iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back

Hello jgoshawk,

Are you running Time Machine on OSX?

Time machine backs up iCloud documents. Open the appropriate application as: Pages / file / open / iCloud. When you see the window for iCloud Pages documents, even if the documents are gone now, open Time Machine and go back in time to find and restore.

I likely mentioned it earlier, but I switched to Google Drive. I haven't had a problem with it since switching.

Thanks bicycle, I didn't know the iCloud docs were back there. Sure enough.

But still there's a glitch. If I try to restore a doc, it comes forward grayed out; won't open in Pages; Quick Look says it has zero bytes. THis happens with all the old files.

At the same time, a progress window appears labeled "Copy" that seems to be trying to copy the old file to a folder called Documents (evidently not my local Documents folder), but nothing transfers. I get an error message saying "The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access..."

I wonder if there's another way to get at them.

This happened to me-I lost a Pages doc on my iPad for no reason when a "document has been deleted at another location' error message came up (it hadn't been deleted at another location). I was able to able to retrieve it by turning off iCloud sync then quickly emailing a version of the doc to myself from my iPhone pages app before it disappeared there, too. The iWork website would've been my next option. For some reason other versions of my Pages weren't affected. Not sure why they haven't fixed this problem, though. Hope this helps somebody.

ETA: closing and restarting my pages ipad app also restored the doc.

It was a nasty surprise to turn on my ipad air and go to edit a document in pages and find all my content gone. I have no idea what happened but i did click on a recent 'update'. Went to icloud and there's nothing there either.

10 folders POOF!

Come on apple, Really?

Icloud is now switched off - permanently. I will backup my own content somewhere else.

That's awful.

Scary how this is still happening to peo

But can you give more details, please?

What iOS version?

What device models of yours use iCloud?

What update did you apply to what previous OS versions on what devices?

Scary how this is still happening to people.

I lost some Pages documents through iCloud a couple years ago and that motivated me to understand iCloud better.

Is iCloud really a backup? It can be a backup if you want to start a new device "in sync" for example. But when I think about it... If you are allowed to manage your documents to stay within your allowed iCloud storage size, then you must be able to delete -- permanently.

Time Machine is a backup except where it deletes old files to avoid running out of disk space. Time Machine is where I can reliably restore documents. But in iCloud, if there is a way to restore a document I intentionally or unintentionally delete, I haven't found it, and I can't force myself to look too hard because it doesn't make sense.

On my iPhone I've butt-called too many times so I discipline my actions. Could one "butt-delete" a document, or all documents for that app, like Pages?

Does Apple have a tutiorial on this subject? If we understood these issues so we could manage our devices to prevent unintended deletions that could save a lot of grief.

I have an incomplete understanding but for what I've learned I'm far more confident and haven't had a problem since.

thanx jcx

IOS vers: 7.1.1

Pages vers: 2.2.1

Use icloud was 'on'.

Pages was listed as an available update when i went to the App store.- this was about a week ago.

Thank you bicycledriver!

The very same thing just happened to me! After changing the name of a sheet in Numbers, the app quit. When I relaunched, everything was gone!!! Went to Pages, same!!! Problem is around for a long long while apparently. What is Apple doing?!

I Just went into settings for pages and reset the use iCloud switch. Then after a while the documents began downloading.

I am posting this because in the process of updating to iOS 8 there was a space issue on my wife's iPhone. She doesnt use her Pages on the phone so it was deleted. Oops. There went almost 800 documents. Restoring my iPad from backup failed to restore the documents. However I have Time Machine.

Solution:

On my iMac I went to Finder. The Go menu will show Library if you hold down the Option key. Click on it to open a window. Enter Time Machine. Select a time prior to the delete on the timeline. Select the Mobile Documents folder and click on Restore. I simply replaced the folder. I then opened Pages on the my mac and when I went to the File>Open menu the files were populating in the menu as they were recovered to iCloud.

Opening Pages on the iPad the documents slowly appeared. With the number of documents I was recovering it took some time to recover them.

Quite unfortunately, I am on a windows. And all my stuff from iCloud got deleted suddenly while I was working on a document for Spanish class. So don't tell me to go to my Mac or use time machine, because I can't do that. Someone please help!

This happened to me too but I was still lucky enough to,have them on my iPhone 4, so I opened each spreadsheet and sent it to myself by email. I was then given the chance to open them in Numbers and it saved them all again. I hope they stay there. They are now in the Cloud too. If you still have an iPhone 4 you will be OK, but I doubt it with a newer model.