Historical contributions are missing from my GitHub profile

[esencialcoder]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Profile

Body

A significant number of historical contributions have disappeared from my GitHub profile contribution graph.

I noticed this during the past week, although I cannot determine exactly when the contributions disappeared.

I had previously removed an old email address from my GitHub account. As far as I recall, the contribution graph initially remained unchanged. After noticing the missing contributions, I added the exact same email address back to my account and verified it successfully.

The email address has now been restored and verified for more than seven days, but the missing contributions have not returned.

One curious detail is that, when a large number of contributions disappeared, many others did not disappear and remained visible on the graph, even though all of them had been made using the same GitHub account and email address.

I have also confirmed that the affected repositories and commits still exist.

I tried to submit a request through the GitHub Support portal, but none of the available categories or options appears to be related to my problem. Therefore, I was unable to open an appropriate support request.

Has anyone experienced this issue? Is there an appropriate way to ask GitHub Support to review the commit attribution or rebuild the contribution graph?

Thank you.

[mnarcisom3-pixel]

I am experiencing a very similar issue.

In my case, I rewrote the history of my repository to replace an inaccessible former university email address with my current verified GitHub email.

The rewritten historical commits are now correctly attributed to my GitHub account on the commit pages, and they are contained in the default main branch. However, they still do not appear in my contribution graph after several days.

As a comparison, I made two new local commits after changing my Git configuration to the same verified email address. These newer commits have exactly the same author information and do appear correctly in the contribution graph.

So in my case, the issue seems specifically related to historical commits whose metadata was rewritten and force-pushed.

Repository: https://github.com/mnarcisom3-pixel/TFG_CODIGO

For example, commit 0dde9c48690b0cea0eaa288a6ae348361338573b (August 25) is in the default main branch, uses my verified email address, and is correctly linked to my GitHub profile, but it still does not appear in my contribution graph.

In contrast, newer local commits made with exactly the same author name and email do appear correctly.

Has anyone found a way to force GitHub to rebuild or reindex historical contribution data?

Thank you.

[krif014]

GitHub's documentation says that if an email address used for historical commits is removed, adding the exact same email address back to the account should restore the attribution. The contribution graph can take up to 24 hours to refresh after that.

Since you've already restored and verified the email and it's been more than seven days, I'd check the actual author email on one of the missing commits. You can append .patch to the commit URL and check the From: field to confirm which email was used for the commit.

Also make sure the commit is on the repository's default branch (or gh-pages where applicable), since commits on other branches don't count toward the contribution graph.

If the email is correct, the commit is on the default branch, and the contribution is still missing after this much time, GitHub's documentation recommends contacting GitHub Support with the affected commit URLs/SHA and the author email so they can investigate the contribution data.

This sounds like it may need GitHub to investigate the historical contribution data rather than something you can force-rebuild yourself.

[esencialcoder]

These are months’ worth of daily commits. I don’t think they can review them one by one. There must be an explanation and a better solution.

[Dani-8]

@esencialcoder You do not need to submit hundreds of commit SHAs manually. GitHub Support uses backend batch-reindexing tools to recalculate contribution graphs for your entire account at once.

Here is how to resolve this and open the correct ticket:

1. How to Submit the Support Ticket

If you cannot find an exact subcategory on support.github.com:

• Select Account & Profile -> Profile settings & contribution graph.
• In your ticket description, specify that this is an Account-Level Contribution Reindex Request.
• State clearly: "I removed and re-added my verified commit email address over 7 days ago. The commits are on default branches in existing repositories, but the backend contribution index failed to recalculate. Please run a batch reindex on my profile graph."
• Include just 2–3 sample commit URLs/SHAs from different months as representative evidence rather than listing every single commit.

2. Fast Self-Service Workarounds

Before waiting for support, you can often trigger GitHub's background indexing job yourself using one of these methods:

• Toggle Private Contributions: Go to your profile page -> Click Contribution settings (above the graph) -> Toggle Private contributions off and on again. This often forces an asynchronous cache refresh across your full graph history.
• Push a Empty Trigger Commit: In one of the affected repositories, push an empty commit to the default branch using your verified email (git commit --allow-empty -m "trigger reindex" && git push). When GitHub indexes the new commit, it frequently scans and updates unindexed historical commits associated with that author email in the same repository.

[esencialcoder]

Thank you very much for your help. I have now tried both suggested options: I toggled private contributions off and back on, and I pushed an empty commit to the default branch of one of the affected repositories using my verified email address.

I have also submitted a ticket to GitHub Support with representative commit evidence and requested an account-level review of my contribution graph.

I’ll now wait and see what happens. I’ll share an update if GitHub Support responds or if the missing historical contributions return.

Thanks again.

[Dani-8]

@esencialcoder You're very welcome! Glad to hear you've taken both steps and submitted the ticket.

GitHub Support's backend reindexing tool usually takes 24–48 hours to process batch profile updates once assigned.

Feel free to post an update here once your contribution graph refreshes.