Restore address book
Solution 1:
I was attempting to work out a bug with iTunes. iTunes was refusing to put my contacts on my new iPod. And no groups were showing in iTunes.
One thing led to another, and I found myself looking at a blank address book. You can imagine my consternation when my iPhone contacts got smoked before I could shut down a sync.
I could import from my backups, but, like the original poster, the contacts would appear for about a second before disappearing again.
Shutting down the contacts iCloud sync and then logging out of iCloud worked. I was then able to import either one of my two backups without issue.
Solution 2:
If you want to restore ONLY your contacts from your iCloud acccount (assuming you have a viable contacts list) to your iPhone, here's how I did it:
Login to your iCloud account; go to your Contacts and click the asterisk in the lower left corner; choose select all; and then open the menu again and choose export vcard (vcf); it will export a file containing all selected vcards. Save this file to your desktop.
For Win7 (other versions are probably similar): Open Windows Contacts for the appropriate user; click Import from toolbar at the top; browse to the .vcf file you saved to your desktop. A separate vcard will open for each one; click the OK button for each to be added to Windows Contacts. (Sorry if you have hundreds/thousands, maybe there's a faster way to add them all, I'm not sure.) PLEASE NOTE: If you already have people in your Windows Contacts list that you DO NOT want added to your iPhone Contacts, you need to move them around or delete them or whatever PRIOR to importing the .vcf file. You need to be left with only the contacts you want to be transferred to your iPhone. Understand that ALL contacts in Windows Contacts will be imported into your iPhone Contacts list.
Once the contacts are imported into Windows Contacts, open iTunes and connect your iPhone. On the info tab select "Sync" with "windows contacts". Go further down the page to the Advanced menu and choose to replace information on this iphone and check the contacts box. Make sure any other options (apps, music, etc.) are unchecked since you are correcting your Contacts only. Click the Sync button. Your iPhone Contacts should now match your iCloud contacts. I could not figure out any other way to get the iCloud list to the iPhone...
Worked like a charm...
Once you get your iPhone just the way you want it, this is the time to use iCloud backup. If you don't know how to do this, Google Search "turn on iCloud backup."
Hope this helps some of you that may have the same problem I did with screwed up Contacts lists.
sberg