iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back

Wait. This only works if you have previously opened your iCloud documents on your Mac.

If you have never locally opened the mobile docs folder then your Mac has no files. Same for cloud files not accessed on iPhone. There will be no mobile documents folder unless it got created when you accessed the cloud from a device.

My iCloud documents were all deleted when I set up a brand new mac with Mountain Lion a year and a half ago. I signed in and they all vanished. They never determined what the glitch was.

I thought all my work was safe, being on my iPad, that was itself backed up to Time Machine. But cloud docs are NOT backed up locally as a matter of Apple policy. I watched in horror as three months of Pages work disappeared before my very eyes when I opened my iPad to work. Apple engineers took three weeks to tell me nothing was recoverable. I ended up at least finding salvageable scraps of text spread around dozens of hidden files.

JC

Atlanta

This is my first time to use Apple Support Communities so I apologize if I'm not handling this correctly. Basically, I also opened Pages and Numbers yesterday and discovered all of my documents are gone. After reading through these posts, I logged into iCloud.com and when I opened Pages (marked "Beta"), all of my documents were there. But I don't know how to get them back onto my iPad. Can anyone offer advice or directions? Thank you.

Simplest way... open each document stored on the cloud and then choose MOVE TO in the file menu then move to your iPad documents folder or wherever. I don't know why your documents disappeared on your iPad but in theory each time you edit or open a document on iCloud a copy will be available on your iPad as well. Of course moving the documents to you iPad obviates the whole point of the cloud but it can be a more secure option to keep them on your own device.

Sorry but asll I can do is add to the tale of woes.

Yesterday, I upgraded my Mac to Mavericks. I had to as Pages on my iPad had upgraded itself (the only new feature seems to be a new icon) and then told me that if I wanted to open a Pages document on my Mac as well then I would need to upgrade to Mavericks. Well, as it was free, what the heck...

Today, I'm sat in a coffee shop working on a document and...."This document has been deleted from another location" flashed up and right before my eyes the document I was working on vanished. I spent the next couple of hours Googling for solutions, only to find lots of upset posts. I don't know if it was anything to do with Mavericks, after synching with my iPad last night, the iCloud disappearances is not the onloy thing to go wrong with my iPad.

Bye bye iCloud. Because all it takes is ONE error like this to completely undermine my faith in this cloud solution. And bye bye Pages because I've got to use iCloud to get my work on to my Mac, and I don't know if it will devour the documents en route. I had already decided not to use the Key Chain on iCloud as I didn't want the NSA to get all my passwords and credit card details, but now it seems that iCloud might eat those details anyway.

The old Apple adage 'it just works' needs a big upgrade.

"Wellcome". I think it delayed more than a year, that Apple could at least improving icloud adding a "trash/restore" option!! You are not the fst, the only one, And sad, BUT you'nt be the last!

I'll give one trick, that worked for me: if, And Thats the only option, if you have recently backed up your Apple, using time machine, so you can access the time machine drive, inside that, look for the icloud folder (Google it) And your last vers. Of these documents should be there.

BUT it is rally shame on apple's icloud. Extremely dangerous issue.

Just add a trash folder, even if it'd be online, ok... "Acidentaly" erases, could be solved...

I discovered my problem! In my Settings on the iPad, I discovered under ICloud, there is a control switch for "Documents & Data." For some reason, it was turned off. When I slid it to the Green position and re-opened Pages, I was asked if I wanted to synch with iCloud. When I said "yes," my docs reappeared!

Is it fixed for good? I don't know. But it looks OK for now.

Sad. This is why I know form experience to NEVER upgrade either OSX itself or the iOS Pages app without first waiting weeks or longer. Apple now always screws us over with some disaterous changed they dont tell you about. Glad I waited. My suspicions were warrented.

If you previously open any of your documents on a desktop or laptop, then go into the finder and access the hidden Library folder, which you can do by holding down option while looking at the Go pulldown menu at the very top menu bar. In there you shoudl see a folder called Mobile Documents. Explore itand some of your fiels should be tehre, if not, portion sof their text is actually recoverable by opening files there in Text Edit.

I do a back up to iTunes of my iOS Pages files weekly. Because TimeMachine DOES NOT back up your iCloud documents. ⚠

Apple and OSX have beocme a joke. They dont give a **** about basic functionality and stability. It's now all bells and whistles.

ps

(I previously lost 3 months worth of over 50 iOS Pages documents when I upgraded a new iMac to Mountail Lion. Apple gave me $300 in compensation for their error. Hundreds of others have had the same inexplicable problem. Since then I do not trust iCloud at all.)

Exactly the same thing has happened to all my yearly accounts.

Opened the spreadsheet on the iPad. It said that the file had been deleted on another machine and the it disappeared from the iPad.

I had just upgraded to Maverick on my mac book pro.

I have a Time Machine back up. It it doesn't store icloud docs does it?

Omigod. Taft us HOURS AND HOURS of work!

@guineapig,

Your iCloud documents are visible under 'Mobile Documents' in your library (the one you can access by holding down 'alt' when you hit 'Go' in the menu bar whist looking at your user account in Finder).

Access that and see if Time Machine has backed this folder up. In which case you are lucky!

It works for me, but I am not sure if this is because I made an alias pointing to that folder on my desktop. There is some anectotal evidence (somewhere in this thread if I remember correctly) that Time Machine normally does NOT back up this folder. In that case, set up such an alias and at least you are safe for the future.

iCloud behaves completely unpredictable when machines get added or modified. I lost all my iCloud files last year when I added my new MBP. when I upgraded to Mavericks last week, there was no loss of iWorks files. But, now that iBooks is on iCloud, I lost quite a few .PDF's which I had on iBooks on my iPad. Unpredictable as I said before....😕

By the way, if you use any iWorks application in OSX, be aware that the 'upgraded' versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote are very different from the ones you currently would use and have a lot LESS functionality! And once you have opened a file in the new version, it can no longer be opened in the old one! It may not effect you negatively, but lots of users are livid about this 'downgrade'. There are several threads in the user forums that detail the changes in each of the iWorks apps, read those BEFORE upgrading!! ⚠

AND the new versions of the iWorks apps, such as Keynote, seem not to allow the user to simply save a file other than to iCloud. Before upgrading to the current Keynote a few weeks ago, I could choose to open a presentation in Dropbox in Keynote format would create a Keynote file that could be saved in Dropbox. Now that same process creates not a Keynote file, but a compressed folder with all the elements of the presentation organized as it it is a webpage. There doesn't seem to be way to create a simple single Keynote file (with the extenstion *.key) that can be backed-up. Interestingly, the only way to save your presentation to a single file on Dropbox or GoodReader is to choose Powerpooint format! That works, but if you have video files embedded in yoru presentaiton those slides lose the video and you have to re-insert in Powerpoint.

So now there is no way to create presenation, save it as single file and send that file to another user or even to your own hard drive--and that includes trying to send it to iTunes file sharing!

So in response I started to sue iCloud only to discover that you have to specifically ask that your presentations are saved LOCALLY on the iPad and be very careful when turning iCloud off and on or you the presentations can be wiped from the iPad.

Thanks so much for the advice.

I haven't been able to test it out yet. I'm away from my mac book pro until Tuesday....here's hoping!

same thing happen to me, using iPad mini(1st gen, turn on sync with iCloud) suddenly all my documents that been created month before disappeared. try to recover back my document but no luck.

so it is 2 years since this topic begins and nobody in apple gives a ****. Same thing happen to me today. Never buying apple things again!!

It appears simply removing the Pages app from my iPhone has selectively erased many of my Pages documents stored in iCloud.

Either that or iCloud is having trouble tonight.

This has removed around 20 irreplaceable documents. Does anyone know of a new solution to this problem? I'm going to reinstall Pages on my iPhone, but don't have much faith that that will fix the problem.

Check that. The missing documents seem to have reappeared. This means that either it was an iCloud glitch or reinstalling Pages on the iPhone worked. Either way, I'm making a copy of the Mobile Documents directory to create a secondary backup.