Sequoia 15.6 update on MacBook has deleted all my Word docs since 2022

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Level 1

4 points

Sequoia 15.6 update on MacBook has deleted all my Word docs since 2022

The Sequoia 15.6 update for my MacBook which was out on 30th July 2025, completed but did need a couple of restarts. A couple of days later when I went to retrieve a letter I'd written on 28th, it wasn't where I'd saved it. I just assumed I'd been careless and not saved it at all. However, when checking 'Recent' in Microsoft Word it was there but came up with this message 'This document has been deleted or is not currently accessible'

Sadly, I then found a few days later when going to pick up on an assignment, that every Word document (apart from very old stuff 2013) has completely vanished. I've been through Apple Support and Microsoft support and spent around 4 hours on the phone yesterday going through all the suggested fixes. I've been left with an email from Apple saying 'glad we were able to help you' and reminding me to use Time Machine (sadly I hadn't been as I thought everything was in the cloud). Microsoft told me to take it to a tech expert or try data recovery software after their attempts failed.

This has left me with all my last 3 years of work missing (some can be retrieved through college), lost letters, invoices etc. It's very frustrating and upsetting! Any other suggestions please, as I'm reluctant to leave my MacBook and password with a computer shop.

Posted on Aug 14, 2025 12:17 AM

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Answer 1

Alli_1756 Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 14, 2025 04:47 AM in response to Barney-15E

HI, it is only Word, excel is ok and some older Word docs. Its lost word files from 2 folders on my desktop and others in the documents folder. They're not in iCloud Drive as this was checked yesterday. Thanks

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Answer 2

Aug 14, 2025 09:20 AM in response to Alli_1756

Alli_1756 wrote:

[...] Microsoft told me to take it to a tech expert or try data recovery software after their attempts failed.

This has left me with all my last 3 years of work missing (some can be retrieved through college), lost letters, invoices etc. It's very frustrating and upsetting! Any other suggestions please, as I'm reluctant to leave my MacBook and password with a computer shop.

You haven't said what model and year this MacBook is.

If it's a newer model that uses an SSD for a startup disk, then the potential for data recovery even by a profe$$ional service is very low. Extremely low. Leaving your Mac with a computer shop to recover your data is likely to be fruitless.

With older computers that used hard disk drives, data recovery was much more likely than it is today. SSD and flash storage is a completely different animal than HDD. This is why it is more important than ever to make sure you are backing up any data that is important to you.

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Answer 3

Alli_1756 Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 15, 2025 05:06 AM in response to D.I. Johnson

Hi, thanks for your reply. It's a MacBook Air (M1 2020) which I believe uses SSD.

Because of all the hassle with working out how to prevent the computer shop getting access to all my passwords I think I've already decided to just deal with the loss of my files. There are some which are quite important, but I'll have to either re-do my work or bin off the course for now as I don't have time for that to be honest.

It's a lesson learnt I guess.

Now to decide which external hard rive to get to do my back-ups on!

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Answer 4

steve626

Level 6

13,035 points

Aug 15, 2025 05:40 PM in response to Alli_1756

Alli_1756 wrote:

HI, it is only Word, excel is ok and some older Word docs. Its lost word files from 2 folders on my desktop and others in the documents folder. They're not in iCloud Drive as this was checked yesterday. Thanks

A few thoughts.

Some of what you describe could be caused by a File System or Catalog error. Have you booted into Recovery and run Disk Utility First Aid? (I assume yes, because you spoke with Apple Support.)

In addition to First Aid, I would immediately make a backup of everything important to you that you can still access. If your computer had a File System/Catalog error leading to inability to access some specific folders, that problem can spread to other parts of your storage.

Note that cloud storage is now located on your Mac in your User Library inside the CloudStorage folder. Have you looked in there directly? Cloud files might still be there.

Also most cloud storage agreements (Dropbox, Microsoft, Google, Apple ...) allow you to retrieve files for some period of time (such as 30 days) even after they have been "deleted." Have you pursued that? The way to recover them differs with different cloud storage systems and vendors.

Storing files ONLY in the cloud is risky because it isn't even one fault tolerant. In other words, a single "fault" (failure) can result in loss. For cloud storage, that can include user errors, a server issue in the cloud physical storage ... these can result in loss of files.

If you keep a separate physical copy of all those files on an external drive, now you are one fault tolerant. Two things have to fail for the files to be lost completely. I suggest multiple such backups and putting at least one in a separate, secure location. You want to be three or four fault tolerant.

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Answer 5

Alli_1756 Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 18, 2025 05:33 AM in response to steve626

Hi, thanks for your suggestions.

The first option to run Disk First Aid from Recovery was tried and I've done this again with no luck.

I've checked Cloud storage folder, nothing.

I have run Disk Drill data recovery and located some of the missing files. Some, but not the most important have been recovered and saved.

A few of the assignment docs which I really need are there, but are corrupted and look like this; ~$signment 5.docx or empty.docx

I have tried to use the repair tools in Word, which doesn't work and also tried saving in Google Drive as a google doc, but it then just asks for a password on a document that has never had one.

I've realised that I will either be starting from scratch on my work or not completing my course as I'm running out of time. Life is one big learning curve I guess!

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