Lost all contacts after updating iPhone to iOS 18.6

Hi folks, similar problem here.

I followed the normal update process by clicking on <update to 18.5 now> and found out a few days later that I lost more than 100 contacts (out of 500). Everything disappeared: Names, phone numbers, birthdays, addresses, notes. Synching to iCloud was always on, iCloud is the master for all my contacts.

Called Apple Support and all attempts to reload previous backups did not bring back the missing data. I even tried to use Time Machine on my Mac to see what's in the synced database on my Mac from 2 weeks or 4 weeks ago. Big Surprise: The missing records are not even in the synced contacts data on my Mac.

It seems to me that certain contact records had never been synced! That would be a huge bug in the iCloud system.

Really appreciate any insight to (a) conclude what is the root cause of the missing data and (b) what can be done to recover the data that disappeared.

Many thanks in advance.

Good point. Yes, I do have several other accounts, but only just a handful of contacts in them. And they are still all there. And no accounts deleted either.

I double-checked and can confirm that the default for my contacts is iCloud, as it always has been over the years.

And if you tap on Lists, what is shows there? Anything more than iCloud? If there are separate things, you should have the ability to select All. If you have individual things, if you look at them do you see any of the contacts you said you lost?

On clicking, I see 5 accounts listed. One of them is the iCloud account. 3 other accounts have 1-4 contacts listed, one accounts doesn’t show any contacts (and probably never had any included). This account is inactive since 5+ years.

Under the Outlook account (that shows 4 contacts) there is also a line shown that reads ”Outlook Global Address List”, which is empty.

Looks like you have some cleanup to do. For the accounts you do not want to use, go to Settings>Apps>Mail>Accounts. Select the account you wish to turn Contacts off for and you will find the switch. If you are seeing a Global Address List, it would seem you have an Exchange account and those are your Exchange contacts. Don't forget that if you ever leave that company and they turn off your contacts, they will disappear from your device.

Right. Actually, it might be the main issue here. I'm an iPhone user since 10+ years and only now I begin to understand how the <Contacts> app works and what the root cause might have been that I lost so many contact data:

• So far, I only used the contact app by clicking on the <Phone> icon
• I created new contacts by clicking on the Plus <+> icon on the upper right hand corner or used similar functionality provided in other apps, such as WhatsApp.
• By doing so, all new data are entered in the <Default Contact Source>, which I set to <iCloud>.
• I never paid attention to the <List> option on the upper left hand corner and never checked in the past how many contact data actually were included in which source (c.q. email accounts).
• I assumed that all my contact data were stored under <iCloud>, but I can't prove this.
• If they were stored under a different account (such as <Outlook> or <GMail> they still would show up under <All Contacts>, which is what you get when you just click on the <Phone> icon.
• I just noticed today that after a reboot of my iPhorn suddenly the <default settings> for <Contacts> shifted unintentionally from <iCloud> to <Outlook> !
• If I hadn't seen this and corrected immediately, new contacts would have added to the <Outlook> Account.
• Apple only syncs and backs up what's in <iCloud>. It just displays data from other accounts in such a seamless way that I never realised which data are stored where. Even if you edit contact data on the iPhone, you won't notice where the data are actually stored.
• Therefore I see it now as a risk to have <Contacts sync> switched <On> for multiple accounts. It would probably be safer to just have <iCloud> activated as the single source for contacts.
• So, in my case it is possible that I entered and modified contacts data for the last 5+ years that were not stored in iCloud, even I had definitely selected <iCloud> since I got my last iPhone (which is several years ago by now)
• In addition, I had some email accounts deleted over the last 1-2 years.
• >>> Could this have resulted in a situation where my iPhone kept a local copy of the contacts data, even after the email account had been deleted from my phone?
• Then I updated my iPhone from iOS 17.x to 18.5 and a few days later to 18.6. According to my understanding it only re-synced the contacts data from the <iCloud> and those settings that are linked to active <contacts accounts>. Information from previously deleted accounts got lost.
• As a result, some 100+ contacts data were missing ... and I was unable to find them in older versions when restoring contacts data on my Mac via Time Machine.

My conclusion would be (at least for the time being):

• Switch off syncing contacts data with other accounts.
• Only leave <iCloud> sync <On>
• Ensure that <Automatic Backup> is always switched <On> (as it was in my case, but that wasn't enough to prevent the data loss).

>>> I'd appreciate comments whether my thoughts are technically correct and whether any special backups (as Apple Support Staff suggested to me) would have helped prevent this data loss.

There is a big but: Whenever I edited contact information, I often scrolled down to the very bottom. And I never ever noticed that the attributes for <Linked Contacts> had been filled. Now I know that when these fields are filled, the master source is definitely not <iCloud>.

That means that maybe something else happened in my case that caused the data loss? I'd really like to learn if there are other scenarios that could cause <Contacts> data loss, especially because I'm definitely not the only one.

Excuses for the long text. I thought it might be worth it.

Thank you for your response. Yes, it is a little long, but I understand trying to find things. When contacts are in iCloud, they are not a part of your iPhone backup, since they are in iCloud and that is backed up by Apple, they are synced to your device. This is the same for anything that is in iCloud. I'm not positive about contacts that are saved in other email accounts. I cannot guarantee they are backed up when you backup the phone whether it be in Time Machine or iCloud. I wish I knew for sure. So, you can save other contacts in your other lists to iCloud, and I must say that I did that a long time ago and all my contacts are in iCloud. I also use an app called MCBackupPro. It is a paid app, but there is a free version without the word Pro. It will save a number of contacts as an archive, but I cannot remember the threshold where you would need the paid version. They are saved as a vCard file and you email it to yourself for safe keeping. Then if something goes wrong, you can recover all of your contacts from that file. This is how you take all of the contacts on your iPhone and move them to iCloud. Set up and use iCloud Contacts - Apple Support That way they are always in iCloud and are safe. When you get a new phone you just log into iCloud and turn on the switch for Contacts and they all populate. I'm not real familiar with Linked Contacts, so I don't really want to speak to them, but I've seen a lot of posters complain about them. I use Time Machine on my Mac as well, but then It is backing up my Mac, not my iPhone. I let iCloud backup my iPhone. I have a Family Plan with my wife and daughter in it and pay for the 2TB plan and all of our Apple devices are backed up to iCloud. I plug my iPhone, iPad, my wife's phone, and my daughter's iPhone and iPad at bedtime and they are connected to power and automatically backup every night.

I hope I addressed everything you asked, if not, you can come back and chastise me and point out what I missed.

Thanks, that’s very helpful.

I had another look at my contacts that disappeared after the iOS update. It seems that they had one thing in common:

They had been created by using the WhatsApp feature <add to contacts> and <sync contact to phone>. While I was able to use these contact data without any issues for several years and they were even transferred without issues from one iPhone to another, they now disappeared. Very strange. Had they all been stored in an account that I was not aware of and this account had been deleted from my phone? I had successfully updated some of the contact data just a few days before the iOS update.

Or a bug somewhere?

That’s all I can contribute to this subject. Appreciate other people’s views.

That is an interesting thing in common. I do not use WhatsApp, so I'm not aware of anything there. Does WhatsApp have its own contact list area? Hopefully, someone that uses WhatsApp will read this and have a comment.

This article sounds promising to recover lost iPhone contacts that had been created via WhatsApp. Unfortunately, too late for me to try out as I went already through various iCloud and TimeMachine recovery steps. So, I can’t judge on the recommended steps and/or the tools mentioned. I hope it is not just a marketing site.

Anyway, it may be useful for others to have a look at: https://uktechteam.co.uk/recovering-lost-whatsapp-contacts-on-iphone-step-by-step-instructions

Yeah, but I gained a lot of additional insights.

And after all, there is a positive note: I just found back my offline contacts backup, which I did once in the past. It became clear that I didn't lose just 100 but almost 300 contacts. Many of those that I recovered from my local backup could actually originate from one of the accounts that got deleted recently.

I will never be able to find out, but I would really appreciate if Apple would add a simple option in iOS to export all (or selected) contacts as individual .vcf files. All fields, including notes and the profile picture. This would give users an easy, reliable way to stay in control of their own data and backup and transfer contacts to their needs. I'm referring to stories that one of the Apple Support guys was sharing with me, where Apple users were crying on the phone because they lost extremely valuable contact information, which couldn't be recovered from the iPhone or the iCloud. I would say: it is worth the effort, Apple. Please help prevent further data loss for potentially millions of users in future.

BTW, I used for my contacts backup an iXpand USB stick from Sandisk. Contacts data backup is extremely easy and works well. Just did another one and will do so from now on regularly.

What are you syncing your contacts with? Are they still on the server?

I wonder if you possibly had contacts in another email account?

When you open Contacts and look at the upper left corner of the page, what do you see there?

On my iPhone, I do see <Lists> as well.