All .pdf files are gone from Books

I had saved over 100 .pdf User Manuals for all the stuff I use. Been doing this for probably 10 years. Never had an issue before. Was in Books about 6 weeks ago and everything was there as usual.


Went in today and all .pdf files are gone. No settings have been changed, Books is still toggled on in iCloud, etc. All actual downloaded books are still in there. It is just the .pdf’s that are all missing.


As mentioned, never had an issue before and it is kinda strange that it coincides with the shutdown of My Photo Stream in last June. I know that is different but though I would mention the coincidence.


Any ideas? Anyway to find these and get them back?

iPad Air 2

Posted on Jul 10, 2023 11:37 AM

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Jul 11, 2023 05:02 AM in response to jsuvman

Well that did not work. Only brought over 8 .pdf’s I had on my iPhone in Books. Not sure what Apple did? 


Reason for saying this is I always kept the “Books” toggle in “iCloud” on my “iPhone” turned off as I did not want those backed up to iCloud. 


On my iPad I always had the “Books” toggle, in “iCloud” toggled on, which it was and is still on. 


Now “Books” on my iPhone was toggled on in “iCloud” and in that setting under “Books”, that you mentioned, “iCloud Drive” was also toggled on. However, on my iPad, “Books” under “iCloud” was still toggled on but under that setting you mentioned under “Books”, “iCloud Drive” was now toggled off. 


I did not change ANY of these settings. I did not even know of this iCloud Drive setting you mentioned under “Books”.  


I am assuming they got changed during one on the recent iOS updates I did. I did do an iOS update in June to 15.7.5 on my IPad Air 2. 


When did apple move from keeping .pdf’s in “Books”, from being saved in “iCloud” to using “iCloud Drive”? I believe this is what caused the issue? There were never separate toggles that I played with.  


NOTE: Here is something else I just noticed. Because I backup our devices on my computer, I still only used the free 5GB of iCloud Storage. It was always pretty full. Around 4.5GB but it was fine. 


Now all of a sudden it is down to 2.4 GB. Which 2.3 GB of that is just stuff in my “Downloads” Folder in the “Files” app. Everything else that was backed up to iCloud is gone. 


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All .pdf files are gone from Books

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