiry was escalated to a supervisor who told me that their engineers are working on a solution and that I'll have to wait for an iOS update to come out. It's still a HUGE issue. I just texted someone in my contacts this morning and instantly his name disappeared and it just showed a phone number. Every day I'm having to create a new contact for people I've known for years. I get calls daily from phone numbers I don't recognize, so I have to let it go to voicemail, then re-create the contact and call them back once I realize they're a friend or biz contact. I've lost everyone's email and mailing addresses as well. FRUSTRATING.

Happened to me too starting Aug 14. Slept, woke up and suddenly realized hundreds of contacts were missing. The missing contacts are completely random, nothing in common or particular order, the only relation I came to was MOST contacts from 2019 to 2023 and some from 2024.

Tried every possible solution mentioned here and elsewhere, nothing worked. Reached out to apple support, they tried to walk me through every possible solution I already tried, again nothing worked. Now escalated to apple software engineering team.

Hoping to find a solution with Apple soon.

Hi There

I have spent a few hours on phone to Apple support Mon and Tues this week, still no real results and they have indicated ludicrous things that it is linked to a work email I had 5 years ago. It all happened after an upgrade over weekend. I must say I am nervous about any future upgrades now. And when I went to icloud to use the back up before it happened it gave me nothing. So in essence I have been paying icloud storage for nothing. SMSs gone, contacts gone. My last iphone bought in Nov last year. They managed very clunkily I might add for the biggest tech co in the world, to restore from my old iphone but they still have 10months of info they can't get back and they said they would ring me back but haven't. I think it's too hard and they don't have an answer. My problem is this is my business so it REALLY affects me. They speak down to you too at Apple support. It feels like a culture there as I have now spoken to a few people with the same attitude. I just want answers and I don't believe them with what they think has gone on ie the link to the old work email from 5 years ago. Particularly with messages I read here on this community board where others have experienced something similar with no answers. What is particularly alarming is the steps they give to retrieve info, I believe has lost more info. So I noticed I lost the contact names to phone numbers yet the name appeared on an SMS. Then all the SMSs went and the names associated with them. I scroll down the SMSs and it takes me to messages from years ago. Anyway good to know there is a community to talk this through with.

Hi,

im experiencing a very similar problem, with a number of random contacts disappearing (all of different random ages). Not sure if this is correct, but it may be that some were contacts that were stored to my Sim. Using Copilot, it stated that there has been a shift by Apple to move away from ‘iPhone’, as a source (which incidentally is still on my wife’s iPhone 16 which is on a slightly earlier OS Version than mine (iPhone 13 on 18.6.2). If iPhone was automatically removed as a List during an upgrade before sim data was synced, this might explain a ‘random’ disappearance of contact data. I’m not sure if new contacts can be added to a SIm if there are connectivity issues - this could add to sporadic pattern of missing contacts - ie when you are adding a new contact, some may go straight to cloud while others might go to Sim. If an account was only on the Sim, and the ‘iPhone’ option was removed from the Contacts Lists, this could explain a sudden disappearance.

i am still exploring the issue, I actually have a separate older phone, which refers to Lists as ‘Groups’, and this is allowing me to see ALL of my contacts (including the iPhone itself). When I restrict this to use iCloud only, I am getting a restricted list, suggesting that some of the contact data is in an alternative source.

one thing that I thought might have fixed the problem on my current iPhone 13, was to select the option to ‘Import SIM Contacts’ thinking that this would import the missing contacts from my SIM (if my theory that the missing data was there), but unfortunately this did not resolve it.

As I say, this is just me rummaging around for a potential cause, but in light of everyone else’s issues, there is a pattern suggesting that an upgrade is the trigger.

Perhaps what I have reported above may trigger a bigger brain to have a light-bulb moment.

in the meantime I’ll keep exploring.

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you were having trouble finding the settings for Contacts as you gave the incorrect path to that. It what you really meant is that you're trying to find the Contacts app, use Spotlight. Put your finger on any Home Screen anywhere but on an icon. Pull down. Start typing "contacts."

It's possible that you don't have it on a Home Scree but rather the it's only in the App Library.

My contacts…about 80% of them—disappeared beginning some time in early August or late July. I see from reading what others are saying and experiencing that this is a continuing problem. I have lost almost an entire 40 year career not to mention personal contacts and other significant contacts and information. I have spent hours on the phone with Apple and four genius bar appointments. Genius bar basically told me 2 days ago that they cannot fix it and that I should stop trying to get them to fix it. The info is gone. Shocking response. I saw that one person on this chain discussion was told that Apple’s engineers are working on this. Has anyone gotten a positive response in terms of working on recovery?