Contacts not restoring from backup on iPhone and iPad after iOS 18 update

Many of my contacts have been deleted after iOS 18 install. Apple suggested a restore from iCloud, did so, the contacts did not come back and I had reset a lot of personal preferences after.

Very disappointed with Apple right now.

Update: This fixed my issue..

Go to Settings > Tap iCloud > Find Contacts > Toggle it off if it is on > Choose keep on my iPhone, and then toggle it on again; While if it is off, turn it on > Then iCloud will ask you what would you like to do with existing local contacts on your iPhone > Tap on Merge. And your contacts will get back again.

This is absolutely awful. What an incredible and unnecessary problem to now have to deal with. In my opinion, this is unforgivable. My current iPhone will be my last.

I tried this and it didn’t work!

Tell Apple, a restore from iCloud did not work for me.

This is a huge disaster.

Apple asked me which contacts I lost. My reply was, ‘He’ll, I used to have over 3000 contacts and now only 2000+.’ How am I supposed to know who is missing until I look for a contact and it’s not there.

This worked for me, but my situation is different. It happened on my MacBook after updating my iPhone SE to OSX18. My phone was not affected.

I unticked “Contacts” on my iCloud account. That was it, my contacts reappeared! Later, I reticked them.

Previous to 18 I believe all contacts were only associated with an email address. Your iCloud default email address that comes with an Apple ID if you use iCloud and synch contacts were the list that you had manually inputted in your phone.

All of your other contacts were synched with your email addresses

example blah@gmail.com

or blah@yahoo.com or any other email address. You used to go to settings, internet accounts, and then add your email account there.

With iOS 18 you go to settings, apps, mail, and add your account there.

The issues arise when 3rd party email hosts have now added a layer of security by asking your email account to generate a specific third party password for iOS mail. Now this has not worked for many people. When you add for example a Turbify business email to apple iPhone mail, there is not option to synch contacts.

I don’t know if this is Turbify (which is actually yahoo business mail with a different name). Or that iOS 18 has split the places where contacts are brought into the iPhone.

Now when you go to contacts there is a section on iPhone for accounts. Well you can be logged in to your business Turbify email, but no contacts are showing up.

The work around that seems archaic and medieval:

go on the web to your web host login page, login to your respective email account, go to contacts, select all, click export. (If you are on a mac, or have a more advanced web host you can export to VCard). If you are on a PC and your webhosting is not that great either, your only export option is a .csv file that opens in excel, numbers or google sheets.

At least you can get access to your contacts now. You don’t have to manually input them.

Now go to iCloud.com, login to iCloud using your Apple ID and password. Go to contacts, in the far right corner click on the plus sign. If your contacts were exported in vCards, go to the place you saved them on the computer and upload them. You may have to do this one vCard at a time. (At least today I had to do that on a PC for a client but haven’t tried it on a mac yet.) If you only have a .csv file you have to convert that excel spreadsheet .csv file to vCards. There are some free vCard creators and there are paid. I haven’t settled on one that o like yet but you will have to convert the .csv file to vCards and then follow the iCloud instructions above. Now, make sure your iPhone or iPad has /contacts turned on to synch with iCloud so that the iCloud.com (basically your mother ship to all of your other apple devices) will be in iCloud and mirror out to all your apple devices where you have logged in to your Apple ID. I am super upset with difficult third party web hosting, and for apple for splitting something up and not realizing the limitations of email web hosts, and thinking that this upgrade would be ok. I still have to convert try clients .csv files to vCards. What I truly don’t understand is why anyone at apple in the stores or when you call them, why they can’t ask people what email addresses they used to have on their iPhone and then telling them to re-add those accounts. My client had called apple and been to the Apple Store and they said there was nothing they could do. I am losing faith in apple. This seems pretty basic. Hopefully this helps some of you recover your contacts. My client was over the moon that at least I had a spreadsheet for him. This is a small business. I have never listed in these forums but I couldn’t find anything like what I am writing. Good luck and I hope this information is helpful to anyone.

I wonder if it isn’t a list issue. I’ve had a similar problem after restoring contacts; The All Contacts list was not selected and was pointing to another list.

Didn’t work for me either!

I think that if you untick contacts from the cloud, it removes them from the cloud and leaves them all on your device - effectively downloading them. This is different to a backup. I’m a newbie on this and may not understand it perfectly. Am I correct?

The contact lists do seem to be an issue. I was puzzling over why I could only see 5 people in my contacts. Eventually I discovered that I was looking at a sub list. Somehow I got back to all contacts, but it wasn’t obvious how to do that. Check the title of the contacts list you are looking at, to see if it’s All Contacts.

I didn’t know sub lists existed, did the update create them?

I had the same issue happen to me and it was because only my iCloud account was showing and not the contacts in my various email accounts. This is what fixed it:

Go to settings…then apps…then contacts….then contacts accounts and make sure each account has the contacts settings turned on …..all of your contacts will show up.

I updated 18.1.1 last week mend and lost my yahoo email and my contacts. I was abke(after 3 hrs on AT&T) to get my email. But I could not get my contacts. I have read here how some of you were successful. Please post the like or share what you did successfully. 12-4-2024

I have fixed it. Go to settings and under mail, add your iCloud email account if it isn’t already, and any other email accounts you may have. And make sure contacts is turned on for each account. And your contacts are back!

I found a solution or hopefully it is for you. Go into settings search up mail go into it and add at the iCloud email account if it's not already in there and any email account that you own I'm going to each one to make sure the contacts tab is turned on. The other option is to sign into icloud.com and go into data recovery and go to contacts and pick a prior backup of contacts on a date! Hope this helps