iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back

I fell pity for the loss of my documents =( I bought iWork apps for my iPad/iPhone just for iCloud documents support, but It appears not to work as seamless as it is advertised =( .

I am still trying to restore documents from "Mobile Documents" folder on my iMac via Time Machine, but no results yet.

Hi there everyone!

I also lost all my iWork documents yesterday. I opened a case to apple regarding this but haven't heard from them yet.

I managed to salvage all but my Keynote files back to iCloud. I did the following steps from terminal:

1. I have copied the documents folder in "~/Library/Mobile Documents.delete.Wed Jan 4 09:19:53 2012/com~apple~Numbers" to "~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Numbers".

AGAIN: MAKE A COPY! Don't move the folder in case it doesn't work. Maybe even make a second copy fo the whole ".delete" folder to have a backup copy available!

2. I have renamed each document folder, removing the ending "-tef", e.g. renamed "My First Document.numbers-tef" to "My First Document.numbers". This makes the document appear in iCloud shortly afterwards. You can't open it as it is considered a document created by the Mac Numbers application.

if you have many documents using a short cmd line script is helpful;

# for i in *.numbers-tef; do mv "$i" "${i/.numbers-tef}".numbers; done

3. I have renamed each document folder back, i.e. "My First Document.numbers" to "My First Document.numbers-tef"

4. Now iCloud seems to sync it up again and recognizes it. It reappers on my iPad and I can open it.

If you copy from me so frankly, please at least post the link to my original message:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3382799?start=18&tstart=0

timpppa wrote:

Hi there everyone!

I also lost all my iWork documents yesterday. I opened a case to apple regarding this but haven't heard from them yet.

I managed to salvage all but my Keynote files back to iCloud. I did the following steps from terminal:

1. I have copied the documents folder in "~/Library/Mobile Documents.delete.Wed Jan 4 09:19:53 2012/com~apple~Numbers" to "~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Numbers".

AGAIN: MAKE A COPY! Don't move the folder in case it doesn't work. Maybe even make a second copy fo the whole ".delete" folder to have a backup copy available!

2. I have renamed each document folder, removing the ending "-tef", e.g. renamed "My First Document.numbers-tef" to "My First Document.numbers". This makes the document appear in iCloud shortly afterwards. You can't open it as it is considered a document created by the Mac Numbers application.

if you have many documents using a short cmd line script is helpful;

# for i in *.numbers-tef; do mv "$i" "${i/.numbers-tef}".numbers; done

3. I have renamed each document folder back, i.e. "My First Document.numbers" to "My First Document.numbers-tef"

4. Now iCloud seems to sync it up again and recognizes it. It reappers on my iPad and I can open it.

Yes, sorry about that! I give you the full credit about the steps!

DeHub, you save my life.

After almost 6 hour of frustration, I finally recover my page file using your method. Thank you so much

RECOVER YOUR DOCUMENTS!

After I had the same problem as you, I searched for a solution to get my documents back. And I found one!!! This evening I recovered all of my documents.

How to do?

First: You can only do that if you did use "icloud documents sync" also on your Mac (don't know if the windows variant also works) before icloud deleted your documents.

My example shows the way with numbers documents:

1. Watch at your mac for the folder /user/library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~numbers/documents. You should find some folders like myDocumentsName.numbers-tef. Take care with this! These are your lost documents. Copy the folders to another directory (save it).

2. Then you need a document in old numbers style (like the ...numbers-tef folders). I had that on my iDisk. So I used my ipad to recover the document from the iDisk to ios numbers. (it‘s totally equal if that is the correct document or not. You only need a document in old style in numbers ios).

3. Rename that document within ios numbers to the name of a document you lost.

4. After you renamed the document in ios numbers it gets uploaded to the icloud. Then you will see it at icloud.com and a few minutes later it gets synced into the com~apple~numbers folders on your mac.

5. replace the document you find there with the document you saved before out of that folder and wait until that change gets synced in the icloud.

TADA now your ios devices will update its document and you will have your old documents back.

Nixe to read that :-)

... Nice ...

Apple said it's fixed in the next big release. They asked me if I wanted to try it, but I would rather wait till the released version because I've already lost too much!

I did, however seem to narrow it down to the source of the problem. When I have "Documents & Data" checked in the iCloud settings on my Mac, that's when it seemed to periodically gobble up my documents.

Ever since I unchecked that, it syncs between my iPad and iPhone without issue.

Anybody else try that?

Hello Graffxguy

Any idea from Apple as to when the next big release will be? I just lost (again) all my documents from iWork, and also the ones from Goodreader which were in iCloud. It seems that the documents from Adobe Sketchbook were not lost (they are in the ipad, but I'm not sure if the cloud backup works the same in this case).

About your suggestion, my concern is that if I do it, I'd lose my "safety net" which is the copies in the Mac library. Am I wrong?

I lost almost all my Pages documents in iCloud that I had been working on with my iPad and iMac. Started with Apple support on December 26. That call went up 3 levels with that person contacting engineering and many contacts/calls later including a trip to Apple Genius bar. My account was put on "test?" with a new pasword. Since then performance is frequently changing but...unable to get my documents back, and support seems to be having a foodfight and throwing Apples between departments. Its funny but in a way I'm not entertained. Its been almost 4 weeks and I have no idea when I might get my iCloud service back as it was.

Files engineering "recovered" and emailed me did not work and I noted they had "index.db" files sizes of 29KB while working files on my iMac / Mobile Documents Pages folder had "index.db" files of approxiately 300KB.

On the iPad I see many pages with the "Pages icon" and some with a picture of the first page text, where some work others not.

I do not see any folder for deleted files as others have described.

Why not a simple text syncing system between the iPad and my iMac, that's all I need and really want. I can finish the fancy formatting on the iMac.

Any suggestions how I might dig my way out of this situation would be appreciated.

No clue when it'll be.

As far as losing the safety net, well, you can still download stuff from iCloud.com... I was just tired of the "safety net" on my Mac deleting all my documents.

I can answer yes to all those question in regard to my own iMac with a new installation of Lion, yet my ipad tonight lost months worth of irreplaceable Pages files, and my iCloud shows nothing there. I have no /documents.delete folder, and nothing shows in any time machine back ups whatsover. My itunes back up of my ipad as well as my icloud back up failed to resore any iPages files. I am stumped and my work is gone.

This is simpley not true. I wish it was!

I had iCloud sych completely set up on my new installation of Lion, it made no difference. I lost all my ipad Pages file sand there is no /mobile documents.delete folder anywhere, even going back on my time machine right up to the date Lion was installed. Nor are any of my Pages files in my iTunes back up. iCloud deleted all my files inexplicably and none of the recovery solutions on this thread have worked for me.

Hey everyone... I have the same problem, but sadly, I am not using Lion or any Mac OS. I'm using Windows...

Is there any way to recover a deleted document from Pages?

Isn't there any website or anything for I may recover this doc?

Please, HELP ME!!!!

It is so much important for my work!

Thank you

Hey there,

this could by the answer, wich you are all waiting for....

I've found some backup data on my mac via /YourUser/Library/Mobile Documents/iWorkApp/

Download iDevice Manager and paste the Data from your Mac /var/mobile/Library/Mobile Documents/iWorkApp/

Then restart your iWorkApp - voila 🙂

Please tell me if its working, ive tried it by myself and it works perfektly 🙂