I lost 450 .pages documents

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Level 1

36 points

I lost 450 .pages documents

I was in the process of transferring.pages documents from one folder to another. During the process, everything froze. Once I got things going again appears I have lost all of my documents. Is there a way to retrieve these? I’ve checked everywhere, checked the recently deleted folder and I’ve also checked with Apple. At this point, I’m looking at some sort of iOS file recovery app. Any suggestions?

As an aside iOS doesn’t let you look and incremental backups. Further you have to do a complete system restore to retrieve a backup. What gives?

iPad Pro, iPadOS 18

Posted on Aug 30, 2025 01:15 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,052 points

Sep 1, 2025 03:03 AM in response to rickatk

If your documents were stored on iCloud Drive, and they were actually deleted within the last 30 days, then iCloud provides you with a means to recover those documents. This is not a function of i/Pad/OS, nor of files deleted from the local storage of said device.

Recover deleted files on iCloud.com - Apple Support

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Answer 2

sberman

Level 10

271,420 points

Aug 31, 2025 01:07 PM in response to rickatk

rickatk wrote:

As an aside iOS doesn’t let you look and incremental backups. Further you have to do a complete system restore to retrieve a backup. What gives?

iOS backups are not intended to be preserved or used to archive data. They are used to back up data which can be used to restore a device in the event of a catastrophe or transition to anew device.

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Answer 3

rickatk Author

Level 1

36 points

Aug 31, 2025 02:15 PM in response to sberman

Wish I had known that. At one time the fault backups could be seen in iCloud At least the documents I lost (for the most part) were saved as .pdf.

Time Machine for iOS would be nice.

At any rate I found a third party product that does, among other things, daily backups to my destination of choice.

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Answer 4

rickatk Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 1, 2025 09:57 AM in response to VikingOSX

If I was to back up my documents to iCloud using a third party product would the same parameters apply?

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Answer 5

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,052 points

Sep 1, 2025 12:04 PM in response to rickatk

All the iCloud Drive recovery opportunity cares about is if the documents were stored on iCloud Drive, and were deleted in any given 30 day window. Not how they were stored there.

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