You add a contact to your iPhone and it’s supposed to show up on all your devices automatically, right? Isn’t that what out iCloud is for? How come only some of my contacts are showing up on my iPhone? Why are only some of my contacts missing? How can I move all my contacts to one place so this problem doesn’t keep getting worse?
I’ll start by clearing up confusion about “The Cloud”, explain why contacts are missing from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod, help you find out where your contacts, calendars, and other personal information is actually stored, and help you change some settings on your iPhone or iPad to get your contacts back under control.
A Little Background Information
When I first heard that my data was stored in “The Cloud”, I pictured all of my contacts, calendars, and notes floating around in white, puffy clouds high above our heads. I’m not sure who told who coined the term, but it is one of the greatest examples of technology marketing lingo of our time.
Why Do We Need A Cloud?
Since we all use multiple devices nowadays, it makes sense that if I add a contact on my computer, I want it to show up on my iPhone and tablet, and if I add a calendar event on my phone, I wanted to show up on my computer.
Sounds great, and it is — but if you don’t know exactly where things are being stored and what clouds all of your personal information is being stored on, you can end up with your personal information distributed across a slew of cloud servers, which makes things really complicated, really quickly.
Wait, There’s More Than One Cloud? Yep!
iCloud isn’t the only cloud in town. Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Exchange, and many more are all types of cloud servers. Here’s the concept behind the cloud, and the key to understanding how it works is as easy as answering this question: Where does my data (contacts, calendars, notes, etc.) live? Is its home on my device (the old way) or on the cloud (the new way)?
The old way was simple: When you saved a contact on your phone, it was saved in memory on that device. End of story. If you wanted to transfer contacts back and forth between your phone and your computer, you had to plug in the USB cable and use iTunes to sync the data.
Using the old way, the contact’s home is on your device. If you delete the contact from your phone, it doesn’t affect the data on your other devices. But, if you drop your device in the toilet (like I did once), all of your contacts go down the tubes.
The new way (using the cloud): When you save a contact on your iPhone or iPad, the contact is saved on a remote server like iCloud, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Exchange, etc., and yes, every one of these is a cloud server! Using the cloud, the contact’s home is on the remote server, not on your device.
If you delete the contact from your phone, it deletes it from the server, and since every device is connected to that same server, the contact is deleted on all your devices. If you drop your phone in the toilet, it’s OK because the data’s home is on a remote server (a cloud), not on your waterlogged phone.
See Why Things Can Get Really Complicated, Really Quickly?
If iCloud, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Exchange, and others can all save your contacts, how do you know where your contacts are actually being saved? A contact is only stored in one place, after all – otherwise there’d be duplicates all over the place, and Apple doesn’t let you make that mistake. That being said, Apple doesn’t help you get organized, either – and that’s why I’m writing this article.
So Where Exactly Is This Cloud?
The concept behind all cloud servers is essentially the same: Build a massive building, fill it with servers and hard drives, and give everybody a little corner of a hard drive. iCloud is actually in North Carolina. In truth, cloud servers aren’t new by any means, and you’ve probably been using at least one for years.
Lots of email providers (Gmail, AOL, etc.) have used the IMAP protocol to synchronize email for over 10 years. Microsoft Exchange has, in essence, been a kind of cloud since day one. It’s only in the past few years that we slapped the cloud label on everything because it sounds cool.
Saying my contacts are stored on iCloud sounds way better than saying they’re stored on iMassiveServerFarm-InNorthCarolina-WithLotsOfHardDrives-OnWhichIHaveATiny-AmountOfSpaceReserved-ThatAppleOwns – but that’s just my opinion.
Cloud servers are great and we use them for two main reasons:
1. Automatic syncing between all devices. Update a contact on your iPhone, it’s updated on your computer. Delete an email on your computer, it’s deleted from your iPhone.
Note: If when you delete an email it doesn’t delete from your other devices, your email provider is probably using the older POP (Post Office Protocol) method for delivering your mail.
2. Automatic backup. Meet a new person, add them to your phone, and drop your phone in the toilet later that day? No worries! (At least about the contact.) Its home is on a cloud server, so if you have to get new phone, it’ll come right back when you set it up.
Hi, David: Ok. So I’m a little late to this party, but this is the first usual information I’ve found about this issue. Thank you! Every other article just focused on the iPhone/iCloud missing contacts. None EVER mentioned the concept of pulling contacts from multiple server locations. Quite honestly, the iPhone storage structure drives me batty. Photos folders keep moving and changing, there is no real “folder naming” on the iPhone, just tagging, so if you look at the raw storage structure, you can’t find your photos. And deleting often means the img_##### name can get reused, which makes manually… Read more »
Thank you so much, this info was a lifesaver 🙂
Wow!!! Can’t thank you enough. I’ve searched the web for days and couldn’t find out why my contacts on my iPad were not showing up when they are clearly on my iPhone. I’ve tried many suggestions – none of which worked. THANK YOU! I not only followed your step by step instructions, I also completely understand WHY I was having this problem. I will print and save this article for future reference. Appreciate you posting this.
Thank you so much!!!!! This was the most useful and easy site I have found with questions about my iproducts!!!! I will be checking in with you often and spreading your good news to all those who will listen. I followed you step by step and it all came together.
Great post! Extremely helpful! I have an iPhone, iMac, and a new iPad. The correct set of contacts is on an Exchange server. I can access them thru my iPhone. I ran setup on the new iPad. I added the Exchange account, but no contacts show up. My old iPad as well as my iMac keep an incorrect set of contacts on a Gmail account. Any thoughts?
Thank you for this!! I had lost only a portion of my contacts and have no idea when an how. Almost purchased an unnecessary data recover program. After reading this article, I realized the contacts I lost were associated with an email account I deleted. Re-associated the account and voila!! Fixed in 2 minutes.
Couple questions please David! 1. I have a load of duplicate contacts somehow. With this as a guide, I’ve narrowed it down to every service (GMail, Yahoo, iCloud, GMail #2, etc.) that contains that contact causes it to be displayed on my Mac when I select “All contacts” or iPhone when I enable all the services (they’re not complete dupes of each other). On my iPhone, I’ll see a contact displayed up to 4x. I want to make iCloud my “source of truth” when it comes to contacts. Can you explain how to do that (is that another blog post… Read more »
You are my hero. I was going insane. Good to know about the different clouds. I just got a new ipad and hadn’t added all my email accounts yet, thus all my contacts weren’t showing up. Thank you again!
My problem is I have lost only some of my (old) contacts in the last few days – they have just disappeared – for example, my daughter and son!!!. I do not have all my contacts in icloud, as it is full and I have not paid to increase its size. SO – how do I find these missing contacts?
AMAZING! thank you so much! I was able to reconcile all my missing contacts.
Thanks, Dave. Ive just stumbled upon you, but already in the space of two articles – and maybe a few side trips to links – I have fixed two problems, overheating and contact syncing. Not to mention I finally understand The Cloud. Oh, and now Apple isnt following me everywhere I go… Cant wait to pass on your website. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Thank you so much! I just bought a new iPad and couldn’t figure out for the life of me why my contacts wouldn’t sync with my iphone. This is much appreciated.
Thanks! I had no idea what was going on. I’ve only got around 15 or 20 contacts in gmail accidentally so I guess I can move them out and shut that down. I wonder why my phone decided to put the there rather than in icloud.
I wish there was an indicator on each contact telling which server it was stored on- like gmail or yahoo or iphone.
I couldn’t figure out why a particular contact entered into my iPhone would not show up on my iPad. After using you diagnostic info, I figured out that it was because I only had an address without a phone number registered for that contact.
Thank you for all your advice
I share it with everyone. You have enlightened me on so much, keep up the good work!
Thank you for taking the time to post this iinformation. It has become so difficult to keep up with the never-ending changes in techno-land. It seems like the designers simply move things around, hide them, so that the device looks new. Unfortunately it only antagonizes the user.
Thank you, your method fixed my problem
Thanks. Exactly what i wanted to know
Fantastic. I’ve struggled goes thinking where on rat jve those contacts gone. Great response. Thank you.
I found this article to be very useful, compact and straight to the point. Answered several of my Outlook questions and well written. Thank you.
Great article. It helped a lot. However when I go to contacts on my iPad it does not offer me a default account, and that is my biggest problem on my iPad. Only some of my contacts show up. . Thank you
Does this article need updating? I found you and have followed you ever since because of the clarity of your writing and instructions. Based on this article, I moved all my contacts to the Gmail Cloud and it worked great! Now with nothing changed that I can tell, excepting IOS upgrades, it ain’t working. Help?
Contacts disappearing on iphone 7 with OS 10.2 And also pictures, mails, calenders, apps docs, This is a big problem and as I can read on the internet in many blog and forum, many people have this issue!!! Already since iphone 4 I bought my new iphone 7 and installed from icloud, Perfect installation and everything is there and works! This is what happened -I add a new telephone number to my iphone contacts to add a friend to Whatsapp. -My iphone Contacts disappear. -My iphone Calenders disappear. -My ipone Fotos disappear. -My Safari Bookmarks disappear. -My Mails disappear. -Several… Read more »
You are a blooming genius! Thank you. I thought I was loosing my mind. Somehow one of my iPads had a different default account than the other, so contacts added on one iPad didn’t show on the other iPad. Fortunately, there were only about 9 so I added them manually and made both ipads use the same account. Bigger issue with the Calendars. Everything before mid 2013 is on Gmail server. All my events after 2013 are on iCloud server. I think I must have chosen a while back to sync only events newer than 1 year previous. I use… Read more »
I left my job yesterday and lost part of my contacts that I saved by hand on my iphone. I’m sure 100% the standard account was another and not the one from work.
So why were my contacts saved there?
Any explanation?
This is a good article indeed, because it gives a warning on a very important moment that we are facing (and it’s yet to come a lot more). I was the first of my friends who started using Google Drive to store my PC apps, personal documents and other sensitive data, with caution, of course. I’ve been using the services of “The Cloud”, but I’m rethinking my consept of storing data, because the “sky is getting too cloudy”. It is a serious issue that we don’t really know WERE EXACTLY our personal information is stored and how can we be… Read more »
I followed your directions and lost all my contacts…. Thanks
Hey Jackie, don’t panic! We never deleted any contacts during this tutorial, so even if you don’t see them on your iPhone, they’re not gone for good. If you can give me a little bit of background information about what you did, I’ll be happy to help you get it straightened out.
I read your article and checked both my iPad and iPhone to make sure the settings were the same and the default account for contacts is iCloud. I also checked my groups and all are checked. Here is my problem: I add a contact on my iPad and it does not go to my iPhone. If I add the contact on my iPhone it does go to my iPad. However, when I go to my iPhone to manually enter the contact, it goes over to my iPad and now showsTWO of the same contact on both devices! Sounds crazy, but… Read more »
Thanks for this. It was missing the info on how to fix the problem on a Mac (such as my Macbook Pro), though. I found the answer though: Open the Contacts app and then go to the dropdown “add account” menu and add in your Google or other email accounts there, as the info is stored on THEIR cloud servers, not iCloud. The fact that those accounts are all set properly in the Mail app to include contacts apparently doesn’t count. You have to add them to the Contacts app.
Thanks for your sharing.
I have encountered the same problem. Thanks to FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery, I have successfully get them back.
And what David Payette said is quite useful too.
You can have a try and hope you can get back your contacts as me.
Thank you for sharing. It was driving me crazy and our IT person did not have solutions. Quick fix.
This SOLVED my problem!!! I have been trying to find a solution for days without having to go to the apple store!! Thanks so much for this it really helped me out! 🙂
What if you have contacts on saved on your iPhone? I have a lot of contacts that are on my iPhone and show up on my iPad without the name attached. I never understood why until I followed the steps. But how do I fix this?
I’d like to point out that if you do find you have your contacts stored across an array of servers, the Mac Contacts application (if you happen to have a Mac) will allow you to add all your accounts as sources. Once you do, you can view them independently. In my case I was able to open, say, my Exchange contacts, highlight and drag them all into iCloud. I hope this helps save someone some time and aggravation!
In step one I discovered that the iCloud account had all my contacts. Google had many, but not all. In step 2, I confirmed that both iCloud and Google are configured to sync my contacts. Here is the real issue – when I logged on to my iCloud account from my PC and checked the contacts, some of teh contacts were not there. How do I ensure that ALL my contacts which are there on my iPhone are there on iCloud? It is important as I might shift to Android (read my comment on your article about heating and battery… Read more »
wow. really awesome.
i am breaking my head why all contacts are not coming to my iphone 6 plus. because i dint config my email yet. so icloud contacts only came to phone. Now going to export mail contact to desktop and import to icloud. its easy to keep all at one place. nice tips. thank you very much
I did the above but I can’t get exchange to show up in my groups on my new phone…
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Another thing to check: you can choose to SORT contacts on either first name or last name. Also you can choose to DISPLAY on first or last name. Use the search option if you don’t “see” your contact. Also if you have a “Group” entry entered in your .live or .msn or other account it will not show up.
Hi, thought you’d want to know that a big (taking over my screen) ad for MacSweeper came up while I was on your site. I don’t know if you have injected files, but you might want to do a scan. I don’t know if it was an anomaly of some ad that came up in the Google ads on your site and I inadvertently touched on it while reading, but thought you should know.
Thank you SO MUCH for these articles – esp. the one to let me back up again to iCloud!!!
Dear Laura,Thank you so much for leaving the comment about the big annoying ad that took over your screen. I do make revenue from advertising, but I would never want to sacrifice user experience to make a few extra dollars. Yesterday I decided to try a new ad network, but I didn’t realize how invasive it was until I saw your comment and checked it out myself. Based on your comment, I’ve permanently disabled that ad network and I’ll never use those types of ads again. I truly appreciate your taking the time to make me aware of this. I’m… Read more »
Good article, thanks for the helpful insights. However, I seem to have a variation of the problem. All of my contacts are in iCloud and visible on my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air, but some don’t have the complete information. Oddly enough, I noticed it with my parents contacts. I see my mom’s basic info on my iPhone, but her home address is missing – same with my dad. Yet, when I look them up in Contacts on my Mac, their home addresses are visible. Is my iPhone deciding what info to display from iCloud? Their home addresses used to… Read more »
Thank you for taking the time to pass on all the helpful information.
Great advice
I bought a Samsung tablet and AT&T put my aol e-mail on it for me, but my contacts did not sync. There isnt even a tab for contacts at the left when I am on it. How do I get Contacts to show up in my email like they do on my computer?
Thanks for your help.
Paula Johnson
[email protected]
David, your article was helpful in some ways, ESPECIALLY in calming down my panic. It’s great to meet people like you who don’t go into panic mode when stuff happens. I unfortunately do!
I have checked some random button because I actually have my AOL contacts listed in my iPhone and iPad, yet they are lost on AOL on my Mac. Can you help?
Thanks this is very helpful. I have 2 Macs, new iPhone and old iPad. I will see if this helps. I have lost 100s of contacts over the past 2 years. Also I synced up with LinkedIn about a year ago. It brought over photos of many of my contacts. About 6 months later I noticed that many of my contacts had the wrong pictures and many had duplicates of wrong pictures. I asked LinkedIn and they said it was a Mac problem and Mac and it was a LinkedIn problem … sounds familiar. Rather than them both wanting to… Read more »
[…] Double-check that all your contacts, calendars, notes, and other personal information is synchronized on iCloud, Gmail, Exchange, Yahoo, AOL, or any other cloud service. If your personal information is stored on the cloud, it won’t be deleted when you restore your iPhone, and it will be immediately come back to your device when you set up those accounts again. To learn more about syncing contacts, calendars, and other personal information on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod, check out my article, Why Are Some Of My Contacts Missing From My iPhone, iPad, or iPod? Here’s The Real Fix! […]