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iCloud files disappeared

A lot of files just disappeared from my iCloud Drive, the folders are there but they are just empty, I didn’t delete any files and they doesn’t appear in the recoverable files in the iCloud Drive or the recently deleted

iPad Pro, iPadOS 16

Posted on Dec 2, 2022 9:41 AM

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Posted on Dec 7, 2022 9:03 AM

Same. I lost 4 years' worth of college notes, projects, powerpoints, pdf's of reference materials and research articles that I no longer have access to since I'm not a student anymore, reports and essays, tax return information, financials, receipts and invoices for large/asset purchases, utility bills and tracking spreadsheets, recent tickets and purchase receipts--pretty much everything important that you want to keep somewhere safe. I pay for the 200 gb plan, and have been since 2016, and it's always been reliable, so I don't have a backup for any of these files either. I'm so sorry you're having this issue too; I know how valuable (and time-consuming) curating your study materials and notes is.

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Dec 7, 2022 9:03 AM in response to Hendelsady

Same. I lost 4 years' worth of college notes, projects, powerpoints, pdf's of reference materials and research articles that I no longer have access to since I'm not a student anymore, reports and essays, tax return information, financials, receipts and invoices for large/asset purchases, utility bills and tracking spreadsheets, recent tickets and purchase receipts--pretty much everything important that you want to keep somewhere safe. I pay for the 200 gb plan, and have been since 2016, and it's always been reliable, so I don't have a backup for any of these files either. I'm so sorry you're having this issue too; I know how valuable (and time-consuming) curating your study materials and notes is.

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Dec 7, 2022 6:14 AM in response to Hendelsady

The same thing happend to me, importent files just vanished, I'm lucky to have a large Time Machine so I was able to retrieve the files.

If it is possible that files can disappear from my iCloud than it is useless to me.

I would say Apple has here a big issue.....

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Dec 7, 2022 9:20 AM in response to natalie_tweeter

A little update as of yesterday:

I've been paying for the 200 gb storage plan since about 2016, and have never had an issue with my files disappearing from iCloud Drive, which is why I've never considered archiving files and backing up that archive elsewhere (this is my fault). After seeing this thread and looking into this issue all over the web, I couldn't find anything that addressed recovering only the missing files (e.g., pdf's, jpeg's, png's, etc.) from iCloud Drive. None of my other Apple/iCloud data is missing; all calendars, messages, password, photos, videos, notes, reminders, etc. are all still completely intact (thankfully). So I ended up calling Apple Customer Service about this yesterday and was on the phone with two reps for close to an hour. Although they were extremely patient and tried to be as helpful as possible, they couldn't identify the cause of the issue or how to remedy it, so they had to send my problem to their Engineering team. Although the service rep was great, ultimately the solution was this: we will try to recover your missing files, but we can't guarantee we'll find them. In the future, make a separate backup of all the files saved in your iCloud Drive and any other important data, and store that archive/backup file elsewhere so this issue can be avoided again.

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Dec 6, 2022 1:29 PM in response to Hendelsady

The exact same thing just happened to me. I didn't delete anything from iCloud Drive or iCloud.com and all of a sudden, I have 4 years' worth of files completely gone. All the folders are still intact, including their locations, but all the files within them have disappeared. I can't find any of the missing files anywhere in the recently deleted folders of iCloud Drive or on the website under the Data Recovery > Restore Files section. Everything just vanished and there's nothing for me to recover in any of the possible locations. I looked at the folder properties in iCloud Drive where missing files were saved, and they all say they were last modified on December 2, 2022 at 1:26 pm.

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iCloud files disappeared

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