I accidentally merged my husbands iphone contacts with mine through icloud...how can I fix this? o

Question

I turned on the contacts in my husbands iphone/icloud options and it merged both of our contacts..His are a mess and there are 5 million of them. Is there a way to keep his contacts and mine seperate even though we share the same apple id? HELP!

Answer 1

Unfortunately I'm not sure there's much I can do to help.  When your contacts are deleted it's not unusual to still see this when you text or use spotlight search.  The device retains some residual contact information in cache memory even when the contacts are deleted.  However, there's no way to access this directly, or transfer it back to your contacts on your device.  If you have a backup of your device, you may be able to recover them by restoring to the entire backup, however this is not always successful.  If you want to try, and your backup is in iCloud, use this procedure to prevent any recovered contacts from being overwritten by iCloud:
Ensure the device is connected to your local network.
Start the restore from iCloud back up.
Allow the devices settings to restore (watch for the confirmation of completion).
As the apps begin to restore pull the connection to your router WAN port (the one that goes to the telephone point).
Wait for the time out confirmation.
Navigate to settings > iCloud and turn off contact syncing (keep contacts when prompted).
Reconnect the router to the internet and let the restore process complete.
Delete the iCloud contacts from iCloud.com on a computer.
Navigate to settings > iCloud and turn on contact syncing (merge contacts when prompted).