All my contacts lost their associated picture

[iMore Question]

Rene (or as Andy I would say Rhen-knee)
Yesterday (March 2nd, 2017) each of my contacts had a picture that I painstakingly, individually assigned. These images showed up in the Apple Contact app, and they showed up in the Apple Messages app. Today, I only see the grey circle with the contact's initials. I cannot think of anything that I did in the last 24 hours to cause this. Have you heard of any other users experiencing this. I did a bit of web crawling and found advice to shut down/restart. This did not work. I also the suggestion to force close the Messages app. I did this along with another shut down/restart and still not change. I have not reached out to Apple support yet, I thought I would ping you first.

 

[gordonbrowntech]

Do you have a backup storage for this

 

[prithvi64]

I have too experienced similar problem. I don't recall but after some OS update, I started feeling that some contacts don't show photos and company names. whenever, I am saving contacts, randomly, some contacts show up company name blank. very strange problem.

 

[Ledsteplin]

You may have linked contacts. For example, you may have both iCloud and Google contacts linked. They may be set up differently and the one used may not have the same info as the other. The best way to solve this is to make all contacts iCloud contacts, and delete the Google or whatever other there is.
1. Go to settings > Contacts > default account > make iCloud the default account.
2. Create a vCard (vcf) for your contacts and put it on an email.
3. Go to Contacts > groups> uncheck all but iCloud. The Groups option is in the top left in contacts.
4. Go to the email with the vCard. Open the vCard and go to the option to add to Contacts. Tap to add.
5. Merge any duplicates.