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Individual Contacts are disappearing from my smartphone

B

Bob Onysko

Newbie
Lately, I have been losing individual contacts from my phone - not ALL contacts, just some of them. When I look up a contact to dial, the contact is often missing. What could be wrong? Thank you.
 
Not sure, but I believe I back up to Google once a day automatically. However, this disappearing has been happening for a few weeks now - so, if I have a backup on Google, wouldn't my backup be synced and, therefore, I no longer have my missing contacts? How can I check for this? It would be great if all my missing contacts were on my Google backup. If so, how would I retrieve them? Thank you.
 
Check your contacts on gmail/google on a computer. See if the contacts that have been missing show up there.

If they are in google/gmail, then your phone is not syncing properly and needs to be set to sync.

What phone do you have? What carrier?
 
I have a Samsung Galaxy S9+. I have never had a problem with syncing - this problem of just "some" of my contacts missing is recent. It seems like the missing contacts are ones I use occasionally. Also, I have never changed my syncing options. One other thing: Since only "some" of my contacts are missing, I have no idea which ones are missing until I try to locate a specific contact. My Google backup is on and my Samsung backup is on. There are no options that I can see. The contacts that I've found missing have already been replaced manually by me. So, in order to see which other contacts might be missing, I would have to look through over 600 contacts and try to remember them all to see if I'm missing any more. Sounds impossible to do. Thank you.

Forgot to mention that I use Verizon for my carrier. Do you know how long Samsung and Google retain backups?
 
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Well, i can say I have seen contacts "disappear" as well. I swear I saved them to Google but when I try and find them they don't show up.

I've seen some weird issues for example with my cousin's phone number. Her google name is a nickname not her real name. So for years I couldn't find her number by her real name. I had to change the name in my contact list to her actual name so I could find it.

Also, when I merge duplicates, I get issues after and "lose" phone numbers/contacts. I no longer merge duplicates.

I don't know how long Samsung retains backups. I have Google One and found this information about backups:

https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9149304?co=GENIE.Platform=Android&hl=en#:~:text=For some data, your phone's,your device for 57 days
 
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