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iCloud Drive Documents deleted

After performing a "reset all settings" on my iPad in iOS 8 I found that all documents have been deleted. I have now read on another forum that this is a bug but Apple Support say that it has not been reported as an issue and after several days am still waiting for a resolution from the engineering team, although a post on the other forum suggested all they had to do was to roll back the iCloud drive to the earlier date a few days ago.


I am astounded that such a serious flaw exists and that the response from Apple in the case of such data loss is not to treat it with greater urgency.


Anyway I write this as a warning:


DO NOT "RESET ALL SETTINGS" IF YOU HAVE DOCUMENTS ON ICLOUD DRIVE.


All other iCloud data was unaffected.

iPad 2, iOS 8

Posted on Sep 25, 2014 12:18 PM

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21 replies

Sep 26, 2014 1:33 PM in response to srbuk

I just got hit with this as well. Utter RUBBISH from Apple I have to say. The pop up dialog when resetting clearly states that no data will be erased, just some of the phone's settings.


I'm totally disappointed with this crap. They really should have prepared iOS 8 and iCloud drive better. Not that sending feedback will do any good, but I had to vent at Apple anyway.


Do they not realise data loss completely erodes trust in the company??? How can I continue to push my employer to switch the department to macs when someone is going to lost data???

Sep 26, 2014 4:08 PM in response to srbuk

All my iCloud drive documents are missing from yesterday. I upgraded both my iPhone 5 and iPad 2 (from 8.0 to 8.02) last night (about 9pm MST). Was in Numbers, Pages, and Keynote yesterday (Thursday) and there were lots of documents there, even after doing a "Reset All Settings" in the morning to try to resolve a worsening battery usage problem on my iPhone 5. I had made modifications to a few of them.


Went to my Mac Mini just an hour ago and happened to click on iCloud in the Finder—all documents are missing. Apparently, there's nothing prior to Thursday in Time Machine backups either. Miffed.


I am a very patient person (I'm a system admin for over 500 Windows servers) and will hold off a few days to see if the issue is resolved. Fortunately, the immediate documents I must access were emailed to others so I could restore them. After a few days my patience will wear thin.

Sep 29, 2014 11:54 AM in response to srbuk

Spent a long time with Apple on the phone today while they tried to work through the problem. Spoke to a senior advisor who told me he could see all my documents but had no way of fixing it so I could see them too. Apparently it's an issue that their developers are trying to fix. He said he'll put it down as a high priority and said he'll get back to me when he's got a solution.


Hope what ever the fix is it can be rolled out to everyone.

Sep 29, 2014 7:36 PM in response to srbuk

Same issue. I spoke with support and was told my iWork data is in a "locked" state on their servers. I was informed this typically happens when a user is transitioning from iCloud to iCloud Drive so data is not lost. I'm waiting for support to call me back in a few days. I'll post what I'm told then. If this can't be resolved my faith in the software side of Apple will be seriously eroded.

Sep 30, 2014 7:43 AM in response to srbuk

All of my documents in Pages have been deleted accross all of my devices as well as iCloud. After talking to a senior advisor for a few days, he informed me that he "just heard back from the engineers and they said they are unable to restore any of those documents". How can all of my documents be completely deleted like this? This has caused major problems for me!

Sep 30, 2014 8:51 AM in response to maildude39

I did not reset all settings, however, after I upgraded to IOS 8.02 I just can't find any documents in ICloud drive. This is very frustrating and I need to start not to trust Apple in docents security. I better have additional sources to keep my documents safe. I never expected something like this from Apple. How can I contact support Apple support to deal with this? Thanks

Sep 30, 2014 8:52 AM in response to srbuk

I did not reset all settings, however, after I upgraded to IOS 8.02 I just can't find any documents in ICloud drive. This is very frustrating and I need to start not to trust Apple in docents security. I better have additional sources to keep my documents safe. I never expected something like this from Apple. How can I contact support Apple support to deal with this? Thanks

Oct 1, 2014 8:14 AM in response to bereillyte

Terry, I, too, have many years of IT experience. I've had three VERY painful experiences with data loss and learned to keep regular backups and test them. I never dreamed that I'd have an Apple cloud data loss short of an apocalyptic cause. I do Time Machine backups and also do daily iTunes syncs for my iPad 2 and iPhone 5. The iTunes syncs didn't help but an iTunes backup would've. An Apple Store Genius recommended I try restoring from a backup saying that it would restore documents and settings but not take me back from iOS v8.0.2. Ah, well. I should do a monthly manual backup there as a secondary backup.


TO ALL WHO DO TIME MACHINE BACKUPS

...and have iCloud Drive enabled

(Confirmed this works in Mac OS X Mavericks or Yosemite Beta)

  1. Go to your Mac.
  2. Open the drive containing your Time Machine backups.
  3. Open the folder "Backups.backupdb".
  4. Open the folder that uses the name of your computer.
  5. Now you will see a number of folders with names that indicate the YYYY-MM-DD-xxxxxx.
  6. Determine what date you last saw your missing documents and open that folder.
  7. Click once on the folder containing your hard disk name.
  8. Enter "Mobile Documents" in the search field at the top of the window and press the 'return' key.
  9. Click on each until you see content. Many of mine had no content, presumably because nothing changed.
  10. Select one of the folders with "~Keynote", "~Numbers", or "~Pages" in the name. You'll see them by looking for the folder names that start with "com~apple
  11. Select the Documents folder and rejoice in the documents found.


I recommend copying these into a folder on your desktop. Once you have all the missing documents, locate the iCloud Drive folder (usually in the left iCloud Drive favorite) and copy the files into the appropriate Keynote, Numbers, or Pages folder. Take note that you may have some documents missing from one of the other apps like Preview. Caveat: these instructions will work with OS X Mavericks. I use the Yosemite Beta. I cannot verify on earlier OS versions.


PAINFUL LESSONS, LEARNED LESSONS

Regular successful backups are the key. Don't trust ANYONE to ensure your data is safe, even Apple. f you have a Windows machine, talk to a techie friend about the best backup method to use and be sure you do a regular iTunes backup of your device. If you have a Macintosh, Time Machine backups are a good method. They are automatic and incremental (they only copy what's changed). When you store them on an external drive (Is $80 too much to spend now that you've lost all that iCloud data? Think carefully before answering.) they are one step closer to restoration in case of failure. It has helped me restore important lost information about four times since I implemented it.

iCloud Drive Documents deleted

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