We always rely on contacts to keep in touch with our family, relatives, friends, colleagues, clients or commercial partners. So it is quite annoying when iPhone contacts disappeared or lost due to various reasons, such as mistaken deletion, failure of iOS upgrade or iPhone jailbreak, factory settings restore, etc. Read on as we sum up four free and practical approaches to get contacts back on iPhone.
Method 1: Get Back iPhone Contacts via iCloud if You Set up iCloud Sync Before
Log in to iCloud via a web browser on PC by navigating to http://www.icloud.com. Click on Contacts icon to check if the iPhone contacts you need exist in your iCloud account or not. If there are, you have three options. Option 1: Synchronize iPhone with iCloud contacts. Go to iPhone > “Setting” > “iCloud” and turn on “Contacts” switch. Later, it will load the contacts on your iCloud account to iPhone. Option 2: Export iCloud contacts onto your computer. When logged in iCloud Contacts on PC, select all contacts by pressing Ctrl + A. Next, click on the cogwheel in the lower-left corner and select “Export vCard…”. The contacts will be save as a vCard (.vcf) file on PC. Last, send the .vcf file by email and download it on iPhone with Safari.
Option 3: Restore iPhone contacts from iCloud Settings. Sign in to iCloud.com > Settings > Scroll down to “Advanced” section > “Restore Contacts”.
Method 2: Rescue Your Contacts via iPhone Messages App
This trick that only few people know can help to recover some of the iPhone contacts – at least the ones you often keep contact with.
- Tap on the iPhone Messages and create a new message
- In the “To” field, type the name or number of the contact that you deleted from phone book.
- Most probably the contact info of number and name will pop and then tap the “i” circle to Create New Contact based on the number.
Method 3: Retrieve Deleted iPhone Contacts from Google Contacts or Other Cloud Services
If you’ve synced your contacts to your Google account or other Cloud Services, follow these steps to restore them to your iPhone.
- Tap on “Settings” > “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” > “Add Account” > “Google” or other Cloud Services.
- Enter your Google email address and password. Then “Sign in” and tap “Allow”.
- Turn on the “Contacts” switch and tap “Save” in the top right corner.
Method 4: Recover Deleted or Lost Contacts from iPhone/iTunes with Freeware
Contacts disappeared from iPhone but you cannot salvage your phone book via the means above? Don’t worry. Free iPhone Recovery can help you to recover lost contacts from iPhone or iTunes backup. It is a free but useful iPhone data recovery software to recover photos, SMS, contacts, WhatsApp and more data on iPhone 6s(plus)/6(plus)/SE/5s/5/4s/4/3GS. Download it and have a try! To Restore Lost/Disappeared Contacts on iPhone:
- Step 1: Launch the free iPhone Contact Recovery and check the “Contacts” in the file types. Go to the next.
- Step 2: Connect your iPhone to PC. The freeware will detect the matched iTunes backup if you have one.
- Step 3: Click on “Next” to scan your iPhone/iTunes backup. After scanning, you can recover and export lost contacts to PC as text, html, csv files.
