How do I delete "documents & data" that is consuming space?

Check this out...

http://forums.imore.com/ask-question/265176-documents-data.html

I had the EXACT same problem (4.1GB documents and data when plugged into iTunes... and, upon looking up Usage in the phone 4.1GB next to Messages(saved)) and the "genius" at the store was absolutely no help whatsoever. Geniuses my ***! Here's what finally worked for me (suggested by one of my best friends before I ever went to see a "genius").

First, go to Settings>iCound>Documents and Data. Turn that OFF. Then go back to your Usage and see if the number of GB next to MESSAGES has decreased. If so, you just told iCloud not to save your documents and data anymore. However, if you still have some messages left (I still had 3.6GB left), you probably have a lot of messages backed up to your iTunes from before iCloud. Unfortunately, the only way I've found to rid yourself of these is to do a restore back to factory settings and restore it as a NEW PHONE. Don't restore it from a backup, or the messages will just reappear. BUT, if you back your phone up to iCloud from now on, and make sure Settings>iCloud>Documents and Data are turned OFF, you shouldn't have this problem again

Just make sure you sync all of your music to iTunes on your computer, import all of your pictures, etc. Of course, this is going to delete all of those txt messages that are taking up all that space... so if you have anything important in any of your txt messages, you might want to write that down on paper or something. Notes will be erased too. I wrote down my calendar dates just to be safe... but they saved to my Apple account when I logged back in with my phone.

The problems I had with Documents & Data accumulating was the result of the Mail program hanging when checking mail. Forcing Mail to close fixed the immediate problem but caused wasted memory to accumulate.

Mail can tell you how much memory is used by each email account, but it can't free up that memory unless you delete that account entirely - both the settings and the data. (One can't delete the Mail app, of course).

My new iPhone doesn't crash in Mail, so the problem has ended for me. I did a clean install of the new iPhone to get beyond the corrupted data on the old phone.

For a game the only option to clear the data seems to be to uninstall the app, but that loses all your data. But even if the app had a button to delete your data, that would happen unless various parts of the game data were stored separately.

The best solution would be to have some better memory management that compartmentalized storage in a more sensible way. I don't think Android is any better in this regard than iPhone. I don't know about Windows Phone.

I have deleted all of my messages and still have a storage of 4GB for documents and data. Not sure what else to do but it seems pretty ludicrous to have to do a complete "erase all content and data" to get my storage back.

The data for each email account will disappear once you delete the associated email account. If you sync to an email program on your computer, it can set up all the accounts for you. If not, note the details of the settings before you delete and then set up each account again.

If you have more than one email account it is fine to do one at a time.

This is what i did

1. iPhone: Settings > iCloud > Turn of "Documents & Data"
2. Computer: Delete all the texts that were saved on my computer
3. iPhone: Delete all the texts saved on my phone

"Messages" went from 7GB to 469MG

So basically, the only way of completely getting rid of "documents & data" usage is by fully restoring your phone and then setting it up as a new phone after. If you do decide to do this make sure that you save your important information (contacts, photos, notes...). It is important you set it up as a new phone because restoring it to a backup will bring all the "documents & data" back 100% of the time!

Now if you are just looking to get rid of a bulk (not all) of the "documents & data"...

1. Set up a cloud. Only sync what you desire. (Please don't sync "documents & data") haha.

2. Back it up.

3. Restore your phone to factory settings.

4. When it asked me if I wanted to "set up as new phone" or "restore from a back up". (I chose set up as new phone).

5. Then later restore it from the back up on your iCloud.

6. Your "documents & data" should have gone down quite a bit.

**I went from 3 GB of docs & data to 320 MB by doing this.** (I may have just gotten lucky!!!)

Document & Data on iPhone is including browser history, cookies, logs, caches of photos and videos, database files and more stored by your apps. You can't delete them directly unless the app in Settings, General, Usage has an Edit option like Safari.

The only way to delete them without deleting the app itself is to use tools which can access your iPhone app directory. For example，CleanMyPhone, Copytrans, iExplorer and more.

The iExplorer tutorial:
First Step, Connect your iPhone to the computer.
Seconed Step, Click the Apps Button, and select which app's documents & data you want to delete. And then click the Documents directory, right click the files to delete.

Note: If you are a new user, do not delete all files. The app may not work normally due to the loss of some important data. So you can just delete some caches of images and videos, logs and some junk files.

The CleanMyPhone tutorial:
Step 1: Connect your iPhone to your Mac computer.
Step 2: Run CleanMyPhone on your computer, select the App Cleaner tab and click the Scanbutton to scan your device.

Step 3: After the scan is completed, click Remove to get rid of documents and data on your iPhone.

CleanMyPhone can remove cache files, junk files, documents& data and more.

Source http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/33799/is-there-a-way-to-delete-only-doc uments-data-of-an-app-without-deleting-the-app

ok so i am not sure if this is a permanent solution or not, but i found an app called PhoneClean... you can find a product key for free on youtube... it cleaned up 8gb on my phone i had 9 taken up by bs.... please let me know if this works for anyone else!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCPKeCR0CTo

http://www.imobie.com/phoneclean/

I did not pay for the Program because there was a product key that I had found on the internet... If you read the directions, it tells you what the program will do before you do it. I included the YouTube link that had the program key above^.

I have created numerous backups on both my macbook, and my iMac, and even icloud, so that I wouldn't waste all day trying to put my phone back the way it was, even with the 9+gb of wasted data. I have wasted more time finding a solution to the numerous gb of wasted data and with this phoneclean program it wiped that excess bs and I haven't seen it come back. If you wanna save iMessages, turn that feature on on your mac. If you want to save regular messages take screenshots and then offload them to your mac.

I will say, with the deep clean option you'll have to input your information into different apps like Facebook, Instagram, vine, etc.

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USING THE PROGRAM... As you should with everything!

This phoneclean program was the best thing that's happened to my phone since I've been having this excess data problem for the past oh about 5 months. I felt a huge weight lifted off my back.

I have to say, I've been using PhoneClean for a couple of years and have never once had any problems with it - I did take time to read through everything though to make absolutely sure I knew what each setting and option was going to do before I ran it - most of the time when I hear people saying it is bad software I find out later that they just plugged their phone in and clicked 'clean' then wondered why things were gone from their phones. The software will only clean what you tell it to, it's not the software at fault if you don't take time to use the correct settings.

This how I fixed it witout restoring te whole phone.

Settings--Usage--Manage Storage

I delted icloud backups which took up tons of space.

But those backups are stored in iCloud so are not affecting the space on my phone. Also if you delete that then what will you do if you need to restore your phone for some reason?

texts on your computer? i don't have those? is this in iTUnes?

I know the post is old but for future reference

THIS IS THE SOLUTION!!!

1. text, mail, in between other apps may take a huge chunk of space even if, for example "messages" are deleted completely, the problem is they are not. Here comes the "Saved messages" part: that phrase means that they have been temporarily delete from your phone but they are still stored somewhere (It can correlate to PC-Trash bin situation, were you delete an icon but they go to Trash bin before permanently deletion) In the iphone case, they go to a type of invisible list where the system know they are up for deletion but does not have a "authorized permission" to permanently delete. To resolve this, connect your phone to iTunes and Sync your phone. That sync between your phone and computer is that "authorized permission" i was talking about to permanently delete your text and free up space, also deleting document and data space. Take it slow, erase about 20-25 messages and sync, to make the sync process easier and faster for the computer to process.

I had almost half of my phones memory in saved messages (3GB) and i kept restoring phone and erasing all data but nothing, until I went digging further and further in some forums and found a similar explanation of what i just wrote.

For apps, you may find temporary solution by deleting and reinstalling the app. Documents and data increase from apps probably comes from constant updates to that same app. If you delete it and reinstall it, it was installed with the current update, while the older app moved "old updates" into an invisible trashcan in order to make space for the new update, and that invisible trash can is what I like to call Documents and data

For photos, you may want to try using apps such as Dropbox, which stream photos to your dropbox account you can also access from your computer, storing those photos safely in your computer. You can then delete them on your phone and repeat the "Sync process" explained above.

Any doubts, you can just message me.

RJ