All documents gone after admin reset login password

Out of nowhere a user on my MacBook Air was locked out. No reset time and waiting a day didn’t help. I ended up logging in as admin and resetting their password. They logged in immediately but now there are no documents, desktop items or downloads. No other users profiles, no recently deleted profiles.


im not backing up to Time Machine and the user doesn’t believe they were logged in to iCloud on this device

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 13.5

Posted on Jan 17, 2026 5:00 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 17, 2026 5:25 PM

Okay, so macOS 13.5 (and not 13.7.8, or something newer) and also no backups?


if backups are now required, get a hard disk drive or maybe a NAS if the budget is available as NAS can avoid needing cabling for connections, and then set up Time Machine or some other backup tools.


Get the Mac updated to at least 13.7.8, or maybe to newer, too.


As for finding files, look around in /Users directory, and see if you can find anything relevant.


If Desktop and Documents was enabled, that storage requires access to iCloud, so check iCloud Drive via the user’s iCloud.com login, and see if the files are there.


Add your Desktop and Documents files to iCloud Drive - Apple Support


Recreating the password probably clobbered access to the Keychain and he Keychain may well now be blocking access to iCloud Drive.

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 17, 2026 5:25 PM in response to yourashero

Okay, so macOS 13.5 (and not 13.7.8, or something newer) and also no backups?


if backups are now required, get a hard disk drive or maybe a NAS if the budget is available as NAS can avoid needing cabling for connections, and then set up Time Machine or some other backup tools.


Get the Mac updated to at least 13.7.8, or maybe to newer, too.


As for finding files, look around in /Users directory, and see if you can find anything relevant.


If Desktop and Documents was enabled, that storage requires access to iCloud, so check iCloud Drive via the user’s iCloud.com login, and see if the files are there.


Add your Desktop and Documents files to iCloud Drive - Apple Support


Recreating the password probably clobbered access to the Keychain and he Keychain may well now be blocking access to iCloud Drive.

Jan 17, 2026 6:47 PM in response to MrHoffman

Nothing was viewable from users when accessing from go. Signing into iCloud gave access to many files, but local files are still blank.


Ssd is about half full which sounds correct but I suppose it’s possible all documents and downloads were stored in the cloud


ill update and see if that fixes but hopefully I don’t lock myself out of recovery in the new version

All documents gone after admin reset login password

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