Sudden disappearance of contacts on iPhone

Have you found any solutions? I am horrified as I have thousands of contacts missing overnight and a ton of information beyond phone numbers. None of the suggestions have worked - the contacts have just disappeared.

I have had all of my contacts disappear and have done what they say to recover on icloud but still they are not coming back. All contacts were on "on" in the icloud back up. I've restored to yesterday and I know there was a new Apple upgrade so that must be the reason why none of what I have done has worked and I am without my contacts. If I scroll through my messages and look at my id on my phone it's back over 5 years ago. My pic is up to date but the address details etc are very old. I need urgent help with this as this is my business. It's saying I have 673 contacts when I had over 1000 possibly 1500 it was 720 this morning now it's gone down. HELP

Agreed, there doesn't seem to be a common thread in what's missing. I did have a bunch of contacts magically come back but many still

missing. A majority of my regular text communication are missing the associated contact info. I also have since discovered my Outlook Calendar data is missing and none of that has returned.

I have not. No suggestions on any of the threads have been applicable. I have discovered my calendar is missing too with recently add meetings/events. I have contacts missing from within the last few years and then some that are probably 15 years old so there's no consistency with why some would be missing! Definitely making me rethink iPhones,updates and iCloud. I have blindly trusted all of them.

After the new update over the weekend my phone has started deleting my contacts. This is a huge issue as I have business contacts accrued from the past 10 years that i no longer have access to. Apple, you need to resolve this as a matter of urgency.

Hi there,

I am having the same issue of losing certain contacts and I don't understand how you fixed it. Sorry to be dense.

I went into Settings/Contacts. I see Contacts Accounts and it lists my 4 accounts..icloud, gmail, work account, and rcn. When I click on Gmail, I see mail, contacts, calendar. I can click off the button on contacts. and then click the button back on. I'm not sure where you are seeing teh "email not authenticated" . Thanks in advance for your help.

Hey! Just curious how you figured this out, because this is ME. Same issue as everyone else. Have tried all the steps to restore the contacts, but nothing's worked. However, I do have an old, deactivated university account listed as a Contacts Accounts (Settings>Apps>Contacts>Contacts Accounts) that I had previously used with the Apple Mail app ~7 years ago. When I click on this Contacts Account, it says "Account not authenticated" at the top of the screen. I can't authenticate the account, though, because the account no longer exists (university deleted it years ago). Based on your comment, I'm assuming my contacts were somehow (??) saved here, even though I haven't logged into the account in years (I would also get the random popups about logging into a Microsoft Exchange Account and was always confused as to why). Any chance you figured out a solution? 🤞

I think this is exactly the problem. I had an old work email that is obviously gone like your college email. I think somehow all the contacts that were saved under that account are lost.

I don’t know why some contacts save under different accounts. They aren’t all related to work. Serious problem.

Thanks for your reply! Very strange that this is suddenly a problem for us now! It's also bizarre to me that contacts were saved under different accounts, but that wasn't made obvious when you saved a contact. I never received a prompt asking me which account I wanted them saved under, so had no idea it was happening. Frustrating, to say the least!

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.

This should be of the utmost urgency for Apple. A class action lawsuit might arise from this, as this issue has severely impacted a number of businesses. I can not beleive, even with the Cloud, that I am losing my contacts. I need these contacts to make a living and support my family. This is unbelievable. How is this not all over the news by now?

I have to disagree with all the responses stating it might be because of an old email account no longer syncing. I have four email accounts attached to my iphone. All are syncing. I have tried all the suggestions below and nothing is working. It potentially finds those that I am missing when I type in the name-because Siri makes a 'suggestion' bsed on conversations with the individuals on text/WhatsApp. That's all well and good if I know who is missing-I can then re-save the contact, not ideal but possible. However, what about all the contacts that I don't know ae missing?? I'm being prompted today to do a software update but am reluctant to do it in case anything else goes wrong!

Bagpuss5 wrote:

I have to disagree with all the responses stating it might be because of an old email account no longer syncing.

A couple of people have reported that it is their problem. It is likely that this is not one single problem but a couple of different ones with the same symptoms.

Having the same issue. Happened at the same time mid August. Huge loss of the last 4-5 years of new contacts.

Spent a large amount of time on the phone to Apple who claimed they'd not heard of the issue. My default contact save was my outlook account and they closed the case and asked me to take it up with Microsoft.

The outlook account is still live and the contacts aren't there. Microsoft can't help.

No solution.

Missing 400+ client and staff details.

Huge impact on my business.

Help!! Is this an Apple based issue?

Tried everything suggested in this thread to no avail. All my previous email addresses etc still active and logged in.

This group proves this is a widespread issue.

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.