How restore just one app data?

Problem is, you will have lost progress in other apps if there's a time lag? One of my games crashed a few days ago and I have been trying to find out what to do from the software supplier. I have progressed other games since. If I now reset my IPad to ground zero and restore from backup, won't I lose progress in other games I've played since as well as locally stored mail? It really should be possible to extract and restore from backup without having to dump everything and start again!

Imthink there's a flaw in iOS 10 that now makes what you said partially inaccurate. I noticed when I set up my iPhone 7 from the backup from my iPhone 6 (backup done earlier that same day) and again today when I set up a brand new iPad from the backup from an older iPad (backup and restore from backup both done today), iTunes failed to install all of the apps which were on the older devices onto the new ones, and more problematic, with some other apps, iTunes did install the apps on the new devices, but with none of the data associated with those apps. I found an article a few minutes ago saying that since iOS 9, iTunes no longer stores the data when you backup an iOS device (but iCloud still does). I'm still trying to determine how to recover the data from the handful of apps that iTunes did install from the backup but which have no data associated with them now.

The only way to restore data from an app is to restore from a backup. That will restore everything that is in that backup. You cannot selectively restore just one app's data.

You can read this for the instructions on how you can restore from a backup.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766

Remember that If the data is not in the backup, restoring will do no good. You have to have a backup that contains that data.

I guess the easiest way to explain it is that whatever data or files were in that app on that day that you created the backup will be restored fully and will look exactly like they did on that day.

Lets say you are using a Word Processor app for example. You make changes to say several files on a certain day. You create a backup that night. The next day you made changes to all those files again. You don't backup this time. Something goes bad the next day, and you need to restore from the backup. When you restore from that backup, those files will be exactly as they were on the day that you last backed up.

The only thing is - every file in every app on the iPad is also restored to the way it looked in that last backup. If you have spreadsheet files that you had worked on and revised on the day that you backed up - made changes the next day - that day that you did not backup - when you restore from the backup - those files revert to the way they were on the day that you backed up. The entire iPad will "look like" it did on the day that you backed up the last time.

This talks about iOS backups

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946

This explains how to create a manual backup.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766

Most of the time - iTunes will create a backup when you sync. It will overwrite the previous backup when it does. I like to be proactive and create my own backups after I sync, just in case.

Finally - You have to make the choice to restore from the backup and have to initiate it on your own. The link that I provided above explains how to so it, whether you use iTunes or iCloud for your backups.

vivienfromham lake wrote:

Problem is, you will have lost progress in other apps if there's a time lag?

That is correct. Restoring from the backup in order to get back your progress from that one game will overwrite the current progress that you have established in the other games.

it really is a good practice to backup every day, if not every day, then every other day at the most. I backup at least 5 days a week - I have gotten a little lazy in my old age so I sort of got away from every day backups. If you are diligent about backing up, then issues like this aren't quite as painful to deal with.

With iCloud you can backup automatically every night with the iPad plugged onto power, locked and connected to WiFi.

I do that with iTools. You can backup each app with its data into an ipa file, to restore it individually. This allows you to merge apps with its data from different backups.