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Resolved [iOS 5] Contacts gone after syncing with iCloud.

Nikos

Nikos

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 20, 2008
1,651
323
New York
I just enabled iCloud and turned contacts on, so that they sync. All of my contacts were deleted from my phone. I'm pretty sure it asked if I wanted to merge them, and I said yes, as I didn't want any deleted or overwritten.

Has this happened to anyone else? Am I doing something wrong? Trying to avoid restoring again.
 
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Nikos said:
I just enabled iCloud and turned contacts on, so that they sync. All of my contacts were deleted from my phone. I'm pretty sure it asked if I wanted to merge them, and I said yes, as I didn't want any deleted or overwritten.

Has this happened to anyone else? Am I doing something wrong? Trying to avoid restoring again.
Click to expand...

this happened to me, if you go into messages and make a new one and start typing a contacts name do they appear?

basically flick the contacts toggle to off again, wait til its done turning it off, then flick it back on and you should have them back. it's a little glitch where they don't appear in contacts, but have not actually gone. think it just takes a few mins for contacts to appear on the cloud
 
andythursby said:
this happened to me, if you go into messages and make a new one and start typing a contacts name do they appear?

basically flick the contacts toggle to off again, wait til its done turning it off, then flick it back on and you should have them back. it's a little glitch where they don't appear in contacts, but have not actually gone. think it just takes a few mins for contacts to appear on the cloud
Click to expand...

They don't appear when I start typing them. I've tried flicking it on and off but to no avail. :eek:

Maybe a restore is in order.
 
Ended up restoring from a backup. Seems to be working this time. Must have been a weird glitch.
 
Same happened to me. When i woke up this morning, i saw all my contacts are gone. I switched off contacts in icloud and it asked me if i wanted to keep or delete the previously synced contacts on the phone. I said keep. Bam! They all came back.
 
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Experienced the same thing after syncing, my entire phone book was cleared out with names remaining in Messages. I went into the 'Contacts' app and refreshed, it crashed out but all my contracts came back.
 
So, what will happen now?

If we turn on syncing contacts with iCloud, the contacts are going off the phone. So, it's useless.

If we don't sync contacts, then we won't have the backup of the contacts. So iCloud is useless for contacts.

So now?
What should we do to both keep contacts on the phone and on the cloud, updated? Any ideas?
 
Same thing happened to me, after a rather troublesome install of iOS 5. I had to install it three times, before it finally worked and then the sync looked to be a success but iTunes said it failed.

Anyway, everything in the phone worked besides the contacts. I couldn't see them in phone app or contacts app, but names remained in messages. So I flicked contacts in iCloud off and on, went to the phone app, which crashed, but upon its return the contacts reappeared.
 
Contacts gone on my wife's iPhone4, not mine...

Anyway, everything in the phone worked besides the contacts. I couldn't see them in phone app or contacts app, but names remained in messages. So I flicked contacts in iCloud off and on, went to the phone app, which crashed, but upon its return the contacts reappeared.
Click to expand...

Same with my wife's phone on entering the iCloud, but curiously not mine. Toggled contacts on and off in the iCloud settings on the phone, no return of the contacts. Turned phone off, after killing the contacts app along with the phone and messaging apps. No contacts back.

Would love some ideas - not sure if a restore from iTunes will do the job either... :confused:
 
If you go to settings, then to mail, contacts and calendars, scroll down and press the button that says Import SIM Contacts. worked for me!
 
In there under iphone contacts...

I have this same issue. In the contacts app i see them under "iphone contacts" but not all contacts. Odd...

Nothing has worked so far


EDIT - nevermind. closing out contacts app, turning off icloud contact syncing (keeping contacts), turning off phone, turn back on, icloud back on (merge all) and they were there. problem solved.

Thanks!!!
 
Very helpful, thanks!

capsones said:
Same happened to me. When i woke up this morning, i saw all my contacts are gone. I switched off contacts in icloud and it asked me if i wanted to keep or delete the previously synced contacts on the phone. I said keep. Bam! They all came back.
Click to expand...


Was in a panic this morning after an OS5 update yesterday when no contacts were appearing on the phone. Followed your steps above and got them all back. Thank you!
 
thanks Alexander

Just found this thread because I had the same problem. Fixed it with Alexander's 5-step plan. Thanks for that.
 
Recurring steps?

Alexander897 said:
1.Tap Setting on the home screen and Tap iCloud option in it.

2.Now, toggle the Contacts switch to Off.

3.Now, Sync your Contacts with your Mac or a PC. Just connect your iDevice to your computer, fire-up iTunes, and enable Contacts Sync. (Hope you know this already!)

4.Now, your contacts will be synced to your computer’s AddressBook. You are half way through the process now. On your phone, go to Settings > iCloud and toggle the Contacts switch to On! This will enable Contact sync on your device.

5.Now, the phone will ask you if it can Merge the contacts that are already on the phone. Just click Merge. And you are done. Youe contacts are on the Cloud now.
Click to expand...

Hi, this was very helpful many thanks. But question: do we need to do it again and again every time we want to sync iphone contacts with the computer's address book?
 
Iphone 4 and i cloud

My Grand daughter managed to delete all my contacts from her Ipod,she was not even at my house she was with her father in the truck, she had synced her ipod with my phone and when she told me had all my contacts I got annoyed and told her to delete them out now....she did so when my husband rang it was an unknown number. Took awhile but worked it out ...my icloud is shut down and will never be used again.
 
Contacts Gone - AppleCare Level 2 Support still working problem

I tried everything listed above and the Contacts will "reappear" after turn iPhone off and back on (with or without iCloud Contacts turned OFF) ... but whenever I select "Groups" it list NO Groups other than ALL CONTACTS ... when that is select ALL CONTACTs are missing except for only 1 Contact (my own phone number). I've restored phone back to default and recreated as essentially a Brand New iPhone. Then refreshed phone from several different backups. All have same behavior. CONTACT "disappear" when Group is selected. ARRRRG!!

Anyone else with any solutions. this seems like a HUGE bug to me.:confused::mad::(

doug in Texas
 
What the ****

THIS HAPPENED TO ME TODAY!!!
I did not even plug my iphone into the computer, it sat on a counter all day. Now, all of the sudden, it replaced all my contacts with contacts from my Hotmail account, but I never told it to anything of the sort.

Now when I try to restore from a backup, it syncs only the apps and not the contacts?? WTF??
Text me at 305-898-4565 if you have any ideas what the problem could be.
 
So much for iCloud

I'm a PC-Mac switcher. I've had an iphone for over 2 years and when iOS5 came out I decided to "just say NO" to the cloud. Just bought a new Macbook pro 5 days ago and was on the phone with Applecare for a while making sure I had all music files on the new Mac with playlists. Good there and synced with phone no problems. (Had to do with NTFS formatted HD from Windows)

Today, I decide I better jump on the iCloud bandwagon and turned it on for Contacts on the phone. An hour later I go to send a text and about half my contacts are gone!!! I have tried all of the above that doesn't require the actual laptop cause I'm at work. I KNOW that they were there after the iTunes Sync and before I turned on iCloud, so it had to be iCloud that did it. When I get home I'm going to root around and see if I can locate the contacts that had been syncing with Outlook on my dead PC.

So much for "Everything is just EASIER on a mac!" :mad::mad::mad:
 
I never activated the cloud. Had Aton of contacts but the very few I added manually disappeared after I synced with the cable. They are not on the iPhone and not on the mac. Tried the steps but it didnot work for me. Any ideas?
 
So I have a 4s and I started backing up my contacts and pictures but while it was doing it, I look at my messages and all my names are gone, while the numbers are still there. That's when I cancelled the backup because I got worried.
A few contacts are left in the contacts list but most are gone. It's real strange, I've tried the toggling, doesn't work, but I know they're in there since they appear when I start typing a name for a new text. Then when I select the name is becomes a number rather than the name.
Any help?:confused:
 
APPLE! fix this bug!

This crazy bug has been happening to me since my iphone 4... so many IOs updates and phone changes have failed to address this problem. I am getting real tired of re-entering my contacts manually (mindless pass-time while waiting for trains) as no fixes or work around seem to work... icloud hopeless in restoring... Surely somebody out there must have some answers that work!? The apple response says to reset phone then restore from backup - if only that worked!
 
I just bought an iPhone 4S. (OS 8.2)
I wanted to arrange my contacts into groups. Since this function was only possible to create through iCloud I signed up and synched. My iPhone contacts nicely appeared on the iCloud. Then I made groups and put the desired contacts into each group. So far so good. The group buttons even appeared on my iPhone, but when I tried to access each added group they were empty, no contacts, even though they appeared fine on iCloud.
Did some searches on how to fix this. Tried some suggested solutions. Like turn Settings > iCloud > Contacts off and on again. BIG mistake! It deleted ALL my contacts! But, since they still appeared on the iCloud I thought I'd just simply import them bck to my iPhone. Nope. Wouldn't happen. No matter what I did they were GONE from my Phone.
Once I was over the worst despair and had accepted my fate of having to put in each contact again, I disovered that the +/ADD CONTACT button AND the group button had vanishied completely! At this point I was pretty much losing it.

Changing Settings > iCloud > Contacts to ON which seems to help most people who have had this problem did nothing. In the end I was so paniced I pretty much turned all settings even remotely connected to iCloud off so at least it couldn't do MORE damage and gave up for the day.

But I did one more thing that before I was gonna turn my phone off and put it away until I could deal with it again which turned out to be my salvation:
I decided to write a text to my man just to check if at least Messages worked.
I put in the number manually since all my contacts were gone.
Then pressed Details > info (i in a circle) button, and lo and behold! From there I could add a contact!!
I went to Contacts to see it was really true, that I had actually managed to add it, and I had!
And suddenly, while I was looking at this lonely just added contact ALL my missing contacts reappeared along with the +/ADD CONTACT button!

It all came back from adding a contact through messages rather than Phone or Contacts.

Hope this helps someone else if the old Changing Settings > iCloud > Contacts to ON doesn't work for you either. Good luck in MacHell!

I'm never touching iCloud again that's for sure!
 
I use Google for my contacts.

And the Groups app to add/edit/delete groups directly on my iPhone.

Makes it a hell of a lot easier to load contacts to any new device or computer regardless of platform or OS.

Apple making things simple is great, but it's so proprietary that it's a PITA to move things between non-iOS/Mac devices.
 
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