How to Fix: Contacts Didn’t Transfer to New iPhone

While setting up a new iPhone, the first thing you will probably want to do is migrate your data from your old iPhone over to your new iPhone. It’s important to carry forward your data so that it stays on your new device and you can access it anytime you want.

For some users, it seems they are not able to transfer contacts from their old iPhones over to their new ones. These users have taken their complaints to various forums saying their contacts didn’t transfer to their new iPhone despite following all the official setup steps. If you’re in that boat, we can understand your pain. However, you don’t need to be disappointed as we have some methods for you that will help you with your contacts that didn’t transfer to the new iPhone issue.

The following procedure should work for most iPhone models including iPhone 15, and many other models.

If you have no idea of how to move contacts, you can check this guide to transfer contacts from iPhone to new iPhone easily.

Why Didn’t My Contacts Transfer to My New iPhone?

Before you jump onto the methods, you may be interested in finding out what’s causing the issue and why your contacts didn’t transfer over to your new iPhone. The following are some of the common reasons:

1. Different iCloud Accounts

If your contacts were synced from iCloud, then your new iPhone needs to have the same iCloud account as your old phone. If that is not the case, your contacts will not transfer to your new iPhone.

2. Contacts Syncing is Disabled

It could be that the contacts syncing option has been turned off on your new iPhone. If that’s the case, your iPhone won’t be able to get contacts from iCloud and thus you won’t have your old iPhone’s contacts on your new iPhone.

How to Fix: Contacts Didn’t Transfer to New iPhone

Now that you know the possible causes of the issue, let’s check out how you can fix them so your contacts get transferred over to your new iPhone.

Method 1. Use the Same iCloud Account on Your New iPhone

The first thing you will want to do is verify if you are using the same iCloud account as your old iPhone on your new iPhone. It’s pretty easy to do that and the following is how to do it.

On your iPhone, open the Settings app and tap on your name. It will open the iCloud settings screen. On the following screen, you will see your iCloud account. Make sure this ID and the one being used on your old iPhone is the same. If it is not, log out and log in using the ID that you had on your old iPhone and that should resolve the issue for you.

Method 2. Ensure Contacts Option is Enabled in iCloud

iCloud allows you to select what content you wish to sync when the feature is enabled on your iPhone. If the contacts option is unchecked, your contacts will not sync to your new devices so your old iPhone contacts will never get transferred over to your new iPhone.

It’s pretty easy to fix this issue. All you need to do is enable the contacts option in iCloud on your new iPhone and you will be good to go. To do that, open the Settings app and tap on your name. Tap on iCloud and turn the toggle for Contacts to the ON position.

Method 3. Fetch Contacts Only from iCloud on Your New iPhone

Your new iPhone could be fetching contacts and their details from other sources such as Gmail and Yahoo if you have enabled those. To fix the issue, you may want to disable contacts from other service providers except for iCloud on your iPhone.

To do that, launch the Contacts app on your new iPhone > Tap on Groups at the top-left corner > Uncheck everything except for All iCloud option. It will make sure to only fetch contacts from your iCloud account and not any other service providers.

Method 4. Check iCloud Storage

When you set up iCloud, you automatically get 5GB of storage. You can use that space for your iCloud backups, to keep your contacts, photos, and videos stored in iCloud. You can make more space or buy more storage at any time. If you don’t make more space available in iCloud and the file size of the data is larger than 5GB, some data may not be synced with iCloud anymore. So, you need to check the available iCloud storage on your iPhone.

Go to Settings > Tap [your name] > Click iCloud. Here you can see more detailed information about how apps and services are using your storage, and you can tap iCloud Storage or Manage Storage.

Further Reading: How to Delete iCloud Backup >

Method 5. Check Network Connection of iPhones

If your network connection is not stable when transferring, the process will fail. So you need to make sure the Wi-Fi network is stable on both iPhones.

Or you can reset network settings on the iPhone. Go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

Method 6. Utilize Other Useful Ways to Sync Contacts to New iPhone

1. Create and Restore an iTunes Backup

If the above methods don’t work for you, there’s one simple thing you can do to transfer contacts to your new iPhone. You can create a full iTunes backup of your old iPhone and restore it on your new one. This will bring all of your content including contacts over to your new iPhone, however, keep in mind it will bring with it all the unnecessary stuff that you don’t want. Follow the following steps to do that:

Step 1. Connect your old iPhone to your computer > Launch the iTunes app > Click on your device > Click on Summary > Hit “Back Up Now”.

Step 2. After your old iPhone is backed up, connect your new iPhone to your computer, launch iTunes, select your device, click on Summary, and hit Restore Backup.

2. Transfer Contacts via AirDrop

AirDrop is a feature that allows you to transfer content including contacts between your Apple devices. You can use it to manually transfer contacts from your old iPhone over to your new iPhone and the following is how you do it.

Step 1. Open Control Center on your old iPhone and enable AirDrop. Do the same on your new iPhone as well.

Step 2. Open the Contacts app on your old iPhone, select the contacts you want to transfer, and hit the Share option > Select your new iPhone’s name and your contacts will begin to transfer to your new iPhone.

3. Use a Tool to Transfer Contacts to New iPhone

If you would prefer a straightforward way of transferring contacts from one iPhone to another, we would highly recommend you use a third-party app. One such app is AnyTrans which makes transferring contacts and other content from one iOS device to another a breeze for you.

Also, using AnyTrans does not load up your device with any unnecessary items like iTunes as it only transfers what you select to transfer. Here’s how to use the app:

Step 1. Download and launch the AnyTrans on your computer > Connect both of your iPhones to your computer > Choose Device Manager and click More.

Step 2. Scroll down to find your Contacts > Select the contacts you would like to transfer > Click on the To Device button at the top. Your contacts will instantly be transferred from your old iPhone over to your new iPhone.

Conclusion

If you have been wondering “why my contacts didn’t transfer to my new iPhone”, our guide above should tell you the reasons and how you can go about fixing them so you can successfully transfer your contacts.