Can I delete older versions of Pages documents from iCloud

Question

Can I delete older versions of Pages documents from iCloud

I've never been able to understand how iCloud syncing works.

Am I right in supposing that a document originally named let's say "Poems" takes on a new form each time it is edited, so that "Poems 2" is the first amended version, "Poems 2" the second and so on, ad infinitum?

If so, does it do any harm to remove/delete any of these versions, once I am happy that "Poems 8" is the final version?

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), iMac, MacBook, Iphone3G

Posted on Sep 2, 2015 12:25 PM

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Answer 1

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Old Toad

Level 10

207,451 points

Sep 3, 2015 12:19 PM in response to stevieweavie2

Am I right in supposing that a document originally named let's say "Poems" takes on a new form each time it is edited, so that "Poems 2" is the first amended version, "Poems 2" the second and so on, ad infinitum?

No, that's wrong. It's like any other editing by two different users. The file gets updated and only the file modified date is changed. The file name remains the same.

You should only have one Poems file in the appropriate folder on the iCloud Drive. Like my Test Pages Document in the Pages folder in this screenshot:

If the poem document is not created by one of the apps that can save directly to the iCloud Drive folder, i.e. Pages, Numbers, etc., each device will have to download the file to edit it and then upload it back to the drive replacing the file that's on there. If you want to rename the edited file Poems X each time you edit it then you can gave multiple versions.

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Answer 2

Sep 3, 2015 12:28 PM in response to Old Toad

Thanks for responding Old Toad.

When I came to read the contents of the Apple Drive in Finder (as you suggest), I have the three "versions" listed as I described in my original post ... but mysteriously the third version is 26 KB smaller than the others!

The original document was created in Pages, then shared via a Document email link to my iPad, where I opened it and then dragged it into Pages there.

I then experimented with editing it , with the net result that each time I got a "new" document appearing : same name (Poems) followed by 2, 3 and so on.

I don't know which of these I can work on and I don't have any confidence that any changes I make on my iPad are going to be transferred to the document of the same name on the iMac.

Can I somehow "start again" with the original version, so that when I edit it (whether on the iPad or iMac) all the same changes will appear on a single document, or do these clones just keep appearing, every time I touch it?

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

207,451 points

Sep 3, 2015 12:35 PM in response to stevieweavie2

I've not edited any files on other devices so you may be right in the 2, 3, etc. numbering. The iPad version of Pages may add the number to each edited.

Run test on another document to get it to version i8 or so and then delete all but #8 and see if you get what you want. But this time start the document on one device, add it to the iCloud Drive, edit it with other devices from the drive and see if you get the number added.

I just might learn something new here today.

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Answer 4

Sep 3, 2015 12:48 PM in response to Old Toad

Thanks for your prompt reply and your interest Old Toad.

i will experiment as you suggest - will get back to you when I have some news to report.

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Answer 5

Sep 3, 2015 1:53 PM in response to stevieweavie2

Time for an update.

I created a new document in pages on the iMac, it appeared successfully on pages on iCloud and as I made changes to it back and forth between both machines each change appeared faithfully on the other. And no "clones" of the document numbered 2, 3 etc.

The one exception was the Pages app within iCloud, where the new document does not seem to have appeared.

I'm concluding from this that I need to avoid that one ... although theApp on the iPad seems to work perfectly.

By the way I trashed the "poem" clones and was relieved to find that subsequent editing of the original Poems document were honoured on both machines (although I made a duplicate of the original document and left it on the desktop of the iMac as a fall back!)

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