If you are an iPhone user, you must have saved a lot of contacts on it. These contacts contain the name, phone number, and details like email address, birthdays, etc. You must never want to lose these important contacts from your device. However, sometimes instances may occur when these contacts get deleted from your iPhone. In such cases, you must want to get all your contacts back.
Unexpected things like losing your iPhone or the sudden deletion of a few or all contacts can get you in trouble. The best way to protect your contact list is by taking regular backups. This backup allows you to restore contacts that are deleted after an iOS upgrade, iPhone crash, or when your device gets broken or stolen. Wondering “How do I get my lost contacts back?” go through this article to check effective methods to backup your iPhone contacts.
What causes the Deletion of Contacts on iPhone?
Before performing any iPhone recovery method, it is important to know why these contacts are deleted. Given below are some of the common reasons for iPhone contact loss:
- iOS system crash
- iOS system upgrade failures
- Virus and Malware attacks
- Software Malfunctions
- Factory reset
- Accidental human mistakes
How do I Back Up iPhone Contacts?
In this part of the blog, we have provided various methods by which you can back up contacts on iPhone. So, go through these methods to backup your iPhone contacts.
Method 01: Backup your contacts to iCloud
You can back up your iPhone contacts to the cloud to keep them safe from unauthorized access. iPhone users can use iCloud as the cloud backup solution. iCloud allows you to access your contacts on all your devices including PC and Mac. Whenever you make any change in contacts on your iPhone, it will automatically reflect in the iCloud backup. Go through the following steps to backup your iPhone contacts to iCloud:
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Click on your name located at the top and click on iCloud.

- Now, tap the toggle button next to iCloud Backup and change it to green.
- Select the Merge Contacts option from the pop-up displaying ‘merge’ or ‘cancel’ options to store your iPhone contacts in iCloud.
Once you are done with the above steps, all your contacts will get saved in iCloud. To ensure the same, log in to www.icloud.com and check if the iPhone contact backup process is completed.
Method 02: Back up iPhone contacts with iTunes
Backing up your iPhone to iTunes with your Mac or Windows PC allows you to access its data whenever you lose them. Given below are some simple and quick steps that you can apply to back up contacts on iPhone using iTunes:
- First of all, connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC.
- Launch iTunes on your device if it doesn’t open automatically.
- Unlock your iPhone and click the “Trust” button from the “Trust This Computer” pop-up window.
- Now, tap on the Summary button located at the top-left corner.
- After that, click on the “Back Up Now” button in the Summary window.

After the successful completion of the above steps, iTunes will begin the iPhone contact backup process.
Method 03: Back Up iPhone Contacts to Google
If the above methods to backup iPhone contact using iCloud or iTunes somehow gets failed, you can backup iPhone contacts to Google. For this, you first have to export your iPhone contacts as a VCF file using iCloud and then import it to Google. Check out the steps to export iPhone contacts as a VCF file:
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone, and click on your name at the top. Then click “iCloud” and toggle on the “Contacts” option.
- Now, launch a browser on your computer and go to the icloud.com website.
- Provide your Apple ID and password in the respective fields and choose “Contacts.”
- After that, you must select all the items you want to back up and click the “Gear” icon.
- At last, click the “Export vCard” button to export the contacts from your iPhone to vCard. Make sure these contacts are saved as the .vcf file.

Now, check the steps to import iPhone contacts to Google:
- Go to “Google Contacts” in your Gmail account or visit https://www.google.com/contacts/ and sign in with your Google account.
- Select the “Import Contacts…” option on the sidebar and tap the “Choose File” button in the pop-up window.
- Locate the exported contacts (.vcf) and click the “Import” button to import them to your Google Contacts.
The above steps will help you to export your iPhone contacts to Google successfully. If you are unable to sync or back up contacts on iPhone using these methods, you can iPhone data recovery software.

Recover Lost Contacts on iPhone With Stellar Data Recovery for iPhone
When you lost the contacts on your iPhone and do not have any backup, you can recover them using professional data recovery software programs. There are several iPhone data recovery software available online that you can try to recover iPhone lost data, including contacts. Stellar data recovery for iPhone is one of the popular recovery software you can use to recover data from iPhone, iCloud & iTunes.
This iPhone recovery software can recover deleted photos, videos, texts, contacts etc. It is compatible with iPhone Series 14/13/12/11/X and below. Given below is the step-by-step guide to know how to recover lost contacts on iPhone using Stellar Data Recovery for iPhone software:
- Download and install the “Stellar Data Recovery for iPhone” software.
- Launch it and from the “Select What to Recover” window, select “Contacts and Call Logs” as you want to recover contacts. Click the “Next” button.

- After that wait till the scanning process gets completed.

- Once completed, preview the found data and click the “Save” button to save them at the desired location.

Conclusion
In this digital era, data loss because of an iOS crash, damaged or stolen iPhone etc. has become very common. To avoid such a situation, you can create a backup of your iPhone’s contacts in iCloud, iTunes, or Google Drive. This allows you to access the contact whenever they get deleted from your device.
However, if you have accidentally deleted or failed to recover iPhone contacts from the backup, you can use iPhone data recovery software, like Stellar Data Recovery for iPhone. I hope this blog was insightful and helpful enough to back up phone contacts or recover your lost iPhone contacts.