iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back

What you described is what thousands of us have suffered with iWork.

iCloud is UNRELIABLE!

Apple WILL eventually lose your work if you save it only to iCloud.

Always send files to iTunes manually.

I had 3 out of some 30 Pages files mysteriously reappeer on my iPad after ten months, yes. But I suspect this was only because I left the seklenton files for those docs still in place on iPad Pages --- if you see a file icon that looks like a blue on black inkpen and ink bottle, an dit won't open, that's the ghost document place holder.

If you ever opened or saved any files to the cloud from an imac or macbook there may be some remnant of the data in a -tef file located in the hidden mobile documents folder of your library. I found some text in there that I managed to reassemble into soem lost files by dragging and dropping them into TexEdit (they won't open otherwise). Search the threads here for more on all this. Good luck.

Numbers > File > Revert to > Browse all versiones... and recover from there all your lost or changed docs. 🙂

Sadly that wont work! Using that path will get you into the time machine back-up of your documents. But iCloud documents arenot backed up in time machine (or anywhere else on the iMac or MacBook). Especially documents that were created on iPad (or other iOS devices), they have never been anywhere near the Time Machine!

I now use Dropbox as a back-up for iCloud, and that should be wholly unneccesary......😠

You are absolutely correct.

Just backing up your iPad or iPhone to iTunes does not save any of your icloud files.

Any document saved to iCloud is NOT backed up anywhere in any of your backups in time machine or iTunes.

They are effectively "owned" by Apple (i.e., held hostage by iCloud).

They don't tell us this!

You think your work is safe. It's not. It's ONLY in the cloud. It's not even saved anywhere permanently on your own mobile device.

If the cloud becacking up your iPad or iPhone to iTunes does not save any of your icloud files.

I work for three months on dozens of Pages files from an iPad that was not connected to the Internet.

When I later set up a brand-new iMac with Lion the new iCloud sent a signal to my iPad on the very first time it was connected to the Net and all of my files were then instantly deleted right before my eyes. I thought everything was safe in my Time Capsule or in iTunes and my other drive backups of time machine and iTunes. But nothing had been saved anywhere because any iOS file tagged as owned by iCloud is NOT saved OR backed up. Apple was no help recovering them and took no resposibility.

Rely on the iCloud at your own peril. Just as any hard drive will eventually crash so will your iCloud files.

JC

Atlanta

I can only tell you that it works absolutely fine on my iMac with OS X 10.8.2 and iOS 6 devices.

My iCloud documents are automatically synced into the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder.

They are automatically backed up to Time Machine during normal backup cycles.

I can restore previous versions from the Mobile Documents folder from Time Machine, save it to the Desktop and open it from there directly in Pages or Numbers.

Documents created on my iPad are automatically synced in the background to my Mac and are then automatically backed up to Time Machine.

So basically, everything works the way it should...

Thank you very much! For some reason, I thought that these (hidden and on-line) folders were not backed up to Time Machine, but you are right, they are!

Although my loss was not that great, I've got mys stuff back.

I hope the other contributers to this thread have the same experience!

Not sure how to give you the 10 points, but you deserve them!

They are ONLY backed up if you have icloud on your desktop or other device and have ALSO accessed the cloud from them. Otherwise, no mobile folder (and no mobile ~tef file) is created. This is why thousands have lost their work that was only on their iPad. With icloud now being an inseperable part of Mountain Lion the mobile folder is created in the lIbrary by default. But this doesn't mean it can't become corrupted and destroy files.

Just lost all mine too, found the mobile folder but it only had the one new document that I just opened, and Pages on my iMac which I have been using shows no recent documents used, and all Pages documents have been lost, Numbers documents ok.

I guess time to get an even larger hard drive and use Time Machine now....

I had this happen to me also a while back so I stopped using Documents in the Cloud. It's disappointing to see that it's still an issue.

I unwittingly moved all of my Word files - almost a years worth of work - to iCloud when I was prompted to do so about six weeks ago. I then realised that they had been removed from my MacBook (how dare they do this without advising me!) and then they were nowhere to be seen on iCloud. After weeks of trying to find them and weeks of searching these forums, I decided to see if they might be lurking in the 'All my Files' section of the Finder. Lo and behold, there they were. All muddled up - but they were there. I had to manually move each file from All my Files down to newly created Files on my desktop, thus essentially dragging almost a years work file by file into their relavent files on the desktop. I then dragged them all back in to the Documents file on my hard drive, which is where they SHOULD have stayed, had Apple not removed them.

I will never sync with iCloud again, I certainly will not be purchasing the word processing software they are aggressively pushing (lets face it, this is why they are screwing around with our Word files - they want us to opt for their 'easier' option and buy their 'word' version) - I'm (once again) disgusted with this organisation. If I could turn back the clock and never buy Apple, I would. I'm seriously considering moving to Android.

As someone who owns both iOS and Android - Android is 1000x worse. Take iOS, remove everything that makes it great, remove all the polish, make it difficult to use, and there you go, Android.

I used to have an HTC Desire, which I have to say was absolutely on par with my iPhone. I grant you, a PC is rubbish compared to Mac and I'd be interested to see (after having a Mac for two years) if anything on the market comes close. From a SmartPhone perspective, my experience with HTC was awesome (and some of the functionality was actually easier, such as instantly sharing photos on social media...although I think the iPhone 5 is pretty awesome and looks great) - I'm particularly intrigued by the Samsung Galaxy S4. And I've got my head around having a larger screen (which used to strike me as clumsy and just too big) - I think because I now (like so many others) use my Smartphone for content rather than talking, a larger screen sounds great. I'm not that bothered about an iPad so a bigger screen SmartPhone would be a nice middle-ground.

Any idea if there is a PC / laptop out there with the speed and processing power of iOS?

Just Happened tu me. I have a macbook air, an ipad and iphone, all, of course, using the same icloud account.

I changed a file in pages yesterday. Today I tried to lauch it, but there was no internet signal, ok, gave up. BUT... When, now, I tried to launch ipad and mac asked me that there was 2 versions, and asked whick one to keep. Ok, I made my choice, the vers. of yesterday, in my mac. Suprise.... erased both... no more this file... search in mac, ipad, in internet at icloud.com and inside the hidden icloud folder... nothing... gone... that`s not the first time that happend... It`d be better icloud have a trash folder, so we can recover some mistakes....

Today All my iCloud documenta on iPad disappeared. On the iLad only! But not notion the iPhone and not on Pages or Numebers on my Mac. How can I put them on sync again?

If you are using time machine you can get all your files back easily.

alt click the go menu and choose library

open mobile documents

open the folder you want to restore eg Numbers

Then open time machine

go back until you see all the files reappear that have disappeared from iCloud..

hit restore

All you iCloud docs are stored on your Mac.. if not you could not access them when not connected to the internet!