Pages won't sync and now I'm losing all my edits.

The principal criterion for collaboration is the current version of Pages for the author and collaborators. See all of the criteria here: Collaborate on documents in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote - Apple Support

If you do not want to lose content, don't do the things that cause it.

When you begin a new Pages document, the very first thing you do is save it and give it a proper document name. That enables autosave and auto versioning. Autosave will save approximately every 5 - 10 seconds while you are adding or changing document content on the local drive, and slightly longer over the network if on iCloud.

I would not recommend using Pages without also hourly backups to Time Machine so you have a fallback plan. Apple's iCloud Drive is a convenience repository but not a backup strategy that preempts using Time Machine to a local drive.

murray205 wrote:

1. Hi VikingOSX

Thanks for the reply.

FYI, this is my process.

I'm doing a monthly report which mostly involves updating some of the content.

In Finder I locate last months report, cmd-C cmd-V creates a new copy of the pages document. Within Finder I then press 'Enter' and change the name to the current month and remove the word 'copy'.

One can right-click on the Pages document in the Finder, choose Duplicate, and then right-click on that duplicate and choose Rename to achieve this list item goal.

2. Then I double click this document to open in Pages. (I get that warning about not syncing) The name is correct. I update the content. Then I save this new document.

From the syncing perspective, it is not the same document, and thus that warning. I do all of my Pages content locally, so do not have a reason to sync documents to the cloud.

3. Later (after the sync attempt has failed and given up) the document has been restored to the original copy from the previous month. All my edits have gone.

A) I realise upgrading to the latest OSX would fix this. I'm on an older version of OSX (Ventura 13.7.2) however updating OSX will take me a week as I have to reconfigure my development environment. Not really keen to update.

What's more important to you: Proper Pages synchronization, or your reconfigurable development environment which may itself need to be upgraded with a newer operating system upgrade?

B) Another option would be to turn off the sync stuff, but I don't even know if that is possible. Can a document just be local??? The icloud version is good because it satisfies my need for backups.

A document on iCloud can only be recovered if it is accidentally deleted within the most recent 30-day window. Storage on iCloud is a convenience but it is not a backup strategy, especially if the network is down and you need that document now.

C) The last option is to use the icloud version of pages and numbers to edit these documents. They are never the same, as I found when I tried to copy and paste a table from a web browser to icloud pages - not the same!

Pages and Numbers for iCloud are web-based solutions and are simply incapable of providing the features of these applications on the Mac. Neither Pages nor Numbers are inherently web-aware and copy/pasting browser content into them is a cross-your-fingers proposition at best.

Ventura isn't that old... these sync functions should be backward compatible.

Nevertheless, Apple is continually changing the Pages/Numbers applications, the iCloud applications, and even operating system functionality — both in the remaining Ventura updates, Sonoma, and Sequoia. The modal verb "Should" may give a hopeful perspective, but there is no guarantee of backward compatibility with Apple.

Any other options I have missed???