iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back

I have 10.7.2 and there's no mobile documents.deleted file ....??

@collelo: thx for helping me out finding the library folder

I live in Europe, where iCloud is not related to Apple Customer Service and Tech support is strictly for Applecare subscribers

when I do call these guys, the answer is:" iCloud is not an Apple product, it's an mobileme product. And Applecare is apple products-only. Therefore we cannot help you and are even not allowed to answer your questions". Can you believe this?

with mobileme we had chat support, with iCloud there is no support at all

OMG, all my work is gone...GONE

Call Applecare and relate the issue to front line support. This issue is not of your making - it is the result of a installing Apple sanctioned software for a service and or app that is defective - here we are at 8 pages of complaints, in this one post alone - what more proof does any one need. Plead the case for free support your complaint is valid - and urgent!

Had you known the software was defective would you have installed same - knowing you would lose critical documents? I Think Not!

It shouldn't cost anything because this is an issue related to a critical failure post an Apple sanctioned update. HOWEVER verify this first with front line support before proceeding.

ok thx for the info. calling applecare right now...

I am the secreatary and archivist for my private organization. I am deeply concerned that I have lost two years worth of documents with significant historical data. This happened when I uploaded my documents to iCloud. My story is not much different from the others, but I am only interested in the solution to retrieving my documents i.e. pages, keynote, and numbers.

Exact same problem here. After my inital setup across my iMac, iPhone and iPad2 everything from my iPad was sent to iCloud and viewable on each device for about a day. Next day, I watched in horror as the files were deleted on each device when I opened one of the iWork apps. They are gone. I've now tested the situation three times and the results are the same. Serious bug.

Although, thanks to gvde, I'm able to recover them.

Here is a link to a MacWorld article that describes in some detail two methods of retieving deleted documents. One method refers back to gvde's method within this post the other a free piece of software to recover the deleted files from a backup.

http://www.macworld.com/article/163173/2011/10/bugs_and_fixes_losing_iwork_docum ents_in_icloud.html

gvde wrote:

texinick wrote:

Certainly on your first point, I can confirm it WASN'T just iWorks Documents that were deleted in my instance. I not only lost all my Pages & Numbers documents, but also all the data that was stored for Soundhound, Jaws, DoodleJump, AwesomeIdea and TinyEditor. Everything was deleted. I found it all in the Mobile Documents.deleted folder, but it's pretty useless as I can't get it back into the apps from there.

Why can't you get your documents back from the .delete. folder? I have managed to get my iWorks documents back from there multiple times by now. I can't see why this should not work the same for other application documents...

When I tried to recover my Pages/Numbers documents using the method people are talking about, I couldn't get then back. Anything I copied back to the Mobile Documents folder never re-appeared in iCloud Pages/Numbers etc, all the renaming of -tef files in the world didn't help :^) (But then, there are isues with my iCloud account, so whether it's related who knows)

As for other App data, that just didn't go anywhere. I wonder whether the prescence of new data on iCloud (ie, created when you run the program on the iDevice to check if your data was deleted) means the files won't just upload and overwrite what is there?

I don't know, I haven't yet heard of anyone doing it. You could always install Soundcloud on your iDevice and see if it works for you the next time you lose your Pages/Numbers documents. For me, I decided that I'd leave iCloud Documents on other Apps (for now) because there's no 'backup/restore' path, whereas at least with Pages & Numbers there IS a form of backup/restore you can do so all your data can easily be recovered without messing around with the deleted data folders.

Rang AppleCare today to request if we can get documents back via some form of iCloud back-end backup system if it exists. Advised that it's not possible, the documents should be considered as lost.

We don't have any files in the local file system of our Lion 7.2 system as it wasn't associated at all with the Apple ID used on the iPad and iPhone for the particular iCloud account that suffered the document loss. We also didn't have a relevant iPad iTunes backup for various reasons. So, in short, according to AppleCare, we just have to accept the document loss. While we take repsonsibility for lacking local backups, you'd think a much-touted "your documents are safe in the cloud" PR hype would mean Apple would be bending over backwards to ensure good word-of-mouth about the trustworthiness of the system. Either that, or the iWork dev team should be flogged for a pretty fundamental bug in Pages, Numbers and Keynote that causes document deletion. :-(

I have also had this problem today. Apple Care tried to sort it out but couldn't really help.

I finally got my files back by logging on to my iTunes from my computer and visiting www.icloud.com where you will find tabs along the top for Keynote, Pages and Numbers. All of my files were showing up here. Clicked on the file and pressed the download tab that appeared. Downloaded the file to my computer were I made a Duplicate copy in 'File' 'Duplicate' and then saved this file to my computer. You can now email back to yourself.

Now when producing files on iPad, I periodically save to iTunes. Click the Spanner icon, chose 'Share and Print' - 'Send to iTunes'. When you plug the iPad into conputer, open iTunes and select the iPad devise, click 'Apps' In the File Sharing box, click the App your file was created on and the related files should appear in the Documants window.

Hope this helps Steven.

Mike

Check the link to the Macworld article I put up earlier before giving up. Small consolation that there are two types of people who lose data - those that have and those that will. I suspect that before this is remedied there will be many additional posts.

So here's a very surprising development on my end. I lost calendars, contacts, etc., trying to use iCloud at the beginning. Today I remembered that I had purchased Pages and Numbers a few weeks before the ios5 update. I had only created a few non-critical docs, just to learn how to use them.

Today I took a look and much to my surprise, all the documents I had created prior to the update are still residing on my iPad, even though originally my settings had documents set to sync with iCloud and when I discovered calendars, etc., missing, I turned off iCloud.

I have no clue as to why my data was saved and not deleted, given the struggles others are having with iWork losses.

I am been reading through this thread as I have lost about four or five very important Pages documents on my iPad after I downloaded all the new iCloud software on my iMac this morning. I have tried to follow GVDE's solution about finding MobileDocuments.delete in my Library through the Finder and hopefully finding the Pages docs in there. But, when I go through all the folders in "Library" no MobileDocuments folder is listed. What am I missing? Is there another folder in Library that could have the docs? Thanks to ANYONE that can help solve this.

I had this same problem... was able to find the Library folder but no MobileDocuments.delete folder. Have you had any luck finding this folder another way? Thanks, Peter

Does anyone know where pages/numbers files might be stored on snow leopard? I unfortunately don't have a 'Mobile Documents.deleted' folder anywhere on my computer.

I back my ipad up almost everyday and yet it seems that all documents I've made or started on my iPad haven't been saved in any of the backups (I've been able to access previous backups but still no iWork files). Does anyone know is this because the documents aren't saved in the backup through iTunes or is it because iCloud has kissed a year of my work goodbye?