pages-lost documents

This is what mine look like. Clearly seems to be a text document but its a generic icon. I created a very small Pages document, backed up and then selected the very first file in the backup and this is what it looks like. I checked a whole bunch of the files in the list but I cant get one that looks like your.

Hmmm...I also just noticed that your file names make sense - like "plain text" whereas mine are a combination of letters and numbers. My backups are not encrypted so that makes me wonder why yours show up as real words for the file names and mine are some type of letter/numeral gibberish. Oh well, now I have something to obsess about. I'll have to figure that one out now myself.

Quick edit... I didn't have the window opened up wide enough to see the real word file names but mine are all called Document. Strange .... don't know why I can't see the previews like you do. But on the other hand I still have all of my files ... this really is messing with my aging brain now.

Message was edited by: Demo

I went back to the Mac store and they still couldn't solve it, but they did replace the iPad to let me try restoring from the same backup, in case the hardware was at fault. I was pretty impressed with that.

The documents didn't reappear, but I did work out another way to search the backup files in more detail and then access the text inside them. It took a few hours but I've salvaged all the work I did in Pages!

I still think it's crazy that iTunes synced the backup properly but then not only wiped the info from Pages, but also didn't provide either me or the Mac store Geniuses with a way to retrieve the info. Getting it back required a couple of other freeware apps and quite a bit of ingenuity!

Im sorry it was such a pain but Im glad Apple was helpful and that you got this resolved.

The documents didn't reappear, but I did work out another way to search the backup files in more detail and then access the text inside them. It took a few hours but I've salvaged all the work I did in Pages!

Some day if you are really bored and want to share, I would be curious to know how you did this. As you can see from my post above, my backed up files are generic text icons. I couldn't check these files if I wanted to do so. The app saves the files by itself so I assume I am doing nothing wrong in the save process - the user can't change how that works. In the backup process? I just can't figure out why you can see the "mini file" in Quick Look and I can see only a generic icon.

How can you check the files in more detail????

Yup sure. Sorry for the delay!

Firstly ignore any icons of the documents you can see in the itunes backup folder, those are just the preview icons and don't contain your text files.

I worked this next bit out by finding just one of the files by brute force searching but you can just do the following.

1. COPY your whole backup folder (via library/application support/mobile sync) to the desktop. Make sure that's just a copy!

2 Download Easy Find and Name Mangler - both free.

3. Use Name Mangler to rename all the files with .txt at the end. This will let you search them.

4. Use Easy Find to search all the files in that folder for the phrase 'paragraphstyle' (one word). That phrase was unique to Pages files on my machine.

5. Once Easy Find has located them, you can drag & drop them to a new folder.

6. Then you can open them with any word processor. You'll see lots of garbage in the file, but further down you'll see your text. There will be a bit of repeating, I guess from the autosave process, but it's a snip to trim it down to the original file.

Hope that makes sense, just shout if it doesn't..

Good luck!

PS for anyone reading this at Apple - this is how you HELP people.

Paul ... thanks for sharing this little tidbit. I have bookmarked this discussion thread on my iPad so that I can try this at home when needed.

Cool!

CAN ANYONE HELP WITH THIS? Ok, so here is a strange problem. I worked on a paper in Pages in my Ipad2. I emailed it to myself and continued working in MS Word on my HP laptop. Lots of work later, i saved in Word as usual and synced my Ipad. Next day i try to work on my paper on my laptop and the file somehow reverted to a previous version and lost everything I had done since. I've tried multiple Apple support people and no one can imagine why a sync would alter the file on the laptop. I got the Ipad to help with my grad school and its made my first paper disappear!!!

I experienced the same. All gone, and nothing in the "app" section of iTunes. Just vanished.

Hello,

I am having a similar problem but it does not have to do with iTunes. I was working on a very long document, and I did not realize the battery was under 10%. The iPad 2 shut down due to loss of power while I was in the Pages App. When it started back up again, my document was completely lost and I have no idea how to recover it. Can you please help me?

I seem to have resolved the issue with a little help from Applecare, proceeding as follows:

1) Backup all of your iPad and/or iPhone data through iTunes;

2) click off the "Sync Apps" button in iTunes and perform a "clean" sync of the device (all third party apps will disappear, as well as iWork apps);

3) Connect to the Appstore on iPad/iPhone and download your apps back, STARTING WITH IWORK APPS;

4) Sync back again with iTunes.

After taking these steps, documents in the cloud appears to have resumed regular syncing with no deletions, I will keep everyone posted as to how this solution stands, however it seems to be a conflict between iWork apps and other third party apps. If true, it's hard to believe someone at Apple hasn't posted this workaround somewhere yet. If this workaround is only temporary, let's hope Apple fixes it soon.

But it's worth trying, no more deletes here!

I, too, have suddenly lost ALL my Pages documents. But my situation is not covered here. I sensed something was strange when I tried to get on iCloud to see if I could find then and iCloud asked if i wanted to set it up for this device. I was sure I had, so I looked under System and then under iCloud to see what apps were marked on. Sure enough Pages was among them. BUT when I looked at Pages, iCloud was not indicated as on. I am afraid to change anything or to agree to set up iCloud for fear that my documents are somewhere in there and won't be if I set up a new account, not to mention how confusing it would be to have two.

This is not good. The iPad has served as my main computer for two years and the documents are very numerous and include all versions of my resume!

I do hope I can get some kind of help.

I just want to add that the first thing i did was to close Pages, do a simple shut down with just the top left button (iPad sitting sideways). No luck. I then did a full reboot, with both the top left side and the home buttons. Still no luck. Believe it or not, I have never learned to use iTunes, so that's out, too.

OK. The missing documents seem to be accessible on another computer via iCloud and I read on another thread on a similar subject that now that I have gone to System and then Pages and then turned iCloud on, the documents should reappear. I hope that saves someone extensive time looking through these discussions if their situation is similar. But I'm still confused about why, when I try to go to iCloud on the iPad, it seems to think I don't have an account yet.

Same issue but previews have disappeared. I have not been using the cloud so I guess they are gone forever. Lost my trust in the app and wish I could get a refund. Won't use it ever again.

Check in settings to see if anything has changed with your settings for Pages or ICloud which may have been a built in. My previews disappeared too but came back when I changed the settings of Pages in Settings.