How do I recover missing contacts on iPhone?

"Missing contacts on iPhone: My iPhone seems to have randomly lost several of my regularly used contacts. I tried turning iCloud off and back on to “merge” contacts but this did not fix it. What happened? Please help. Thank you."

-------

Troubleshooting Missing Contacts:

Some things to try...

A. Enable Contacts in iCloud Settings:

See If “Contacts” is somehow disabled in settings across all of your devices.

• If it is disabled, then enable it.
• If it is enabled, then disable it and then re-enable it.

B. Retrieve Contacts from Other Devices:

Have a Mac?: Enable Contacts in iCloud on both your iPhone and Mac, and then search through using either device. Using a computer may be more user-friendly when searching through Contacts.

C. Also, Try the Following:

• Archive the Contacts you Store in iCloud - Apple Support

• If your iCloud Contacts, Calendars, or Reminders won’t Sync - Apple Support

• Restore Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, and More Using iCloud.com - Apple Support

“How do I recover missing contacts on iPhone?: My history of calling/texting the contact is there, but it only shows a phone number from the person. No contact is saved in my phone.”

———-

Thanks for the followup reply.

Extract and Archive your Contacts:

Have any device that is not booted up yet, that itself has access to your Contacts? If so, power off your router, and then try exporting them. The goal here is to avoid synchronization with Apple’s servers. Go here: Export or archive contacts in Contacts on Mac - Apple Support

"I will try to back up later. I have an old Mac laptop. It is also linked to the same Apple account. I could back up to it???: Also when I have extra hours of my life to spare, I will be called Apple support back. A few contacts I resaved in my phone have already been deleted again. This is very frustrating that Apple did not believe I was not at fault. The update did nothing to stop this."

-------

Losing Contacts:

Loss of data is something you would have agreed to upon opening an Apple Account. So, take this as a lesson, knowing to always back up your iPhone to a computer (Mac or PC); that way, you can have something to restore it from, should anything go wrong. Note that almost always you can only restore to the same iOS that is currently installed on your device.