Sudden disappearance of contacts on iPhone

I have to disagree with all the responses stating it might be because of an old email account no longer syncing. I have four email accounts attached to my iphone. All are syncing. I have tried all the suggestions below and nothing is working. It potentially finds those that I am missing when I type in the name-because Siri makes a 'suggestion' bsed on conversations with the individuals on text/WhatsApp. That's all well and good if I know who is missing-I can then re-save the contact, not ideal but possible. However, what about all the contacts that I don't know ae missing?? I'm being prompted today to do a software update but am reluctant to do it in case anything else goes wrong!

Bagpuss5 wrote:

I have to disagree with all the responses stating it might be because of an old email account no longer syncing.

A couple of people have reported that it is their problem. It is likely that this is not one single problem but a couple of different ones with the same symptoms.

Having the same issue. Happened at the same time mid August. Huge loss of the last 4-5 years of new contacts.

Spent a large amount of time on the phone to Apple who claimed they'd not heard of the issue. My default contact save was my outlook account and they closed the case and asked me to take it up with Microsoft.

The outlook account is still live and the contacts aren't there. Microsoft can't help.

No solution.

Missing 400+ client and staff details.

Huge impact on my business.

Help!! Is this an Apple based issue?

Tried everything suggested in this thread to no avail. All my previous email addresses etc still active and logged in.

This group proves this is a widespread issue.

I also face the same issue that happened from 7 to 8Sept2025.

I log into my 4 accounts and random contacts including all last contacts are missing on all of them, iCloud, Microsoft personal, Gmail and Microsoft business.

I have a backup that’s is 3 months old in iCloud but I didn’t manage yet to restore due to missing spare phone. I wonder if it will bring back those deleted contacts up to my last backup 3 months ago. Has anyone tried a restore to previous backup? if yes did it resolve the issue? Did you manage to see all deleted contacts to the backup date?

On a side note, I see no logic on these deleted contacts, I have contacts older then 5y ago deleted but also all recent contacts and I have no clue about a rational to justify this which is the worst, hundreds people with same issue and no rational to explain it? Support can’t check update logs? I work with software teams and this is mind blowing! While a bug or human mistake are bad but at least it could justify this issue, the worst is still not knowing the root cause, it totally shakes my trust over apple.

I agree that having contacts spread multiple accounts is dangerous as you well said, but:

a) does iOS (or iCloud) have such wonderful feature or else how to move them all to iCloud automatically?

b) isn’t it too much coincidence so many people complaining about the same issue within a specific time period? (And I’m not saying about the less literate IT people).

Many thanks in advance for any help or guidance.

This reply sounds like going to doctor with a pain and doctor saying it’s because of stress and lifestyle.

Believe or not I work on IT and am a

technical person, for over 20y I use the same email address (even before iPhone existed) and no new neither old emails were created, used or removed.

While I understand some people less IT savvy create new emails and later on they experience this issue because they get deleted or sunset, this is not my case.

im waiting for a spare iPhone to restore a old (3 months old backup) hoping I can recover most of contacts because seems apple doesn’t want to

assume some issue happened and disclose it. There’s simply too many people sharing the same experience to be a one person issue.

I just noticed that all the information I had underneath my contacts, such as the address, email, birthday, etc., had disappeared today also. I was mailing a card and needed an address and when I went to look, there was nothing there so I looked at some others and it was all gone. I thought it might be because I had downloaded iOS 26, but I don’t know. I know that was a massive change and it seems to have changed simple things that I do every day. I did back up my phone to my computer 3 days ago but not to iCloud. I have terabytes on my laptap so plenty of space therefore I back it up there.

Do we know why it disappeared and did it have something to do with the latest IOS? Is that the only thing that has disappeared or will I find other things? I appreciate any help. Thank you so much!

Anybody find any solutions? It seems to be ongoing. Perhaps linked to Outlook in my situation but it's an active, current account. The contacts missing spans decades of use, not isolated to old nor recent. Sure wish Apple would step up and address the issue! Never even thought about this being a problem paying for iCloud and being a devote Apple consumer for decades. Makes one have second thoughts about trusting them with all this valuable information.

Can we get an answer as to why the contacts list on our phones seems to have disappeared when syncing to our Mac's .... Maddening that adopting Apple for everything, including my PC, caused an issue that is so much like the issues we all had with MS for years and years!!

So many of us have lost our main contacts lists!! Please provide some real help Apple!

Hi,

Similar case with me. There is no Settings > Contacts available at all in my phone. More so, when I’m typing “contacts” in search bar in Settings, the app is shown in the results, but I’m able to open when clicked.

Kakok wrote:

Hi,

Similar case with me. There is no Settings > Contacts available at all in my phone. More so, when I’m typing “contacts” in search bar in Settings, the app is shown in the results, but I’m able to open when clicked.

You need to look under Settings>Apps>Contacts.

Any updates on this issue? I just encountered the same problem today, and none of the suggestions worked. It’s strange because I have some newer contacts still listed, but others are missing that I’ve added over the last several years.

Hello, today is 5 November, from yesterday to today this exact same **** thing re-happened again (last time was from 7-8 September! It’s outrageous! I’ve spent numerous hours going through WhatsApp history to identify conversations and add contacts manually, and now the exact same thing re-happened!

I don’t want to believe this! Of course I got no solution from 1st time and now 2nd time.

has anyone got the same issue re-occurring again?

Can’t believe this issue still hasn’t been fixed. I have around 1,000–2,000 contacts saved from 2019 until now, and NEARLY ALL of them just disappeared. I didn’t do anything unusual with my phone, and there was no notification at all. The contacts were simply gone, leaving only 12 that I saved about two weeks ago.

I could lose my job because of this. It’s frustrating, hopeless, and disappointing.

Following as I am experiencing the same issue.