Historical contributions disappeared after removing and re-adding verified email

[p0k4]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Profile

Body

Historical contributions disappeared after temporarily removing a verified email

My GitHub contribution graph lost a large number of historical contributions after I temporarily removed an email address that had been used to author my commits.

Before removing the email, my contribution graph showed more than 2,000 contributions in the last year. After removing it, the count dropped significantly and is currently around 683.

I realized what had happened and:

• Re-added the exact same historical commit email to the same GitHub account
• Successfully verified the email
• Confirmed that historical commits were authored with that exact email using the .patch view
• Confirmed that affected commits exist on default branches and are recognized by GitHub as authored by my account
• Waited more than 24 hours after restoring the email

However, the historical contributions have still not returned.

The issue is particularly noticeable when looking at previous years. For example, my 2025 graph currently shows only 14 contributions, despite having worked across multiple repositories during that year.

I followed GitHub’s documentation for troubleshooting missing contributions, including verifying the author email through the .patch view.

Has anyone experienced the same issue after removing and re-adding a historical commit email?

Does the contribution graph sometimes require a manual recalculation/rebuild by GitHub in this situation?

For privacy reasons, I am not posting the email address or information from private repositories publicly, but I can provide those details privately to GitHub staff if required.

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[hoangperry]

Good news first: re-adding and re-verifying the address restores those contributions — the association is evaluated against your account's current verified emails, so nothing was permanently lost. What you're inside right now is the rebuild window:

1. The graph doesn't recompute at the moment you re-verify. The un-count you saw when removing the email happened quickly, but the re-count after re-adding runs through a slower background recalculation — typically up to ~24–72 hours, occasionally longer. A partial number (like your current 683) that creeps upward is the signature of that rebuild in progress.
2. While you wait, verify the exact-match details so the rebuild has everything it needs: the re-added address must be verified (check for the pending banner in Settings → Emails), and it must be byte-identical to what's in the commits — run git log --format='%ae' | sort -u in your main repos and compare; plus-aliases or a different subdomain count as different addresses.
3. Check the visibility toggles once: if any affected repos are private, "Include private contributions on my profile" needs to be on for them to show.

If the count hasn't converged back to the expected ~2,000 after 3–4 days with the email verified and matching, then it's worth a https://support.github.com ticket asking for a contribution-graph recalculation — include the email address, the removal/re-add dates, and a couple of commit URLs authored with it. But in the large majority of reports with your exact sequence, patience is the whole fix.

[p0k4]

Thanks for the clarification - that’s reassuring.

I’ve confirmed that the historical email is verified again and exactly matches the author email on the affected commits. I also checked several commits using the .patch view and confirmed the expected author attribution.
I’ll leave everything unchanged and give the contribution graph a few more days to finish rebuilding.
If it still hasn’t recovered after that, I already have a GitHub Support ticket open and will follow up there.

Thanks again for the explanation and help!