Q: Using iCloud to back up Keynote presentations
I'm having some Keynote presentations ((different thread) and in the process of troubleshooting, I have come to the realization that - even after using iCloud since it was available - I still don't get how it's supposed to work. So I have a few questions.
This morning I was having trouble with one (out of about two hundred or so) of my Keynote presentations. It was grayed-out and I couldn't open it, rename it or even delete it. Somebody suggested it might be stuck or conflicted with its iCloud version, and that turning off iCloud on the iPad might get everything un-stuck.
So first I opened up iCloud on a PC-based browser and verified that all my presentations were there. Then I turned off the "use iCloud" switch next to the Keynote app in settings:
I got a pop-up asking me what I want to do with the presentations on the iPad - keep or delete. Lucky for me, I chose to keep them because within moments I watched all the presentations disappear from iCloud in the browser. Out of 200 presentations, all of them vanished except for seven:
I nearly had a stroke. These are my lectures and I'd be out of a job without them. Yes I have two other devices acting as backup - another iPad and my iPhone, both with Keynote and synced to iCloud. But apparently, when all the files vanished from iCloud, an urgent order was issued to the two backup devices, deleting all of those files as well! I have only one device (the original iPad) that still has all my presentations on it.
I thought iCloud was supposed to be the "Iron Mountain" repository for my data that I could rely on in the event that something went wrong with the files on my devices. Apparently not! So is iCloud only for purposes of syncing data across devices?
Secondly, I back up the iPad to my PC. Do Keynote documents get backed up as well? If I were to set up another iPad using the image from my main one that's on my PC (not iCloud), would all those documents come back?
If I go back to the original iPad and turn "use iCloud" back on, what will happen to all my presentations that are on the iPad? Will iCloud (seeing the iPad full of files that have no twins in iCloud), order those deleted as well? Or will the files on the iPad be re-uploaded back to iCloud? I am really lost as to whether iCloud is supposed to be the master or the slave in this relationship.
iPad (4th gen) Wi-Fi, iOS 8.1
Posted on May 31, 2016 7:02 AM
