iCloud deleted my keynote files

Same thing, keynotes documents with no backup disappeared, after using icloud.

I had the same awful experience with keynote, pages and numbers documents. I also tried to recover the files from the last back up on my lap top without any result. It seems not to be possible that Apple does not have any kind of solution.

I have been having the exact same problems with dissapearing iCloud files. Yesterday I created several new iwork documents on my iPad during flight. Today I opened Pages on the iPad and for about 1.5 seconds I could see my files, then they all dissapeared. I have searched the Mobile Documents Deleted folder on my mac but they are not there either. It seems like there is a sync server someplace in the cloud that is looking at the new files but deeming the empty iCloud folder as the "newer" status thus synching down the empty folder. Until Apple can straighten it out, it would be great to get access to a "deleted items" folder on iCloud. This situation seems really serious in terms of end user impact.

I wasn't expecting to see this discusssion still live and hear that people are still having problems with this.

I was having the same problems before but a little while ago I turned off all the icloud syncing within iwork, signed out from idisk on both my main machines, sign out from icloud on everything and then loged back into icloud but not idisk. Since then I have had no problems with disappearing files. It's been a 3 or 4 weeks now at least and everything seems fine.

Is being loged in to icloud and idisk at the same time in your system preferences the main problem?

My iWork files on my iPad disappeared yesterday, Jan 12. I got this from Carolyn Samit, who must be tech help of some kind somewhere, having posted more than 49,000 times.

--

Carolyn Samit San Francisco Bay Area

On the iPad tap Settings > iCloud. Toggle Documents & Data off then back on then restart the device.

Hold the On/Off Sleep/Wake button down until the red slider appears. Slide your finger across the slider to turn off iPhone. To turn iPhone back on, press and hold the On/Off Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.

On your Mac open System Preferences > iCloud. Deselect the box next to Documents & Data, then reselect it, then restart your Mac.

--

I don't know if it works yet, or if it must be done in the order listed. I am currently trying to restore my iPad from Jan 11. SLOW reloading all of the apps. When I went to do the 3rd part on my Mac (almost all iWork files from iCloud have since been modified on my iPad) nothing changed on my Mac or in iCloud, despite the warning that iCloud docs would be deleted from my Mac when I went to deselect Docs and Data.

Spent the entire last week snowed in, on the phone several times with an Apple Tech. We figured this out, but you'll need help. It's a multi-step process that you're going to need to be walked through over the phone. You need access to your user Library, which is normally invisible. You should NOT be mucking around in your Library if you don't know what you are doing. I thought that $29 for the phone call was quite reasonable, although I'm not happy with how long it took to figure it out. In the end, the tech assistant and I stumbled together onto the correct solution.

I too, just today, Jan 24, lost all my Pages files on my iPad. Three months worth of precious work deleted when it was supposedly all safe and sound. The files vanished before my eyes when I opened Pages --- after not having used my iPad for days. Logging into iCloud.com shows I have no documents. The Apple care specialists I was on the phone with were "baffled and sent my trouble ticket to the "engineers" for resolution." Pfft!

ps

I had just upgraded my iMac to Lion days ago. And this morning accidentally deleted files from the Library/Mobile Documents folder. Don't know if that was an issue, but Apple said it shouldnt be. I restored them with Time Machine back up but nothing has changed.

There IS a recovery. We figured it out on Sunday, Jan 22. The techs should all have it by now. The one I spoke to made a live recording of the desktop to share with the techs. If I describe it here I'll probably get it wrong, as it had quite a number of steps.

Bottom line: DISCONNECT ICLOUD FROM IWORKS on your iPad. Settings>Numbers (or Pages or Keynote)>set "Use iCloud" to OFF. Do this for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Transfer files between your iPad and Mac via iTunes.

Good to hear. Thank you, Molly. Gives me hope.

But right now I am afraid of disconnecting iCloud from iPad since it warns all document contents will be deleted if you do. So, until they tell me to I will hold off. I am waiting to hear from engineers by tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Btw, I just posted a synopsis of my disaster in a new thread.

Meanwhile, can you please tell me, did your own issue have to do with only iWork/Pages files on your iPad as with mine, or did you ever share the missing documents with your Mac or iPhone? Also, did they retrieve the files form the iCloud for you or did they somehow restore them from your own local data?

JC

My files have been saved, but have gone to present keynote and they were gone and needed to be downloaded which wasn't possible at the time.

Ey definitely have a lot of work to do. The fact that the desktop version won't upload to iCloud without being saved and put in a browswer is bad enough. Losing our files is a total disaster.

I agree with Molly, turn iCloud off. I use Dropbox and won't be using iCloud until it's straightened out.

Funny how I was all excited for ios5, but between this and my iPad crashing in Safari, I'd really prefer to have 4 again.

I have been losing notes out of the notes app that came with my iphone and ipad ever since I turned on the cloud. I have actually watched them disappear. A couple of them have been sent to my wife's icloud account, but the others are no where to be found. A: This is killing me

B: Where are they and can they be recovered

C: Why would they be sent to my wife

D: How do I get them back into notes on my devices

E: I guess I will spend tomorrow morning on the phone with lack of support

F: I have just turned off all icloud stuff on all three of my devices until this is no longer a problem

Yes, I had saved the files to my Mac, but in an older version. More on that after this:

You should be able to transfer files to iTunes:

1. Open iTunes on your computer. Select your iPad under "Devices" in the bar on the left. Select Apps from the bar across the top. Scroll down to "File Sharing" in this window. Find and select the iWork program (you may need to scroll down a bit in that sub-window).

2. On your iPad, open the iWork document you want to move to your computer, click on the tool icon - looks like a wrench - in the upper RH corner, and choose Send to iTunes. The file should show up in the iTunes File Sharing window on your computer. When it does, click on "Save To" and pick or create a folder on your computer for these files and move them there. You'll have to do this for each file on your iPad. Slow and tedious if you have a lot of them.

These files will be in two places on your computer now. One is the folder to which you just saved it, and the other is a folder somewhere in iTunes. It's important to remember that changing one of these files DOES NOT change the other one. If you manipulate the file in any way on your computer then you will need to go to the SAME place in iTunes and Add the file back to the File Sharing list. You'll get a message about a duplicate file. Tell it to overwrite.

3. If you have the iWork suite on your computer I would go to this folder from the Finder and double check to see if the iWork files transferred from your iPad are really there in a form that your computer will open. I'll presume they are.

4. Turn off iCloud for iWorks on your iPad. Settings-> choose the iWork program from the left hand bar -> turn off "Use iCloud". If your files are then deleted then you can move them back to your iPad from iTunes. In the iWork app on the iPad, tap on the little + button on the list of files for that app, and tap on Copy from : iTunes. This is how you'll move files back and forth to your computer from now on. I haven't figured out how to move iWorks files through DropBox. Apple appears to have made file transfer proprietary through iCloud or iTunes. :-(

Now, a bit more about what happened in my case.

Everything was fine from January 10, and my iPad generated a backup onto iCloud automatically. On January 11, all those files vanished before my eyes from my iPad, and when I got home to check on my Mac, they were also gone from the iWork tab in Safari. I was pretty much dead in the water for the day, as far as my iPad was concerned. On Friday I attempted to do a reset, and the iPad asked if I wanted to backup from an iCloud backup. I chose that option, but when I went to any of the iWorks programs, the 'evaporation' visual effect happened all over again. I tried resetting again, this time turning off my iPad wifi, but when I tried to open any of the iWorks apps my iPad informed me that I had to be connected to iCloud. I knew how that was going to turn out, so I began reading these and other web discussions about iCloud. Seems there was a huge iCloud problem back in Oct '11, and some of it looked similar. The ONE piece I gleaned that looked hopeful was the possibility that the backup could be locked in the user Library on my Mac. The user Library is a hidden file folder, and you have to do some tinkering to make it visible. I'm not going to tell you how here, because you can seriously muck up your entire user experience. If you want to find out about that then do a web search about making your User Library visible. You'll find it. BE CAREFUL. The path for your iPad iWorks files is Library->Mobile Documents.

The backup was there, but not in a form that my Mac could open. There were folders that corresponded to the missing file names, but they contained pieces of the file broken apart into separate files. I had no knowledge of how to put them together, and the information in the discussion groups indicated that the file suffixes would look different than they did. Somehow, iCloud had changed the suffixes, so that iCloud didn't recognize the file!

Not wanting to muck with that backup, I made a copy of it and then I called Apple tech help. It took days, and I think the engineers also recovered the iCloud backup, but when they sent instructions to the tech help guy they forgot to attach the file. The tech help guy and I talked by phone and emailed several times, and finally he called me with to update me on his progress to reach the engineers and get them to send the file. That's when I told him of my knowledge of the backup in my User Library. He knew a trick, the one that was used last October to recover some folks' files, was looking at the engineer's instructions for my particular case, and realized that with the backup in my User Library that he might have all the pieces. We worked it out, but it was a lot of steps. I got back the January 10 backup, completely.

Molly

Thank you for all that detail in your response.

That situation sounds nearly identical to mine.

But, when you state "my iPad generated a backup onto iCloud automatically" thi just isn't so. I wish it was.

But the iWork files "on" my iPad only exist so long as the iCloud "tells" them they are still there each time I connect to the cloud. Although I wokr offline with my iPad 95% of the time, when I sogn on the files upoad. So, the one time thet iClud fails and send down a signal to the iPad "telling" it the files no longer exist, well, "poof!" they vanish. And there is no "back up" of the iPad iWork files anywhere on my iMac despite using local iTunes back up as well as Time Machine ⚠

Apparently, unless iWork documents are actualy opened on the iMac by accessing the iCloud on the iMac itself, no back ups are made. Though my iMac Library mobile documents folder contains the files related to my missing work, they lack the critical .xml file associated with the content of the missing documents. Nothing but skeleton "ghost files" -- unaccessible icons with names/dates --- for my lost work shows up in my iPad Pages now.

The case has been escalated to engineers, but it has been four working days and I stil have no info on whether they can retrieve the files that iCloud on its own deleted off my device.

I agree that documents in the cloud does not work. It is three months later and Apple still doesn't have a solution. Genius bar and Apple care have only told me to wait for the next update, which could be in a day, week, or months. Not like Apple to release such a bad product.

I still wonder if the Mobile Documents in your Library aren't the correct files. Mine were missing the proper suffixes as well, but we manipulated the folder and the file names, adding proper suffixes, and the folder condensed to a file that the corresponding iWork program that we then placed on iCloud. The file was then able to be opened from either my Mac or my iPad. It's possible that yours were mangled in a different way than mine were, so whatever I'm suggesting may not work.

The engineers didn't do the repair for me. The tech help guy had a way to access my screen, and over the phone told me where to click and what to type, and was viewing my screen from where he was, to be sure I had it right. It was just complicated enough that I'd be surprised if they offered this to the normal user. As a tech guy, I'd be happier having been emailed a copy of the Mobile Documents contents, and then sending the repaired files back to the user.

Dunno if this can help. I don't know how many tech help folks that Apple has, or if they can get the attention of all of them to get the solution out to all of them. Or if your problem was exactly the same as mine.