iOS 9: Contacts missing in Spotlight Search?

[braunsch]

On iOS 9 now, iPhone 6.

Spotlight search seems to be, ..., spotty?

In my contacts, I have 11 people called "Mike". When I am looking for "Mike" in Spotlight it lists only two of them. No matter whether I search from the "pull-down" search or from the new Siri-enhanced search page.

Many other contact searches don't yield any results in Spotlight - even though the contacts are there and show up when I search in the Contacts app.

Does anyone have the same problem?

 

[rijc99]

Same here. With 9.0 Betas it used to search as deep as the contact notes. Now, it doesn't even see the contacts.

 

[Chindavon]

Yes, same here. Can't figure out how to change the setting. iOS 8 let us move the search result in order. Can't seem to find that feature in 9.

 

[supratentorial]

I have the same problem. Here are 2 suggestions I found online. But neither fixed it for me.

1) "Here's what worked for me:
A - Go to Settings -> General -> Spotlight.
B - Turn off all apps.
C - Shutdown and restart the phone.
D - Go to Settings -> General -> Spotlight.
E - Turn on Contacts (And any other apps that you want to be searched)"

2) "I fixed this problem by heading into the Contacts App, click on Groups and choose to ‘hide all contacts’ then switch back to ‘show all contacts’."

On iOS 9 now, iPhone 6.

Spotlight search seems to be, ..., spotty?

In my contacts, I have 11 people called "Mike". When I am looking for "Mike" in Spotlight it lists only two of them. No matter whether I search from the "pull-down" search or from the new Siri-enhanced search page.

Many other contact searches don't yield any results in Spotlight - even though the contacts are there and show up when I search in the Contacts app.

Does anyone have the same problem?

 

[kshitijshah]

I am facing the same issue. Contacts don't show up in spotlight search. Tried rebooting but the problem comes back again after a short while. Tried hiding all contacts and show all contacts - but that didn't work either. Really frustrating not being able to search contacts.

 

[braunsch]

So... almost a week later:
On the iPhone, it just took another day for everything to appear (apparently the spotlight index was not complete when I tried it).
On the iPad, I had to do a full backup and restore - and now it's working.

It shouldn't be that complicated...

 

[kshitijshah]

Even after upgrading the iPhone 6 Plus 128 to 9.0.2 the problem of contacts not showing up in the spotlight search still does not throw up contacts, but shows everything else.

This bug is really annoying as contacts can only be searched from the Phone App. The participants of this thread also show their frustration.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7219811

Please help!

 

[gpm_kp]

So... almost a week later:
On the iPhone, it just took another day for everything to appear (apparently the spotlight index was not complete when I tried it).
On the iPad, I had to do a full backup and restore - and now it's working.

It shouldn't be that complicated...

I've tried every solution under the sun to get my contact to show up in spotlight searches but alas....
If anyone has a fix that works, please do let me know.

What hasn't worked so far:
* resetting all settings
* switching off the spotlight search & restarting and/rebooting phone, then switching contacts back on
* using different settings for contacts
* hide/show all contacts
* adding a new contact
* removing/adding all contacts

Anyone??

 

[Spink10]

Sometimes my contacts show up and sometimes they don't. Very annoying. Because of my job I have a little over 1,000 contacts.

 

[bob122989]

Hadn't noticed this until today on my 6s with 9.0.2. Very annoyed because I use the search at least once a day in order to find contacts.
It has always been nice to not have to launch anything in order to search for someone's number. Hope this is resolved soon as no method has worked for me.

 

[cameronjpu]

I still have my old iPhone 6 as well as my new 6S. I wiped the 6 and installed nothing but my exchange account. Contacts search works perfectly. On the 6S, which was restored from a backup, it doesn't. Unfortunately I suspect that wiping the phone and setting up as a new device will be my only solution. It's just too bad Apple doesn't provide a good way to do that without a ton of work. I have 200 apps gathered over the years in about 20 folders. It really wouldn't be hard... all Apple needs to do is give me an app or function that keeps a list of the apps and their locations. then I could do a clean install, reinstall those apps in that way instead of the apparently very buggy restore from backup process, and set up my few accounts.

Does anyone know of such a solution? A way to easily restore all your apps in their proper organization other than restoring from iCloud or computer backup?

Edit: Just FYI, for any future readers with similar issues, here's what I did that seems to have fixed my contacts-search issue. I removed my exchange account from the phone and turned off all the Spotlight search functions, and then made a local backup. Then I did a wipe of the phone and restored from that backup. After everything loaded I then turned back on the spotlight search options and added the Exchange account again. Searching seems to be working as it should. We will see if the Siri dictation is fixed more reliably now too.