Contacts have all but disappeared on iPhone and MobileMe

[mikizee]

This one has gotten me stumped. (I'm using an iPhone 4 on 4.3)

Last night I was typing a text message and noticed that the recipient's name wasn't listed... hang on... none were listed! Except for my girlfriend's name under 'favourites'. (her name disappeared as well 5 minutes later).

There were only 4 contacts left, 2 of which I had added within a couple of weeks ago. A new contact was there, myself complete with my profile picture from my girlfriend's macbook pro, and Apple Inc which i saw had popped into my contacts recently as well.

So let's backtrack... About half an hour before I had logged into my girlfriend's macbook pro under my profile. I noticed in the Mac App store there was an update for some crappy game my girlfriend had installed, but when I went to update it told me it couldn't as it was for her apple id not mine.

I sync my iPhone to another computer, a PC. Last backup I did was 8/20/11, so a while ago. I don't want to restore to that backup if it can be helped.

I logged into web MobileMe and found that only the 4 same contacts were listed there as well. Screwed.

I went to system preferences on the macbook and into Mail, Contacts, Calendars and my me.com account was listed there, but mentions only mail, calendars. It used to say Mail, contacts, calendars. I then went into MobileMe in system preferences and saw that contacts under sync options is definitely checked. So what's going on there? I also had a look at the address book and it lists the same 4 contacts.

I have contacted MobileMe support and it has been escalated but nothing is going to happen until Wednesday Australian time.

I can download a program called iPhone Backup Extractor so I can retrieve my contacts from an old backup, but I was hoping to tap into the collective knowledge of this place to see if I can get any suggestions/help.

Any ideas anyone?

 

[aviram608560]

hey dude..

happened to me 2 i think u have restore your old backup and theres no escaping from it.. i wish i coud have better news but in fact they are worse:

after restoring like i told you to do my contacts were again erased at ther blink of an eye, after a few times they did not erase themself anymore

might be a memory leak of some sort but i dont think so cause i had enough space on my phone at all times

 

[mikizee]

An update to this story...

MobileMe support accessed my account this morning.. and shortly after I found I had all my contacts back. Hooray!!

So I immediately made a fresh backup onto itunes, then started investigating what was going on.

I logged back into my girlfriend's macbook pro, and checked all mobileme settings, they all seemed fine. I opened Address Book expecting to find all my contacts there as well, but no, there was only 4 there!!

THEN - I checked my phone 5 minutes later and all but 4 contacts had gone missing again. Same on MobileMe.

So why the hell is Address Book not syncing properly with MobileMe? It seems to be able to send out info to MobileMe, thus deleting all my contacts again, but not the other way around...

Anyway I restored to this morning's backup, and all my contacts have appeared on my phone and MobileMe web again.

I deleted my MobileMe account off the macbook pro until I can figure out what the hell is going on.

Any ideas?

 

[ronainsworth68]

Nooooooooo

This same thing happened to me yesterday. I was driving home from work and received a txt with name. By the time I got to my house all my contacts were gone. What ever happened took place while I was on the road.

Apple support seems to be at a complete loss about this. As if this wasn't bad enough, my Time machine backup doesn't want to launch so I can't restore the contacts.