Contacts disappeared after re-authenticating with Outlook/Exchange

Question

I sync all my contacts to my old Hotmail aka Live aka Outlook.com account.

Today I needed to look someone up through Outlook.com / People web-interface (normally I just do it on my phone) and I realised her contact is not there, while it is on my iPhone. I went to phone settings -> Contacts -> Accounts -> Outlook and it said this account needs re-authenticating. I went through authentication, which went through successfully.

What I expected to happen

The contacts on my iPhone that are not on Outlook.com are uploaded to Outlook.com

What actually happened

The contacts that were on my iPhone but were not on Outlook.com were never uploaded to Outlook.com. Instead they got deleted from my iPhone without any warning.

What I checked

• The deleted folder on Outlook.com / People is empty
• In my iOS Contacts app, in Groups (arrow back on top left in main view) it shows "All Outlook" list/group only, there's no "Deleted" list or "On my iPhone" list. That "All Outlook" list used to say I had 119 contacts, now it says 110.

Is there any way I could get my contacts back?

My latest phone iCloud backup is from yesterday. I can erase my phone now and restore from the yesterday backup, but my concern is: this is a serious step and it has to be something of last resort. I am also concerned something else can go wrong, and I'll lose more than 9 contacts. My trust in things working as expected is not the highest now - for example, this whole situation shouldn't have happened in the first place, the phone should have asked if I want to merge contacts before deleting them AND/OR have some kind of recycle bin folder from which I can restore. I think it used to be like that, but not anymore.

Is there anything that I'm missing? This answer here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254833042?sortBy=rank makes it seem you can toggle contacts sync and they may come back, but it's iCloud-specific, and my iCloud contacts are turned off.

This is iOS 17.5.1

Answer 1

I would suggest first checking other accounts (like Gmail or another email service) that might have enabled contact syncing. Sometimes you don't notice that your contacts are synced with multiple accounts and it can cause similar issues. Also Outlook sometimes has delays in reflecting changes, so I would suggest checking in OutLook People section after some time again. And contact support for sure, Apple and Microsoft.

Also that's true that toggling the contacts sync off and on again for the Outlook account might help here to force re-sync and bring back missing contacts. You're right, it is usually for iCloud, but it can sometimes help with other accounts too. It's worth a try even if your iCloud contacts are off. Hope it helps, please update us on the situation!