Missing files in iPad's Files App

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.

I've contacted them and they had no idea on how to recover.

Did they use iCloud?

If yes, it doesn't work for me, because I disabled the iCloud backup feature a long time ago, so there's nothing in my iCloud. :(

I've had the same issue! Two uni folders with all the work from this semester vanished, neither in Recently, nor in Deleted, weren't even listed in Downloads anymore. It affected PDFs with Apple Pencil editing but also unedited "clean" PDFs. About 3 hours with Apple Support via chat and phone, many checks, resets and going back to the last backup did not work. Went back to a backup version from before the files were lost and still did not reappear :( I'm now just left with hoping for them to magically come back one day, but the frustration and desperation continues

Lotuspilot advice worked for me. Files folder disappeared completely, files within locatable but unopenable. So …. to repeat ….. delete (offload) Pages app. Restart device. Reinstall pages. Folder reappeared like magic! Good luck

I stopped using the Files app to markup PDFs a long time ago because of this issue. I now use the app called Documents. I haven’t lost a PDF since.

Has anyone tried to use the Notes app to annotate PDFs? I just noticed that you can annotate a PDF and then if you want, either keep the PDF in Notes or export it.

Tried this it doesn’t work, I can find the file but it does not open.

This I pade is using my number

This has happened to me. It is so annoying and if Apple cannot fix it, what use is an iPad!

Even I lost some files yesterday 😭😭, what to do?

THANK YOU. I had not figured that out.

Hi, this just happened to me. I am devastated since I had really important notes on the pdf files but now they're gone. I just don't understand why this has happened.

Thanks - just tried this and it works....