IOS – No search results in the Contacts app on IOS 9

contactsiosiphonesearch

On my iPhone 6 running IOS 9.1 (release 13B143), I cannot find any results when searching in either the Contacts app or in the Contacts tab in the Phone app. I have hundreds of contacts, but no matter what letter I type in the search field, I get no results. Example:

No results searching for A

But before I started typing, I could see dozens of contacts with last names starting with "A". This is a new problem; everything was working until a week or so ago, when I first noticed this issue.

Note: this is not the same as the many questions about Spotlight search not finding contacts, such as this one. Spotlight actually does find my contacts. So do the Messages app and the "Invitees" pane in the Calendar app. The Contacts and Phone apps, however, do not.

How can I fix this?

Best Answer

I figured this out. Somehow, I had two different contact cards marked as "my" card: one named "Ed Cottrell" and one named "Edward Cottrell." I have no idea how both of them got marked as "my" card; I don't even know where the second one came from. On my phone, only one of them showed up. In the Contacts app on my Macbook, both of them appeared. Anyway, this gave me an idea that this might be the source of the problem.

I took the following steps:

  • Delete one of "my" cards on the Macbook.
  • Exit the Contacts app on my iPhone (fully, as in double-pressing the home button and dragging the app upward).
  • Relaunch the Contacts app on my iPhone.
    • At this point, the "Groups" label appeared in the upper left corner of the Contacts app. I had been seeing a circular "reload" arrow, but no "Groups" label.
  • Tap on the "Groups" label.
  • Uncheck all groups.
  • Tap "Done."
  • Tap on the "Groups" label.
  • Check all groups.
  • Tap "Done."

And now, my contacts search works again. This was a pain, but at least it's fixed.

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