How to retrieve old phone numbers on iphone

Elena Spencer Updated on Apr 15, 2022 4:55 PM

Contacts app on the smartphone makes writing down or memorizing phone numbers an old-school way. We enter a phone number into iPhone, the digits should stay safe and sound in the contact list together with the name, company, email address, birthday, and other contact details. Despite this, we talk about another thing here if you recently deleted a phone number on the iPhone and don't know how to get it back.

Unfortunately, there's no one single reason why you lost or accidentally deleted a phone number. Sometimes you lost phone numbers from Contacts during an iPhone update, while other times you can't restore the contact numbers through icloud.com to the earlier version. The process for recovering deleted phone numbers on an iPhone depends on whether or not they were synced or backed up anywhere.

What you'll learn here:

• Restore phone numbers from iCloud
• Possible solution: Restore from iCloud backup
• Retrieve from an iTunes backup
• You can recover phone numbers on iPhone, no backup, no loss
• Other solutions to find deleted phone numbers

Rather than going over each option, it's time to skip to "You can recover contacts, no loss, no backup" section to recover lost numbers on iPhone — especially if you don't have a backup. The powerful iPhone Data Recovery will match your need. Quick Guide:

1. Open the software.

2. Connect iPhone to the computer, and click Start Scan button.

3. In the scanning results, find the phone numbers you need in the contact list.

4. Click Recover button to restore numbers.

Restore phone numbers from iCloud

If you had the contacts set to sync with iCloud (Contacts was turned on via Settings > [your name] > iCloud), you may be able to log in to icloud.com to restore phone numbers from contacts list to an earlier version before those numbers were deleted, or merge contacts on iPhone with those stored in iCloud.

A little-known feature: When you turn off iCloud Contacts on iPhone and delete phone numbers in contact list, the contacts already synced to the iCloud will not be deleted from iCloud, they just won't update automatically.

Restore phone numbers using icloud.com

This should be the most straightforward way to follow when you accidentally deleted or lost phone numbers after an iOS update, syncing process or restoring from a backup. If you decide on this route for retrieving a phone number from Contacts on iPhone, please keep in mind that you will lose some contacts that added to the phone after the date your contacts were last archived in iCloud. It's a good idea to make a backup priot to restoring the phone number.

As long as you sign into icloud.com on any web browser of your computer, click Account Settings right beneath your name, and in the Advanced section, there is an option Restore Contacts. Use it will allow you to select an archive of contacts to restore in order to get back lost phone numbers.

1. Head to icloud.com on your computer, and log into it with your Apple ID and passcode.

2. Click Account Settings.

3. Scroll down to Advanced section and select Restore Contacts.

4. You should see multiple archives of contacts sorted by date and time you've created before. Choose the one that may contain your phone numbers erased from iPhone. Click Restore next to it.

5. Click Restore again to confirm the restoration process. It will make an archive for the current contacts and restore old phone numbers.

Recover contacts using iCloud on iPhone

You can also use your iPhone to restore a deleted phone number from iCloud. This involves merging the contacts on iPhone with those archived in iCloud. Take a look at the necessary steps.

1. Open Settings app on iPhone.

2. Click [your name] > iCloud.

3. Turn off the toggle for Contacts, then select Keep on My iPhone when prompts.

3. Turn on Contacts, and choose Merge option in the pop-up.

After a while, your deleted phone numbers should reappear in the contact list.

Possible solution: Restore from iCloud backup

According to Apple, an iCloud backup doesn't include the phone numbers or any other data that is already stored in iCloud. Therefore, if you're enable iCloud contacts features, then the telephone numbers will be saved in iCloud, instead of iCloud backup.

By default, iCloud backs up the iPhone over Wi-Fi once iCloud Backup is turned on, and the device is locked and plugged into a power source. The drawback to this method is that you need to first restore iPhone to factory settings and restore it from the old iCloud backup. There's a potential chance you will lose other data.

To retrieve a phone number from iCloud backup, do the following:

1. First, restore iPhone to factory conditions by going to Settings > General > Erase All Content and Settings.

2. Follow steps in the iOS Setup Assistant to set up your iPhone. When you get to Apps & Data Screen, choose Restore from iCloud Backup.

3. Sign into your Apple account and select the backup when the phone number exists.

The process should begin automatically.

Retrieve from an iTunes backup

If you don't sync contacts with iCloud but you've backed them up to iTunes prior to missing from Contacts, another option is to restore iPhone from iTunes backup (SQLITEDB file). Don't never consider you don't have a backup, as iTunes can automatically backs up your iPhone contacts and update it when you sync with it - unless you disable "Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically." But it keeps only one backup for a device and overwrite the previous one every time you sync.

This is the same for Finder on Mac Catalina 10.15 or later.

1. Run iTunes or Finder on computer.

2. Click iPhone icon on the top left-hand of iTunes window. In Finder, choose your device from the left pane.

3. Click Restore Backup, and choose a backup that has the phone number you erased from iPhone.

4. Click Restore and wait for the restoration to finish.

It's important to mention that restoring from an iTunes backup through PC or Mac will replace the data currently on your iPhone with the data from the time of the backup. Plus, the existing data may be not recoverable. There isn't a way to restore just one phone number from the backup this way.

You can recover phone numbers, no backup, no loss

It can be quite alarming that you don't have a backup from before the time you deleted a phone number. Relax; the dedicated iPhone Data Recovery utility can restore deleted phone numbers on iPhone without backup.

Thanks to its powerful scanning technique, it can not only access iPhone's internal memory, but can also find the iTunes backup on the computer, as well as access iCloud backup. The end result is, you can effortlessly recover contacts and phone number from an iPhone device without overwriting any data on the device. This is the advantage over restoring deleted numbers from an earlier version, restoring iPhone from an iCloud backup or iTunes/ Finder backup.

1. After installation, launch the program and you should see three tabs on the left menu.

2. In this case, select "Recover from iOS Device" tab and plug iPhone into the computer via USB cable. If you lost your iPhone but had synced and backed up the phone numbers to the PC through iTunes, choose "Recover from iTunes Backup File" and the application will scan the backup on the computer and offer you the options to retrieve contact list without an iPhone.

3. Once your device is connected, click Start Scan button to trigger a deeper scan.

4. When the scanning process is done, you will get a window like this:

5. Click "Contacts" category on the left panel, and then select the phone numbers you want to retrieve by checking the tiny boxes next to the contact names.

6. Once done, click Recover button.

7. After designating an output path, press Recover button again to confirm and begin recover deleted phone numbers.

Other solutions to find deleted phone numbers:

Outside of these ways of retrieving a phone number accidentally erased from iPhone, I'd recommend check the following in case that you remember that telephone number:

Call history in the Phone app:

The Recents list of the Phone app should keep a complete record of all phone calls and relevant details, including the name of the caller (the contact is in the contacts list), phone number, and date & time. If you delete a contact from the contacts list, the phone number remains in recent call list.

Locate the phone number, tap the icon to the right of it, and then tap Create New Contact. Fill in the name and other contact details.

You can also check the FaceTime call history to recover the phone numbers deleted from iPhone.

Messages app for the thread between you and that deleted contact:

If you ever texted to the contact, you can add the phone number back to Contacts app on iPhone.

Open the text message from the person, tap the phone number at the top and then tap info. In the Details screen, tap the arrow to the right of the number, and tap Create New Contact.

That's it!

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