iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back

Sadly I don't think anyone has come up with a guaranteed solution to get documents back. My ultimate solution was to move everything to Google Drive. My documents stored there can easily be exported to Word (or other file formats) and I back the Zip file up locally and on Wuala should a disaster ever happen to the datacenter where my documents are stored.

Hi, I'm an oldie who understands very little of how things work today. When I got my iPhone (I now have the iPhone 5), my husband told me to sest my phone to backup to iCloud. I was doing that every night when I plugged in my phone to charge it overnight (I never "set up" anything--just did an automatic backup). However, twice I have lost documents--once it was an entire calendar. This last time I lost one file in one of my apps--my medical history, along with upcoming appointments. I stopped backing up to iCloud since it appears to be very unstable. Two questions: (1) since I set up nothing on iCloud (didn't know I had to), can any lost file (such as the medical app data) be retrieved without restoring (and then losing current data)? and if so, what exactly is the process (remember, I'm an older "girl"); (2) since I have begun to absolutely hate iCloud for ridding me of important data, I am wondering how I would go about backing up my iPhone to iTunes--that, at least, seems more reliable than iCloud. Oh, one more question: why hasn't Apple fixed this really REALLY bad problem? Thank you. Marilyn

Where do you find "~/Library"?

Same here

I was working on a 13,000 word document, then Pages gave me a 'Document deleted in another location' and now the file is completely gone. I was literally mid-sentence when this happened. I am stupified by this - I was literally writing on it, then a pop-up error came up and the document disappeared before my eyes. I can't find any trace of it on my other devices.

I am at a loss for words - I am so disgusted by Apple right now. I am going to immediately back up my files, but losing a document that I've spent so much time on for no apparent reason has me furious.

The lesson I am learning is that I am a fool for buying in to Apple's ecosystem.

Do you have your files backed up to Time Machine? If so we may be able to find a previous version of your document.

Also, try this: in the Finder click on the Go menu, then Go to Folder, and when prompted enter "~/Library/".

Find the Mobile Documents folder, then you should find a folder called something like com~apple~Pages. Look through that folder to see if your document is there.

I did try these things - no sign of the document. I did make a full back up of the library folder to make sure no other documents are lost irreperably though. It refused to copy some of the files because of the version of Pages I had (???), but compressing the folder and moving that worked well.

I feel for you. I too have lost several files, but not as large as yours. I seem to remember Pages on my iPad telling me something incomprehensible about needing to upgrade on my Mac, and it was just after upgrading, I think, that my files vanished...right before my eyes...with the "deleted at another location" message.

Like you, the /Library/ suggestion has come up fruitless.

What with iCloud eating my files and the NSA snooping with the connivance of Google, Apple, Microsoft and all the rest, my faith in ALL forms of Cloud computing is now zero. I will never trust my data with any of these clowns, so it's back to USB sticks and external hard drives for me as back ups.

What is even more remarkable is that this thread is now more than two years old, and Apple still haven't fixed the problem. AND their iCloud still labels Pages as Beta - so they know it doesn't work right, and they're quite happy to let their customers have hours of hard work destroyed in an instant.

They used to say about Apple products, 'it just works'. Not any more.

Have you looked in the Time Machine backup of that 'libraries' folder? (assuming you do TM backups)

I have put a link to that folder on my desktop and since I have done that, Time Machine backs up the folder and iCloud documents seem to be backed up.

Don't know if it was also the case before I created that link.

I also lost iCloud documents in a similar way, from verious examples in this tread it seems to happen when a new piece of equipment is added to the iCloud account (in my case a MBP). Apple certainly do not have the Cloud comuting thing sorted yet, which is pretty disappointing after at least 2 years....

I've deleted documents on both iPhone, and iMac running Time Machine, and restoredthis way:

Open the application on your Mac ( I was also using Pages) then select menu File / Open / and then select iCloud, not On My Mac.

Now you should see a list of your Pages documents in iCloud.

Open Time Machine and go back to a time you can see your deleted document, select the document to recover and then select Recover.

I've lost documents twice, never saw then in ~library/Mobile documents, and when I test deleting they disappear from that location.

I also suggest writing a test document and following it into your Mobile documents and iCloud. See how it updates with and without internet access to keep in sync, and then test deleting your test document until you are confident you can recover it. Otherwise you'll be too distracted by apprehension to get it right the first time you actually loose a document. It may "just work" for Steve, but if you are a normal person you'll need to test and practice first. The time invested will be worth it.

Good luck,

David

I have 3 iPads and just got a iPhone 5, after I setup my iPhone I noticed all of my pages documents were gone from all my devices. I think there was a pages update and now all my data is gone. I thought I could rely on Apple, but this was very disappointing. From what I am reading there is no way to get back this date.....NOT GOOD.

I have a couple questions:

1. Are you syncing with any OSX computer, hopefully with Time Machine? You can restore from there.

2. When you setup the iPhone, did you sync it to your other devices, perhaps through OSX iTunes, with their pages documents? Otherwise, if your iPhone became the latest and "updated" version of your documents (with no documents yet), I assume it will tell iCloud that you now have no documents and deleting your iCloud data on all your devices. After all, when you delete an iCloud document on one device, its then deleted on all devices.

I've lost documents this way so now I make sure my documents are backed up before adding another iCloud synced device.

Your logic makes sense. Sort of.

However....

iCloud does more than backup. It is how these devices sync to each other. As soon as I open pages on any device, it opens by updating everything to its last sync. Backups are individual to each device. Adding the new phone should have added all shared content, just as email, contacts and calendar was added to the new phone, Pages would add also as soon as you opened it on the phone and signed in.

There is always the option to double up, and as a bonus, not take up any of your own storage space. Use DropBox, or Box for iOS. box is up to 50GB free storage. Since I move things across platforms, Dropbox is a lifesaver.

I agree with you Liz, I would think the cloud would update my iPhone with the data not the other way around. My numbers data went on my iPhone, I just lost all my pages data. Very surprised at Apple. When I got my 3rd iPad, all the data was imported from the cloud with no problems.

Yes, me too. All my Pages docs disappeared from iCloud and from my iPad. So did my Keynotes docs. I hadn't started using Numbers on the iPad, fortunately. I wasn't aware that you could force Time Machine to back up iCloud. So I'm just out of luck.

BUT: note that I did not update anything. I stayed away from Mavericks, and did not update on the iPad either. That did not protect me. Apple deleted all my files that had any connection to iCloud.

In case anyone out there still hasn't been through this disaster (maybe you've been in Borneo for six months and haven't turned on your computer) I suggest disabling iCloud first thing, then email to yourself all your iWorks docs and back them up somewhere dark and remote that Apple can't reach.

I've gone back to Microsoft Office 😟, and am searching for apps to replace iWorks for iOS. Any suggestions?