Missing files in iPad's Files App

Hey everyone! I spent hours with Apple Support and this is what worked for me:

1. Download everything that you still have that isn’t deleted to another computer or upload it to google drive
2. Go to settings and erase all data (trust in this) - make sure you download anything important beforehand
3. When the iPad turns back on, sign into iCloud and it should give you the option to restore a backup of your iPad, something that can only be done after erasing all current data.
4. it should give an option to restore back to a date when you had all the data.
5. choose that option and wait until ALL the iCloud data is finished downloading to check.

Yes, I know it sounds counterintuitive but it was the only way to get my data back that was deleted. It restored me back to a backup where all my files were there.

hope this works for y’all!

I spent hours with Apple Support and this is what worked for me:

1. Download everything that you still have that isn’t deleted to another computer or upload it to google drive
2. Go to settings and erase all data (trust in this) - make sure you download anything important beforehand
3. When the iPad turns back on, sign into iCloud and it should give you the option to restore a backup of your iPad, something that can only be done after erasing all current data.
4. it should give an option to restore back to a date when you had all the data.
5. choose that option and wait until ALL the iCloud data is finished downloading to check.

Yes, I know it sounds counterintuitive but it was the only way to get my data back that was deleted. It restored me back to a backup where all my files were there.

hope this works for you!

Same problem! Almost half of my winter HW disappears!!!!!! And still nobody has a solution!!!!!!!

Same too me, what should I do!? I have exam after two days

Go to icloud.com ,sign in, scroll down and click recover files!

My ipad was updated with ios 17.1, recently whole my notes were missing without any interfering from me, some of them are visible on recents as pdf files but I can't open them or share them, it states that they are don't exist when I'm trying to share them, please help me to recover them as they are very much important for me

Glad to see I'm not the only one ! Just hung up on a 1h30 call and the person what suspicious of me having moved/deleted the files. I'm really devastated. They are supposed to call me back on Friday to let me know if I can access my disappeared files another way. Has anyone succeeded ?

I will just add I encountered same error on my ipad (6th gen, probably on IOS17 but it could be also 16th). Today my friend lost her PDF files on AIR 2nd gen, ios 17, from one folder (they are not in deleted files, recent as well). We also see it tries to sync something but never completing.

There is one thing in common, we all used pdf with our own annotation. Never seen anything like this for not annotated pdf.

This didn’t work for me as I found no files in data recovery. Probably because I tried Lotus’s method earlier though and that’s when the files disappeared from “recents” for me. It’s such an unnecessary headache.

same thing happened to me. i’m a literature student and i literally write 24/7. suddenly today in the MIDDLE of a class, 40% of everything that i ever wrote just disappeared. to say that i was frustrated and literally broke down is still an understatement. after a lot of crying i got the files back by a miracle. i did many many many things so idk which one of them was the one that helped me get all of it back but god i was terrified

Thank you for this lead. I’d downloaded the app at some point but removed it. No memory when or why.

i see that it costs $9.99/month (plus tax).

i suppose if your files are critical to success, then it’s a bargain price.

my annoyance is I used FILES but not PAGES app. It seems you can backup PAGES to iCloud but I haven’t found how to backup FILES to iCloud.

i have iCloud backing up everything but photos.

some older dated files remained. No rhyme nor reason to why the missing files went missing on iPad and aren’t in iCloud.

Same thing happened to me. It started over a month ago without notice. Only option is to use Data Recovery however they only keep 30 days. https://www.icloud.com/recovery/

If your files went missing 30+ days then you're SOL unfortunately. Crazy. There has to be a way.

Lesson is do not rely on Files App to update your docs. Keep for backup only and not cross device. Prob best to use Drive.

For anyone having the same issue, try checking icloud.com and go to data recovery and hopefully you’ll be able to find your files there. I had the same issue, somehow when I checked 12 pdfs disappeared without doing anything but I found and recovered them from the website

This is exactly my problem. I can't remember when it started but for a while I have to think of my Ipad like a leaky bucket. I can't trust storing anything on my ipad and must back everything on my Google drive. This is a major oversight for such a high quality product. It's like having a car that runs perfectly in everyway but the breaks randomly stop working.

This happened to me this afternoon. All the files I had saved and homeworks I had completed over the course of a class got moved to the "recents" folder and are no longer saved in the file pathway I had set up for them. I had opened and worked on all of these documents yesterday. Some of these documents include lecture notes about my final project setting up a model and this is happening three days before I have an exam. To say this is frustrating is an understatement, especially since many others seem to have this issue with no resolution. A huge disappointment that will result in massive time consumption for me to fix.