iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back

No more files being deleted:

I spent hours Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the phone with Apple, regarding my issue where my files kept being deleted. I would use PAGES and NUMBERS and see my files on my IPHONE and in IWORK, then come back open either app and see all my files DISAPPEAR, this happened over and over. After talking to numerous reps I was transferred to one who was going to restore my phone since previous people were convinced there was a problem with my operating system, he disagreed, after looking he said I had two accounts.

This had to do with me having two different apple ids, one which I had for years and a newer one I had to about a year since I no longer had access to the old email address.

He had me go to: appleid.apple.com/

Clicked manage your account and login in with my old apple id and password, we then went under where it said ALTERNATE EMAIL address which was the email address to my newer apple id and deleted it. Then logged out.

Went to IPHONE, Settings, ICLOUD, deleted ICLOUD from PHONE.

BACK to Settings, ICLOUD and entered new password to my newer apple id.

Went to SETTINGS, then to PAGES and made sure Use ICLOUD was set to ON and not OFF. Then did the same for numbers.

Then put documents in pages and numbers, restarted phone multiple times, updated docs and they stayed there.

I am CONVINCED the problem was with the mutiple accounts...

HOPE THIS HELPS!!!!

I experience and two different Apple Techs told me they werevGONE! They acted like they never heard of this happening!

I'm also having this problem. All my spreadsheets were working on my iPad. Then my iPhone wasn't syncing, so I turned it off and turned it back on. It synced 2 files, and then the next thing I knew, the rest of my spreadsheets on my iPad now disappeared!

Not cool.

Thx, But it did not work, i dont have two apple id's or accounts.

BUT, DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO NOTIFY APPLE OF THIS ******** PROBLEM it is getting pretty annoying.

lots lots and lots of stories about this problem but no reply from apple.

Id need to be fixed.

This is a nightmare and it needs to be fixed. I backed up all my iPad when upgrading to iOS5 but what good is that if I have no way to recover the files. I searched my hard drive and they aren't there. Of course they aren't. The Cloud is the only place where they reside so if iCloud eats all your files they aren't ANYWHERE!

Look at my earlier post solved my problems, icloud no longer deleting any of my files.

I appreciate the tip and will give it a try but it doesn't mean I'll ever see my documents again. Sure new files I create won't all be deleted but why on earth would I create documents with an app that might randomly erase all my files from existence? It's absolutely appalling. At least when I use Word I know it won't randomly delete it from all my devices. I may as well use text edit and email myself the files. Maybe even start using GMail.

They are on the hard drive if you have a OS X Lion and enabled iCloud documents sync in the preferences before it happened. A local copy of the documents are then in the Mobile Documents folder or the Mobile Documents.delete... folder. If you have Snow Leopard or Windows then there is no local copy on the computer as both don't support iCloud documents sync.

You can disable iCloud support in your iWorks applications on your iPad in the system preferences for each application. If you disable iCloud then documents are stored locally as before. They are not synced into iCloud and they should not disappear. Of course, you will have to make local backups through iTunes.

You should also be able to restore the documents from the backup before the iOS 5 upgrade. If you restore your iPad from that backup it contains all your documents from that time.

I had the exactly same problem today. terrible. Hope apple will fix it very soon.

The documents are on the hard drive but in mobile document format and so are unreadbale by the Mac. There is a previous post suggesting a lot of hocuc pocus involving moving and renaming the files to various directories to get them back in the iCloud, but that didn't work for me. There has to ba a way to translate the mobile documents back to documents that can be read by the applications on my mac.

It's no hocus pocus nor involves moving and renaming to various directories. I did work for many people just fine. What did you do exactly and what happened exactly?

My documents disapeared, I found them in the deleted items folder and do not know what to do with them. They won't open on my mac. If I email them to my iOs device they don't open there either. They are in mobile document format and I don't know what to do with them.

Thomas Grugle wrote:

My documents disapeared, I found them in the deleted items folder and do not know what to do with them. They won't open on my mac. If I email them to my iOs device they don't open there either. They are in mobile document format and I don't know what to do with them.

Did you find your documents in the "Mobile Documents" folder or in a folder "Mobile Documents.delete.<date>"?

So you did not copy the folder and changed the name back and forth? Of course, it doesn't work. You have to copy the whole folder for each document to the Mobile Documents folder for your application, then rename the folder removing the ending -tef, then rename it back adding -tef again. Then you should be able to use it again.

I wrote before what you have to do: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3382799?start=15&tstart=0#16398046

Yes, that's what I did. For about an hour - moved folders, changed names, tried to sneak up on it, It didn't work - nothing returned magically to the cloud.

I think there really has to be a simplke way to read the mobile documents on my mac.

Copy a standard Numbers '09 document (e.g. doc.numbers) from your Mac into the "Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~Numbers/Documents/" folder. It should appear in www.icloud.com and in Numbers on your iPad shortly afterwards. If not, you have to fix that first: check your sync settings and the apple id used.