Numbers documents in iCloud impossible to open

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Level 1

4 points

Numbers documents in iCloud impossible to open

Hi!

Since last saturday one of my Numbers documents in iCloud can't be opened. It simply says that the spreadsheet cannot be opened. It doesn't matter if I try to open it on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or iCloud.com. For some reason most of my iWork documents seems to have been opened and re-saved on January 4 at 21:41. The problems began after that. I wasn't even working with iWork then so it seems to have happened "by itself".

How do I get back an older working version of my documents? Since they are in iCloud they are not included in my Time Machine backups. I always thought of iCloud as the most foolproof way to store my documents.

Best regards,

Niklas Johansson

Posted on Jan 9, 2014 2:37 AM

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Answer 1

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YeOldMacFan

Level 3

820 points

Jan 9, 2014 3:25 AM in response to nickej

The documents are also stored on the Mac in your user's folder. In Finder select Go > Go to Folder and enter "~/Library/Mobile Documents" (without the quotes). Your files should be in the com-apple-Numbers/Documents folder. You should be able to locate the older versions in Time Machine at this location.

But this initial cause of the corruption is a concern. Maybe someone else has experience with this problem.

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Answer 2

nickej Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 9, 2014 5:04 AM in response to YeOldMacFan

Thank you! That was news to me.

I found the document in Time Machine and went back to January 1:st. That was odd. What I found was a document dated back in July of 2013 with a size of 0 byte. I am sure that I had the document open last week and the real size of it is around 9 megabyte. I even went back to the beginning of december and found the same 0 byte file from July.

To me this suggest that Time Machine somehow retroactively changed the file in backups.

Best regards, Niklas

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Answer 3

nickej Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 9, 2014 8:40 AM in response to YeOldMacFan

I found a copy of the document on my other Macs Time Machine copy. The copy was from December 16 but that's much better than nothing. I've been working with the document for over five years. :-)

Thank you again for your help! It meant a lot to me. :-)

Best regards, Niklas

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Answer 4

Jan 9, 2014 8:51 AM in response to nickej

You're welcome. I'm glad I could help you. This is an example of how important it is to back up your files.

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