Greetings. I am having an extremely frustrating issue which has affected several areas of my phone.
It started a few days ago when I installed an app to remove my duplicate contacts. When The app was done, it not only removed the duplicates, it put every number and other information from a contact, into one contact. The result, I had one contact which had nearly 400 phone and text numbers.
I was able to restore my contacts to their original form and then I deleted that troublesome app. I went back to the App Store and found CircleBack. It is free, though there are in-app purchases to get rid of ads, or support the developer. I couldn't find an entry on AppleVis for it. After poking around with it, I have found the app to be mostly accessible without any effort from the blind user. If you turn on Screen Recognition, more items are identified.
Anyway, getting back to the central issue. My wife recommended restoring from a prior backup. I erased all content and settings,. I restored from a prior backup from 4 days ago. However, my contacts and messages were still messed up. In messages for example, I may be told Tom Sawyer on the first message. Ok, this one is from Tom. I then move to another message and find that it is also from Tom Sawyer. In fact, every item on my message screen is from Tom. I now know that I have a problem. If I open a pandom message from Tom, I quickly discover by reading the message content, that ing is actually from Heather Smith. Sometimes I open messages and am asked if I want to update the name to Heather. When I double tap that I do, every other message in Messages, is also from Heather. And on it goes.
Conclusion: I'm all out of ideas here. I am using an iPhone 13 Pro running iOS 18.1.1. I primarily use my phone for organization, productivity, and entertainment. I have a Windows 10 computer with JAWS 2024. I would prefer to fix the issue via the phone if at all possible. All other thoughts and opinions are welcome. The rumor mill says that iOS 18.2 will be out Monday next week. Though it would be a remote chance, perhaps this is a known issue which may be fixed in the update ... At least that's what I'm pulling for since nothing else has worked.
By Bookworm, 7 December, 2024
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
this is why I'm leary of these apps
If they work well great if not you could have a real mess on your hands. If all else fails set it up as new. the contacts and messages I would hope would sink correctly.
Some advice
This, might, be salvageable. It will take some work on your part however. I would take Dennis's suggestion above, but I would add to it. After you factory reset your iPhone and wipe everything, I would then go back to the reset options, and reset from a backup. This, should, fix your contacts. Otherwise, you are going to have your work cut out for you, as you will have to manually edit every single contact you currently have.
For your sake, I hope that is not the case ...
For future reference, if you ever need to edit duplicate contacts again, don't bother with any third-party apps, just save these instructions below in a note somewhere, and use as needed.
How to manage duplicate contacts on iOS:
1. Go to the Contacts app on your iPhone.
2. Below My Card, tap View Duplicates.
3. Tap individual contacts to review and merge them, or tap Merge All to merge all duplicate contacts.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/merge-or-hide-duplicate-contacts-iph2ab28320d/ios
Conclusion
Thanks to those who have replied. I took a little from both suggestions. I have been a longtime fan of having data in at least 2 different places. I've changed that opinion from my mess this weekend.
First, I erased all content and settings, and restored from an older backup, before the drama happened. I went into my Gmail account on the iPhone and turned off contacts and calendar syncing. Now only my Apple contacts, calendars, and other things, are synced with iCloud. This alone removed about 90 contacts from the 300 plus that I had. I then went through my contacts and removed the duplicate entries by hand. That took away another 70 or so contacts. So now I'm down to a reasonable number of 179. My final act was to immediately backup my phone to iCloud, and preserve the projress I had made. My messages are still messed up, giving the same name for messages from different senders. That's annoying but I can deal with that a little better than the mess I had before.
Conclusion: For those who are attracted by apps that promise to clean-up or organize your contacts, take my advice and skip them! It's not worth all the trouble you will go to in order to restore the contacts like you wanted them. I lived and I learned.