after an automatic update my files are gone. How do Iget them back?

What files are gone? Where were the files previously located?

You can boot the computer so the system files are not gone. Can you login into your user account? Where were the files before?

Do you know the name of any of the files you are looking for? Do you have a Time Machine backup? Can you search (using spotlight) for any of these files?

Any chance they were in the trash when you started the update? Any chance they were on an external drive which is NOT plugged in at this time?

Hi, I too had this problem just recently (I see that this is an old post but in order to help anyone with the same problem which does happen quite often, I will post my method that did work for me for future reference to all) & I managed to get my Pages files back after some panic 🙂. This is how I got them back onto my iPad Mini .....:

How to get your Pages files back after an update deleted them: (for iPad/iPad Mini anyway although I assume it will be the same for iPhone too, but not sure) This seems to be the simplest way to do it, but you do need to have an existing backup of them in order for this to work.

As long as you have an iCloud or other backup through your laptop/computer you can do a search in Finder as “Pages” files. that will bring up any files you may have that were done in Pages, just sort them as “Kind/Type” & it will show you all files that were a Pages file.

In order to get them back onto your iPad, first make a new folder on your desktop & name it whatever you want to identify it (I made mine as “iPad pages files”). Then you go back to the finder window with your files you want to transfer & you highlight the files you want & then either right click & select ‘Copy” & paste over to your new folder or by the keyboard just use “Command Copy” then “Command Paste”, as you can’t just click on them & drag them over as that will “move” them & you don’t want to do that or you will lose your backup. After this process you will now have two of the same files as one will be still the “Cloud” version & then the added ones in your new desktop folder.

Then in order to get them back into Pages on your iPad you email the files to yourself & open “Mail” on your iPad, open the new message & then click the attached files one by one & choose to “Save to Pages” option in the popup. Voila! your files should all be back in your Pages when you open it back up.

This method worked for me, so I hope this helps all of you that have also lost their files after an update too.

Good luck to all!