
How Can I Restore Deleted Videos on iPhone
The moment you realize your iPhone contacts disappeared with "No contacts" displaying can be nerve-wracking. You may find there're no longer names but just numbers in Messages conversations, and no numbers in Contacts anymore—they are all gone. Or perhaps you realize your contacts are suddenly lost from address book after iOS update.
Don't despair! A couple things you can try.
The disappearance of iPhone contacts can be caused by several issue such as software update, iTunes restore or sync, device jailbreak, iPhone restart issue, and other reasons.
Whatever the reason your contacts on iPhone disappeared, there're a few standard solutions to fix this problem manually. We will start with some quick fixes to get back the contacts, since this way commonly works for users who have enable iCloud contacts sync on the device. As a last resort, you may want to turn to iPhone Data Recovery to find missing contacts on the device itself.
First, check the obvious points. Are you sure you're using iCloud for Contacts before the contacts list disappear from iPhone? If so, do the following:
It's possible that your contacts have not disappeared; they are just not showing up properly. Try toggling Contacts in iCloud off and then on again in Settings to reload them from iCloud. Here's how to do that.
Remember, make sure your device is connected to Wi-Fi network. Give it a couple of minutes, and then check the contacts in the iPhone's address book to see if they're now showing up. If the contacts do not come back after switching Contacts off and on in the iCloud setting but no avail, you need to try next troubleshooting tip.
Go to icloud.com using computer web browser, and sign in with your Apple ID and passcode. Click on Contacts app and make sure the missing contacts are there. If they're in iCloud, but not on the device, it's advised that you simply sign out of iCloud on your iPhone, restart it, then log back in.
It may take a while to download contacts from iCloud onto iPhone.
Basically, when you're using iCloud Contacts to syncing contacts list over to iCloud, you will also get an archive for them in which case you can restore the archive to the device in order to recover the disappeared contacts. This may work, but you will lose the contents since the archive was last made.
Once it's completed, go back to Contacts app on iPhone and see if they're now showing up.
How many email accounts for contacts do you have? What is your default contacts account? Did you ever delete an email account you're using to store contacts?
Unlike other data, iPhone gives you the options to sync contacts to elsewhere like Google, Outlook, yahoo, Aol, Exchange, etc., not just iCloud. So the disappeared contacts may be associated with another account and the account has been changed in some way, or even worse, deleted from iPhone. The contacts information in one account is different from the other, for instance, some contacts don't show profile pictures and company names.
To solve the problem with iPhone contacts disappeared from the device is check to make sure all groups of contacts are showing in the Contacts app. It's best to set iCloud as the default account.
First, go to Settings > Contacts > Accounts, tap on each account and enable Contacts. Then,
When contacts disappear from Contacts app, they will be still in the Messages app and other messaging apps, but only presented with phone numbers instead of the contacts names. This works only if you remember the phone number with the person you texted to and from, or called to and from.
If you can locate the lost contact you want to recover, add it as a contact back to the Contacts app.
If the above simple tips do not help, then your 'disappeared' contacts are likely gone.
Or perhaps you don't know how else to recover lost contacts if there were only on the iPhone.
There's often little that you can do yourself—professional data recovery services are usually required. With iPhone Data Recovery, recovering a disappeared contacts list should be a simple trip.
Don't open iTunes or sync with it after you lose iPhone contacts, to prevent any backup files from being updated or replaced the newly added contacts on the phone.
The program works intelligently and finds full list of contacts on the iPhone. What you need to do is connect you phone to the computer, scan the device, select some or all of contacts to retrieve, and you're done. The process will not overwrite any data in the memory. Let's start.
Run the software, and plug your iPhone into the computer via USB. Then click Start Scan button.
The smart utility begins scanning all data on the iPhone, including disappeared iPhone contacts. You sit back and wait until the process finishes.
Once done, you should get an overview window like this:
From the left panel, click "Contacts" option to display existing and lost contacts of your iPhone. You can see the contacts names, company names, phone numbers, and emails, as well as a contact card on the right panel if you click on one contact.
Select all disappeared iPhone contacts by ticking the checkboxes, and click Recover button.
The pop-up window will ask you to change the output folder if needed.
Finally, click Recover button.
The software will then recover the address book and save the contacts into CSV, HTML, VCF file respectively.
Now you can browse through the contacts disappeared from iPhone on the computer. You can add it back to your phone by emailing yourself.
The last resort is, recovering contacts from an iTunes (Finder) backup, or an iCloud backup. Have you backed up your iPhone since your contacts disappeared? If you've done so, the contacts would have been part of your iPhone.
Restoring from a backup should restore lost address book, but you lose what you have on the iPhone that's added since after the backup happened.
If you would like to restore just contacts from a backup, instead of anything, you can use iPhone Data Recovery application to accomplish this.
If you have enabled iCloud sync for contacts, they're not in the backup. So this makes no sense to perform a restoration even for testing.
You can do this as follow:
When everything is done, go back to Contacts app, and it should display the contacts you're looking for.
If you're used to do backups of your whole phone via iTunes or Finder in macOS Catalina or later, the contacts missing from iPhone should be included in the backup. Simply restore the iTunes/ Finder backup to the device.
First open iTunes or Finder, click Edit > Preferences, and under Devices tab, deselect the option for 'Prevent iPods, iPhone, and iPads from syncing automatically' in case your last backup is overwritten.
This will restore your iPhone with the old backup, overwriting anything that's not in the backup. But at least, any contacts disappeared from iPhone are presented in the address book.
At first, it might seem like your iPhone contacts are disappeared (the contacts in Favorites list are lost as well). However, with the culprits figured out and the solutions mentioned above, you should successfully get back the missing contacts, especially those critical one time, in-person contacts.
In most cases, the issue is fixed by turning iCloud contacts sync off and back on, signing out of iCloud and back in, changing group settings to display all contacts, finding disappeared contacts in messages app and then saving it back to Contacts app, as well as utilizing the third-party software to scan iPhone's memory and find the disappeared contacts.
If any other method worked, feel free to let us know.
If you've gone through all the recommended steps and can't seem to fix the problem, you may need to contact Apple Support for additional assistance.