So iCloud synced my Keynote documents to my iPad perfectly yesterday. I opened Keynote this morning to find that they had all disappeared. WHAT GIVES????
While I *hope* that these files were backed up when I updated to iOS 5, their disappearance really dents my confidence in the viability of iCloud. Apple tech, please advise!
I can reliably reproduce the error as follows. Create a document in Numbers on an iOS device, or upload to iCloud.com manually. Wait for sync. Restart iOS device. Launch Numbers. The document will be deleted. If you have iCloud.com open, the file will still appear but clicking on it generates a "File not present on server" error. Pretty serious bug, but I can't tell if it's in iCloud or the iWork apps. Or both. Tried to file a bug report, but Apple's bug reporter is offline...go figure.
Found a solution in another thread on this same problem to recovering documents from Mobile Documents.delete folders. See the post from "gvde" quoted below. It's convoluted but it works! At least my data is safe now.
gvde wrote:
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.
I'm seeing at lot of posts about the same problem:
Here is another discussion, with a temporary solution for those who have documents on their computer. I lost those I used on my iPad 1 and iPhone 3GS.
iCloud deleted my documents. How do I get them back : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3382799
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.
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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.
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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.
Did you restart you iPad between the sync and when they disappeared? Another thread has this possibly linked as the problem. My iCloud was working fine this morning, but then everything disappeared after a device restart also.
Another day, another set of presentations deleted. This is the third time I've added files via Safari, which then synced to Keynote on ios 5, only to have them disappear from both the browser-based and iOS versions of iCloud.
In the first instance, I lost work-related files which didn't exist anywhere else. These have not reappeared. Every file I add disappears. My conclusion: Documents in the Cloud DOES NOT WORK.
The iCloud launch has been, for me, much worse than MobileMe. It's an unmitigated disaster.
My larger concern is this: I can find no support documentation describing this issue and cannot, or do not seem to be able, to email Apple support about this problem. Is this a consequence of iCloud being a free service?
Glad it is not just me, anyone found a way to stop this? I have tried turning off document sync on all devices, uninstall iWork on my iOS, turn back on, reinstall iWork, same problem, files are deleted!
Sjazbec,
Let me assure you that it's true. I opened Keynote yesterday to discover that the lecture I was about to present had completely disappeared. This is more than a PR disaster in the making: it is a completely service- and trust-destroying disaster.
I expect some sort of input from Apple technicians here.
Yes, I've watched them disappear too. I've replicated this in Keynote and Pages. It is a catastrophic bug. I have submitted a bug report but we need to have some contribution from Apple engineers. This seems to be a problem for a reasonably small number of people, but it has completely decimated my trust in the iCloud service. I've reproduced the error every day, a few times a day, since Thursday. I'd also be very keen to get the documents I already had in iPad's versions of Keynote and Pages back!!
The files should be safely store in LIbrary/Mobile Documents.delete (that's where I found them), but the point is not where they are, it's why do they get deleted. This is obviously a synchronization issue with one of the devices (or the Mac) telling iCloud to erase upon sync: but which sync process?
I may have found a fix. Delete the iCloud account at both the main level of Settings (i.e., by selecting iCloud) AND by deleting the account in the Mail, Calenders, and Contacts section of Settings. Have it remove everything from your device (careful, this is scary and ymmv). Once it's done. Go to the main level, select iCloud, and re-enable your account there and set all settings there for sync. Let the sync happen.
Since doing this on both my iPad and iPhone, iCloud has been stable with iWork documents. I had noticed that my PhotoStream was different on the two devices and so I am thinking that, somehow, iCloud got 'confused' w/r/t state and was alternating between a state WITH iWork documents uploaded and WITHOUT, in which case it deleted them.
I've had stable documents that survive device restarts for about 4 hours now...so we shall see.
Thanks for the suggestion but I didn't work for me. I deleted the account in iCloud and selected to have it remove everything from the iPhone. When I went to delete the mail account it was gone. Then I redid the account under iCloud. iWork files are still being erased on restart however.
Great tip on the ~/Library/Mobile Documents.delete folder—I found what appears to be my file there. However, it shows up as a directory with the ".numbers-tef" extension, and I can't seem to find a way to actually open the file in numbers or get it back onto my iOS devices (tried changing the file extension to ".numbers" and loading it on the device by several means, moving the contents of the "Mobile Documents.delete" folder to the "Mobile Documents" folder, etc. I do get a file that appears in Numbers on my devices but I can't open it, export it, etc.
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.
I have also been looking at the issue, I seem to have found a log file for the Mac side, it is "~/Library/Ubiquity/username/ubiquity.log", everytime I upload, or do any change on any device (iPad, iPhone or Mac) I see a number of errors being reported. I have just deleted the application support files located in "~/Library/Application Support/Ubiquity/" and performed a restart to force the files to be recraeted. Lets see if this helps fix the probelm.
iCloud deleted my keynote files
