ios 14.3 contacts missing

I have the same issue, this solution did not work for me. I made no changes other than the upgrade to iOS 14.3. Some contacts are shown, most are not. I have 97 contacts showing on my phone, but 733 on my iPad, where I can still see them. I cannot search for contacts, but when I enter the phone number to dial someone, the name shows so the contact is there somewhere. But I am not going to drag my iPad around to have my full contact list.

Well you have a similar issue.

In your ipad and your iphone go to

Settings, Contacts, Accounts

(on older ios it may be in Settings, Passwords and accounts)

Look at the accounts - there must be a difference between how each device is set up.

If they are set up exactly the same (though I doubt it) and if you have access to a computer you can sign into the email or icloud account that hosts your contacts and take a close look at the list. If necessary export them to CSV file and take a look for contacts that are missing and look at the format., You will have to do some proper investigation..

I checked the accounts on both devices. The differences are that my iPhone was set to default account of gmail, my iPad default account of iCloud. I set the iPhone account to iCloud, exited contacts, reopened, still missing contacts. I shut down my phone, restarted, still no contacts. Then for kicks I went into Groups. I don’t use Groups. My gmail was deselected on my iPhone, only my iCloud group was selected. I selected my gmail group, and there are all my 733 contacts. Maybe I deselected this by accident, but I don’t use groups and have no reason to go to that screen. And someone else is having that problem. Possibly a little bug?

Your time, attention and timeliness on this matter is much appreciated. Problem solved!

Go to Settings, Contacts, Accounts.

Check each account and turn on contacts for each.

(for iCloud you need to tap iCloud again)

Have you recently deleted an email account that hosted your contacts?

Glad I could help!