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 1:15 PM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,152 points

Sep 1, 2025 3:03 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

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,152 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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Answer 3

sberman

Level 10

272,214 points

Aug 31, 2025 1:07 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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