Files on iCloud Reverting to Old Versions After Save – Need Help!

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Files on iCloud Reverting to Old Versions After Save – Need Help!

Hey everyone,

My iCloud Drive is not working properly.

I'm having a frustrating issue and wondering if anyone else has experienced this or knows a fix.

I'm working daily with Adobe (Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign etc.) and Microsoft Office (mainly Excel) files. I regularly update and save my files throughout the day. However, when I come back the next day and open the same files, they're often reverted to an earlier version — sometimes even the very first version I saved.

For example:

Illustrator files show up completely empty or only reflect changes from version 1 or 2, not my last saved work.
Excel files I save at the end of the day open up the next day missing the most recent changes, like they're stuck in the state they were in days ago.

This is happening repeatedly for the past month or two.. and is causing a lot of lost work. I was hoping it will get fixed with update but nothing yet.

I always hit Save (Ctrl+S) throughout the day and double-check that the save goes through before closing the files. But next day it is old version.

I'm working on new Macbook pro M4 (if that matters).

Files are saved on folder in iCloud.

Has anyone experienced this kind of problem before? Any tips or solutions would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.4

Posted on May 20, 2025 1:28 AM

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Answer 1

May 20, 2025 6:26 AM in response to D-Benjamin

Weird. So there is no other device in the mix accessing the same documents, right?

I have such setup and I often edit the same document with different devices. Sometimes iCloud Drive fails to sync despite waiting 5-20 minutes after logging to the other device. I must annoyingly babysit that by looking at the file modification date. If it is older than it should, I kick the sync awake by doing some dummy update like saving a dummy new document or doing a dummy duplicate of some document. Opening such document (.odt for example) also kicks the sync awake (when LibreOffice creates a related temp file to iCloud) but then at least LibreOffice is fast enough to open the old .odt document. I wish there was a button to force a sync and a datetime info of the last sync.

But maybe your Office or Adobe app is doing something extra like auto-save behind your back? Or maybe some 3rd party app or anti-virus app is interfering?

An EtreCheck report would eliminate much guesswork:

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

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Answer 2

D-Benjamin Author

Level 1

4 points

May 20, 2025 7:25 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Thanks, Matti — appreciate the ideas.

To clarify, there’s no other device accessing these files — it’s just me, on the same MacBook, saving and reopening the files later the same day or the next.

What’s strange is that the modification date always shows the most recent save time, even when the content inside the file has reverted. It looks like everything saved correctly, but when I open the file again, it's often an older version — sometimes missing hours of work.

Lately, I’ve started saving an extra copy of the file each day as a backup, and those seem to stay intact. But if I rename that backup file to the original filename, it still gets overwritten (or reverted) the next time — often after I put the computer to sleep. It’s almost like iCloud is syncing over the correct file with an outdated version from its cache.

You’d think local changes should sync to iCloud, not be overwritten by it. That’s what’s really confusing here.

Could this be some weird iCloud versioning or caching bug? Starting to feel like I need to just move these project folders out of iCloud entirely but this is not the case because i would like to have all files and backups on icloud.

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Files on iCloud Reverting to Old Versions After Save – Need Help!

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