iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back

I synced my documents with icloud last night on my iPad and iPhone and everything was worked flawlessly, but this afternoon I launched pages on my iPad and all my documents appeared for a brief moment then the disappeared. The same with my iPhone. These were important documents that I use for class. I am assuming this is a flaw in iCloud. Please help me get these back! Thanks!

iPad 2, iOS 5

Posted on Oct 13, 2011 5:58 PM

Reply
313 replies

Oct 16, 2011 2:45 AM in response to gvde

I have managed to get my Numbers documents back:


1. I have copied the documents folder in "~/Library/Mobile Documents.delete.Sat Oct 15 09:01:32 2011/com~apple~Numbers/Documents" to "~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Numbers/Documents".

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.


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.


5. I did this for each of my 9 documents. If you have more, you may want to use a little script.


6. To get the previews back I have also copied the contents of "~/Library/Mobile Documents.delete.Sat Oct 15 09:01:32 2011/com~apple~Numbers/iWorkPreviews" to "~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Numbers/iWorkPreviews"


Now everything seems to be O.K. Documents are back. They show up on icloud.com, iPad and iPhone. I haven't done anything with Numbers the last two days thus at least for me: no loss.

Oct 16, 2011 6:35 AM in response to ryanfromnesbit

This seems unbelievable to me. With the iPad 2, Apple targets the serious business market. So it cant be true, that an update deletes ALL documents that you (I!) stored in Pages, Keynote, Numbers. Even more: with iTunes I made a backup of all content before upgrading to IOS5 - obviously with no use, since you cant restore the data, or at least I dont know how to do it.


For me, not only my confidence in Apple is lost - there is real money lost, since my iPad contained important business information.


Apple: What are you going to do about this?

Oct 17, 2011 3:44 AM in response to ryanfromnesbit

I seemed to have solved this problem by deactivating iCloud on every device (including the Mac!) and then activating it again, after trashing the "Delete Mobile" folders I had found in the LIbrary. Now the IWork documents have resumed regular syncing and I haven't experienced any deletion since. Here's the steps I took exactly: (a) tun off iCloud on Mac, iPad, iPhone after backing up Calendars and Address Book, (b) deleted "Mobile Documents" folders from Library and (c) reinstated all ICloud accounts commencing with Mac. Who knows, perhaps it was just a synchronization issue.


The deleted documents should be in the "Deleted Documents.mobile" folders that are located inside in your Library folder (if you are using OSX Lion you may have to type a special terminal command to view this hidden folder).

Oct 18, 2011 3:33 AM in response to ryanfromnesbit

Oh dear.


I have to do a presentation for 200 people tomorrow morning. I worked on the script all afternoon on the iPad and saved it to iCloud. Now it's gone. Unbelievable.


Why oh why did I trust a .0 release?


I take it from this thread that there are no solutions, and I'd better get to work rewriting the script. That's what I'll do. It's 9:30 p.m. in Sydney and my audience will be ready to go at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Pfft.

Oct 18, 2011 9:29 AM in response to ryanfromnesbit

The instructions posted by gvde do work--they allowed me to recover my documents last night. They've been deleted again since then, but I was able to save them to my normal Documents folder on my Mac, safe and sound.

[quote]

I have managed to get my Numbers documents back:


1. I have copied the documents folder in "~/Library/Mobile Documents.delete.Sat Oct 15 09:01:32 2011/com~apple~Numbers/Documents" to "~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Numbers/Documents".

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.


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.


5. I did this for each of my 9 documents. If you have more, you may want to use a little script.


6. To get the previews back I have also copied the contents of "~/Library/Mobile Documents.delete.Sat Oct 15 09:01:32 2011/com~apple~Numbers/iWorkPreviews" to "~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Numbers/iWorkPreviews"


Now everything seems to be O.K. Documents are back. They show up on icloud.com, iPad and iPhone. I haven't done anything with Numbers the last two days thus at least for me: no loss.

[/quote]

Oct 18, 2011 12:50 PM in response to gvde

When in Finder, highlight the "Go" menu. While it's showing, press the Option key on your keyboard and "Library" will appear in the menu. Click on "Library" and a Finder window will open with Library highlighted. In the next column, Mobile Documents should appear, hopefully more than once. These are you backups. However, not all of my documents appeared there. I think this syncing had happened in the background on the occasions that I logged into iCloud from the computer.


Good luck.

Oct 18, 2011 10:47 PM in response to Felix Leiter

I thought I had found a solution, but it didn't work: after approximately 12 hours the iCloud servers deleted all documents once again and created automatically a "Mobile Documents.delete" folder in my library. It is as if a script were run at regular intervals telling one of my devices to perform a resync and delete. I have an appointment set with Applecare and I will address the issue then.

Oct 19, 2011 12:48 AM in response to ryanfromnesbit

I have some good news. I was contacted by the "iWork team" on my mail yesterday. They said they had read my earlier post here and they asked me a couple of questions: Did I have two Apple ID:s, did I have early versions of iCloud or the latest update from Lion (no), and some more questions.


I answered all the questions, and it certainly seemed that they have some suspects, and that they're narrowing down what's wrong.


This morning, when I checked my mail again, I got a mail from them with a debugger software to install on my phone. So I installed it, and then I went through all the steps that makes my files disappear. That is: I created a file on my phone, it got uploaded on iCloud, and then, after a while and the usual fiddling with the phone, when i opened Pages again, it flashed for a moment and then it was gone.

I've just sent them the log files and hopefully they now have an exact log of what is going wrong.


I'm kind of impressed that they took action like this. It's a very clever way to get the most out of the forum.

I'll keep you posted if they get back to me.

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iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back

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