Help with hidden contacts iphone

Any chance you're adding them into a different contact group from the one you're viewing by default in contacts?

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You have mobile me? Try disabling mobile me contact sync from the phone and make sure when it asks what to do with contacts on phone to goose delete, you will then be able to see the hidden contacts as they are stored in the phone and not on mobile me. You can the turn on mobile me contacts sync and get back all your contacts...

tico24 said:

Any chance you're adding them into a different contact group from the one you're viewing by default in contacts?

Click to expand...

Definitely check this.

I've freaked out after doing something just like you and found I wasn't looking in "All Contacts" but rather a group of contacts that was not everyone.

Having a simial issue, but no mobile me acct. what else could it be? I woke up and my contacts were gone too. Did the restore and still missing a bunch. So when I click my contacts icon on the iphone a bunch of my contacts are missing. If I use the search function, the page to the left of the home screen, i can find contacts I've added and ones I'm looking for, but they dont show up under contacts. There're obviously on the phone somewhere, but I dont know where. O and if I add a contact via the contact icon, push the little green plus sign, and add it manually it will show up under the contacts, but if i try and save something from resent calls or maps and say add to contacts, new contact, it doesn't show up. Also if I add a contact to outlook and sink, it wont show up either. Thanks and hopefully this is pretty clear.

jeff369 said:

Having a simial issue, but no mobile me acct. what else could it be? I woke up and my contacts were gone too. Did the restore and still missing a bunch. So when I click my contacts icon on the iphone a bunch of my contacts are missing. If I use the search function, the page to the left of the home screen, i can find contacts I've added and ones I'm looking for, but they dont show up under contacts. There're obviously on the phone somewhere, but I dont know where. O and if I add a contact via the contact icon, push the little green plus sign, and add it manually it will show up under the contacts, but if i try and save something from resent calls or maps and say add to contacts, new contact, it doesn't show up. Also if I add a contact to outlook and sink, it wont show up either. Thanks and hopefully this is pretty clear.

Click to expand...

As mentioned above... Check the contacts group you're in.

If you open contacts, see if there is a <Group| icon in the top left.If so, hit it and make sure you're in the right group. If you are syncing from any Exchange server, you'll see that group. Otherwise you'll see all the groups you have from your computer and you can chose the right one or select All Contacts (I think... Mine sync with Exchange from Google Sync).

Again I really appreciate the response. I'm pretty tech savvy and know my way around my iphone so I think I've done all the basics; everything short of reinstalling everything and starting from new as recommended by apple Tech Sup. Just noticed other people have had or are having the issue, but cant find a final fix. The contacts are obviously on the phone because I can search for them so I was wondering if anyone knew where this other phantom folder is and hopefully I can cut n past the directories.

Sorry if that soundsed a little rude, just annoyed with my phone. Any other ideas. I just restored the software and still doing it.

jeff369 said:

Again I really appreciate the response. I'm pretty tech savvy and know my way around my iphone so I think I've done all the basics; everything short of reinstalling everything and starting from new as recommended by apple Tech Sup. Just noticed other people have had or are having the issue, but cant find a final fix. The contacts are obviously on the phone because I can search for them so I was wondering if anyone knew where this other phantom folder is and hopefully I can cut n past the directories.

Click to expand...

Well, currently there is no app that I know that can hide specific contacts.

Also, I believe all contacts are stored in a database which means that there is no way to cut and paste anything.

Do you have mac or a pc? That'll help determine how they are being synced to your phone.

have a pc and synk with outlook 07

It does say mobileme sync failed when i add a contacty, biut never used momile my, but the guy i bought my iphone did i think, how can i disable it?

ok cool, well thx for all your help... lol

jeff369 said:

It does say mobileme sync failed when i add a contacty, biut never used momile my, but the guy i bought my iphone did i think, how can i disable it?

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Ah, sorry! That's it. MobileMe could do something like that.

Try going into your Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars then if you see a MobileMe account there that doesn't belong, you need to delete it.

I've never used MobileMe but I'm assuming it works like any other exchange account.

This problem still appears to be happening with iOS 4.0.1. I've never added a mobileme account to this phone. I do use google sync to sync with my google account which works just like an exchange account. When I click the <Groups| button in address book, I get only one group called "contacts" which contains all my google contacts. So the problem is that the "All Contacts" group is not listed as a choice in address book. This is annoying because I often add addresses to contacts from the maps app so that I can pick them up in my gps application. Except, the gps app does not see the "All Contacts" group where they get added. As stated by others, the new conacts appear in spotlight searches only b

One thing that I did do before was sync my contacts with my Mac. But I disabled that when I switched to syncing with google. So that may have confused the phone?

So is there really no solution to this? There is no flag somewhere to just show all contacts? I really don't want to reset my phone and lose all the history for this to just happen again one month from now.

Same problem here.

I added a contact and could not find it anywhere unless I did a spotlight search for it. If I started the contacts app cold, after force quitting it, it would open in the "All Contacts" group (which contained my new contact), but if I clicked the "Groups" back arrow, "All Contacts" did not show up.

I had an "All From My Mac", but that is not the same thing, and new contacts on the phone are not added there.

There is definitely a bug here. I "solved" the issue by enabling contact syncing with my google account via an exchange connection (don't know if it makes a difference). I have no contacts saved there, yet when I do this, my "All Contacts" group reappears.

Definitely annoying, and definitely a bug. I have not figured out how to permanently fix this without doing exchange contact syncing.

Missing "All Contacts"

I am having the same problem...the "Genius Bar" at the Apple Store was not helpful, nor did they know of this issue. I have the same issue--I use the Google Microsoft Exchange setup for Email/Contacts/Calendar. In the contacts program, it only shows the Gmail contacts....and no longer shows "All Contacts" or "Contacts on My iPhone". If I turn off the Contacts part of the Sync, then it lets me see the "Contacts on My iPhone" group. As soon as I readd it, it disappears again. I was wondering if anyone has found a solution?

zaph0d said:

This problem still appears to be happening with iOS 4.0.1. I've never added a mobileme account to this phone. I do use google sync to sync with my google account which works just like an exchange account. When I click the <Groups| button in address book, I get only one group called "contacts" which contains all my google contacts. So the problem is that the "All Contacts" group is not listed as a choice in address book. This is annoying because I often add addresses to contacts from the maps app so that I can pick them up in my gps application. Except, the gps app does not see the "All Contacts" group where they get added. As stated by others, the new conacts appear in spotlight searches only b

One thing that I did do before was sync my contacts with my Mac. But I disabled that when I switched to syncing with google. So that may have confused the phone?

So is there really no solution to this? There is no flag somewhere to just show all contacts? I really don't want to reset my phone and lose all the history for this to just happen again one month from now.

Click to expand...

This is the same problem I had with only the "contacts" group and hidden contacts. I have no mobileme and only have an exchange work account and gmail account.

Before I started to fix I had 55 contacts in the "Contacts" group.
I managed to get back to "All Contacts" group to display by going to my exchange account settings and turning Contacts to OFF. This displayed it will delete all exchange contacts from the phone which I ok'd. I was now down to 32 contacts in the group. I then went back to Contacts and Groups and now found I had an extra field "From My PC", still not what I was after. I went back into my exchange settings and turned contacts back to ON, said yes I wanted to keep all other contacts on my phone and yes to the import exchange contacts.

I then went back to the Contacts and Groups section and magically I now have the "All Contacts" group. I selected that and I now have 87 contacts in that group, so it proves there where definitely some hidden contacts somewhere.

Hope this helps others.

i'm having the EXACT same problem!

I don't use mobileme, and only use itunes to sync.

my "All contacts" in my iphone4 has 1912 contacts, yet "All from my Mac" only has "1563".

Syncing between my macbook pro address book and phone only displays the 1563 contacts.

I didn't even notice that they weren't all syncing for months until i tried to reupdate my groups I have set up in address book the other day and realised that a couple of new contacts weren't showing up at all.

Sure I could manually enter those I notice, but where are all the others, and I certainly don't have the time to try figure it out..

I tried opening up a new account on my mac (so I could start fresh without any history or contacts), and went to sync my iphone (i selected merge contacts), which synced fine but again - address book only had the 1500 contacts appear, not the full amount of contracts which are actually on my phone!!!

I have recently made a new group in address book called "recently added", and check in itunes the part where it says "add new contacts to.." (i can't remember exactly what it's called, i can't double check now because im on a work computer which does not have itunes installed), and did a test to see if they update when new contacts are added to address book - and they now do.

but it still doesn't solve my mystery 400 contacts i can't find.

I called Mac tech support, they said hadnt heard of the issue before. my warranty jsut ran out, so for them to open up a docket to look into it, they expected me to resign up for iphone apple care.

this shouldn't be an issue, but it is and it's driving me crazy.

i'd be happy to even be able to export my full contact list so i can copy them in, but that wont work.

help?!?!

I got it!!!

It's ALL to do with exchange syncing.... i didn't even know I had my contacts syncing to my email account (gmail), as I only set it up about 2 months ago and didn't even know it was syncing.. Any contacted I added after that 2 months was getting synced to my gmail email account (something which i never checked in the account under 'contacts').

Upon thorough search i realised ALL those contacts I had been adding (including email addresses I saved) were the mysterious contacts showing in my iphone, but not mac address book.

Solution??

Followed LiqwidX advice below of turning syncing off, which resulted in deleting the nearly 400 contacts! after freaking out about it (as all contacts was now gone), i went into my actual gmail occount on my computer and found those contacts still there. so - i Highlighted/checked all contacts, went to "more actions", "export", and saved as a vCard format (nearly 400 contacts) called "hidden contacts".

by then trying to open that vCard "hidden contacts", it automatically goes to add them to my current address book which was about 1500 contacts, thus bringing it to my total i was after!

quick sync of phone via itunes, and voila - they're all there!

thank you thank you thank you!!

Weird email addresses on iphone

Very weird hidden contact problem. I opened up a new email. When I started typing in a contact, a weird email address popped up that I had never seen before. It wasn't even a contact name just an email address with nothing attached to it. But when I type in that weird email address into my contacts or into my search bar, it doesn't come up. I'm very creeped out by this and very confused to how that could have happened. It appears to not be anywhere on the phone except for when I am creating a new email. Help with this anyone?