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!!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 👍

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.

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.