Sudden disappearance of contacts on iPhone

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.

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.

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?

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,

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.

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.

Following as I am experiencing the same issue.

Exact same issue, nothing is working. Deleted my wifes contact as well as business partners and close friends. A lot of info in those contacts and they show up as numbers in my messages now.

none of this worked for me at all. thanks though.

I'm having this exact same problem and it's so frustrating. I also have lost three of my favourites and who knows how many others. Apple-we need a solution!

I am having the same issue! Please Apple, get this fixed. I've lost hundreds of contacts and have exhausted all avenues recommended to resolve this issue.