I lost one of my Numbers documents... retrievable? I didn't delete it.

[Turnpike]

I was working on a document in numbers.... I filled in a ton of information, added more the next day, and more the third day. This was waiting for some other information to be added, so sat on my active desktop and at one point I named it "Lists" till I was ready to title it.

Suddenly the power went out (small hurricanes and storms here) and now a day later after the power was back on, I restarted the computer, opened all closed tabs, and I was working, I can't find any evidence of the document. The ONLY place I can see the temporary title of it is if I hover over the Numbers app in my doc, but I can't open it. If I look at my iCloud documents anywhere else, other files I started at the time will open, but this one won't. Is there any way to retrieve past documents (that weren't saved, but drafts should have, it's been open and active on my desktop for weeks up till now).

Any tips to try and find it or what happened, would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Turnpike]

Ok, so looking more into it, I started the document in April, and added small things to it over time over the last couple of months. The draft opened up each time I restarted my computer, but for some reason recently it don't even show in the history. We had a power outage (shouldn't be anything different than turning off the computer) and I added another computer to my iCloud (this one has a later OS).

I turned on my iPad, and it showed in there just as I remembered it, but once it connected to the internet, iCloud updated and the file was gone. I'm glad I took a screen shot of it.

Is there any way to go back through iCloud's history, like a time machine or old files search? It's been less than 30 days (2 or 3 days) and it WAS a file that was saved in iCloud.

Any suggestions how I could go back in my iCloud files history, that would be fantastic. I didn't have Time Machine on but this file WAS on my desktop for months. When I opened my iPad it showed up there (but couldn't download) and once the iPad connected to the internet, it disappeared, but below I have the screen grabs of that file, to show it WAS on there.

Thanks!

 

[galad]

Check on the iCloud.com website, there is a section to check the recently deleted files.

 

[Turnpike]

Check on the iCloud.com website, there is a section to check the recently deleted files.

Yeah, I did, nothing was there. Also, somehow all my "iCloud Backup" switches on ALL my devices and computers was turned off, something I always leave on.

 

[galad]

iCloud Backup is unrelated to iCloud Drive, so it wouldn't have made a difference.
Unfortunately a sync service like iCloud Drive syncs the errors too. If you have a local Time Machine backup you could try to see if the files it's there, or if there is an old revision saved somewhere on disk, but I don't know how to that it.

 

[Turnpike]

Solved!

Everything was lost, and lost for good, BUT!

I had an old external hard drive I used for Time Machine, but it had fallen behind the desk many weeks ago and became unplugged.

I got that out and was able to find a backup in there from a month and a half ago. I probably have 85% of what I lost, and I'm so relieved to have that, I'm not even going to pretend that there is an excuse in the world good enough to NOT have Time Machine running, plugged in, and up to date. If you have something of value, ANYTHING of value, you need to have Time Machine set up and running, and if you don't, at least now you know better and you don't deserve to ever recover your lost data.

That being said, I knew how important this was, and I put off sliding the desk and retrieving the hard drive again, so I'll be the first to admit that I don't deserve even the 85% that I did get.

TIME MACHINE. TIME MACHINE. TIME MACHINE. If it's not backed up, you're writing in the sand. It seems you have to go through something like this to remember how important it is. I learned my lesson, again.

 

[coffeemilktea]

This might not be the most elegant solution, but I also copy-and-paste my spreadsheets into Google Sheets every so often. This way, there's two separate cloud services that have my spreadsheets. 🤓

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Solved!

Everything was lost, and lost for good, BUT!

I had an old external hard drive I used for Time Machine, but it had fallen behind the desk many weeks ago and became unplugged.

I got that out and was able to find a backup in there from a month and a half ago. I probably have 85% of what I lost, and I'm so relieved to have that, I'm not even going to pretend that there is an excuse in the world good enough to NOT have Time Machine running, plugged in, and up to date. If you have something of value, ANYTHING of value, you need to have Time Machine set up and running, and if you don't, at least now you know better and you don't deserve to ever recover your lost data.

That being said, I knew how important this was, and I put off sliding the desk and retrieving the hard drive again, so I'll be the first to admit that I don't deserve even the 85% that I did get.

TIME MACHINE. TIME MACHINE. TIME MACHINE. If it's not backed up, you're writing in the sand. It seems you have to go through something like this to remember how important it is. I learned my lesson, again.

You learned a valuable lesson without suffering a complete loss.

Next suggestion: ADD a SECOND TM drive and let TM automatically alternate backups from 1 to the other. When Drive #2 is fully backed up too, take it somewhere AWAY from your Mac + TM #1 backup and store it securely OFFSITE. Then occasionally rotate #2 in for #1... then #1 in for #2. The fire/flood/theft scenario is a real scenario that will take out everything at one location. However, if you have a recently rotated TM backup offsite, you'll recover nearly everything after any such event.

1 TM drive is certainly better than nothing- as you just learned first hand- but 2+ is a gigantic leap forward in true data security. That one recent backup stored offsite dramatically reduces all risks of total loss. I store the offsite in a local bank safe deposit box for only $35/year and rotate roughly monthly, which is about the right amount of time for me. You may create/update new files at a faster rate to need maybe a bi-weekly rotation or slower and perhaps need to only swap them every 2 months or so.

 

[Turnpike]

You learned a valuable lesson without suffering a complete loss.

Next suggestion: ADD a SECOND TM drive and let TM automatically alternate backups from 1 to the other. When Drive #2 is fully backed up too, take it somewhere AWAY from your Mac + TM #1 backup and store it securely OFFSITE. Then occasionally rotate #2 in for #1... then #1 in for #2. The fire/flood/theft scenario is a real scenario that will take out everything at one location. However, if you have a recently rotated TM backup offsite, you'll recover nearly everything after any such event.

1 TM drive is certainly better than nothing- as you just learned first hand- but 2+ is a gigantic leap forward in true data security. That one recent backup stored offsite dramatically reduces all risks of total loss. I store the offsite in a local bank safe deposit box for only $35/year and rotate roughly monthly, which is about the right amount of time for me. You may create/update new files at a faster rate to need maybe a bi-weekly rotation or slower and perhaps need to only swap them every 2 months or so.

Ha ha ha, there was a time (3 days ago) that I'd have said that you sound silly, but THIS IS EXACTLY RIGHT. I spend more than 10 hours a day, 7 days a week writing and researching on my Mac, I didn't realize you could have a second Time Machine set up, I have so many older 3TB hard drives I'm definitely going to set that up. Thanks!

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Take advantage of them old drives. I'm often recommending at least TWO drives as described above.

Personally, I actually use FOUR myself:

• 2 as described
• 1 TM backup via a Synology NAS (which as a RAID-type device, has a whole backup of the drives in it too)
• 1 partial backup by regularly synching desktop to laptop of all recent file (changes) using Chronosync.

Offsite drive and that fresh synched laptop usually leave the location of the rest, so I just about have 2 offsite backups most of the time.

And note: if you do hook up a second TM drive at the same time, the hourly backups to either drive become every other hour and the the other drive gets the in-betwen hours. For instance Drive A at 6pm, Drive B at 7pm, Drive A at 8pm, Drive B at 9pm, etc. TM "just works" automatically switching back & forth like that.

If you 3TB drives are bare, note you can get a bare drive dock to back up to them and then a 3.5" plastic case to store them in when you have a full backup. That's actually what goes back & forth to the bank for me: bare drive in plastic HDD case. Do a search on Amazon. There's a number of model of these cases and they are cheap.

 

[MBAir2010]

i just want to chime in and state that I have lost way too much data with the illClouds!
the final straw was losing
four page in Phages in a novel of sheets in May,
my cycling results of march 24 with Dumbers,
my cycling results for march 11-paril th with cr watch
and data with both 's Dumbers and phages as 100 lists of entries were no more.

i could not even retrieve these in Time machine via Somoma, with no luck.

what saved my arse was the novel was always copied after every revision on a thum-drive.
the march cycling result really hurt tho, and the  minion supporter felt teh sads....

 

[cjsuk]

iCloud is absolutely terrible and should not be considered a backup solution at all. It's a convenience layer over your files so you can get them on a mobile device if you need it and nothing more or less. I've lost a few things thanks to iCloud as well.

Time Machine *is* a competent backup solution but you have to set it up properly and use it properly. It'll give you hourly resolution if it is set up properly i.e. auto backups turned on and you connect your disk regularly for it to archive it to that. It's important to buy a big enough disk internally to the Mac to support enough snapshots to be retained though. I do lots of changes on small files which is cheap fortunately.

However, after a couple of 2-3 day data losses, I actually moved all my academic work on a nearly completely offline and heavily locked down windows 11 desktop. I have local VCS sitting under that and this is backed up to two external disks which are cycled off site and to Amazon S3. I have had considerably fewer problems with that than anything from Apple.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

i just want to chime in and state that I have lost way too much data with the illClouds!
the final straw was losing
four page in Phages in a novel of sheets in May,
my cycling results of march 24 with Dumbers,
my cycling results for march 11-paril th with cr watch
and data with both 's Dumbers and phages as 100 lists of entries were no more.

i could not even retrieve these in Time machine via Somoma, with no luck.

what saved my arse was the novel was always copied after every revision on a thum-drive.
the march cycling result really hurt tho, and the  minion supporter felt teh sads....

My guess is that you may have done what MANY people do and purchased towards bare minimum storage for TM. People do this often. The good guideline is take the total capacity of all Macs to back up and then multiply that by at least 3 or 4. For example, if you have a couple of Macs that tally 3TB of internal storage, get a TM disc that is at least 9TB-12TB or more.

Many will have 512GB or 1TB in a Mac and only get around matching capacity for TM backup drive. That works and often costs the least. However, how TM works is to backup files that change with an updated version, maintaining the former version(s) until it runs short of capacity... at which time- and this is key- it begins deleting oldest backups to make room for newer ones. Too little TM capacity means the OTHER HALF of TM benefits- the "back in time" feature- can't go very far back in time. Thus, if anyone with too little TM capacity doesn't catch a lost or damaged file pretty soon, it rolls off the TM backup too and is fully lost.

On the other hand, the person with abundant capacity is buying abundant "back in time" capability. Where the person with little capacity might only be able to step back a few versions, the person with abundant capacity might be able to step back dozens or even hundreds of versions. Or, if we want to think of this in actual time terms, the lower capacity TM user might be able to step back a few days while the abundant capacity user might be able to step back a few weeks or few months.

My advice is always the same:

1. go BIG capacity for TM drives (better to overdo this than bare minimum it),
2. have at least 2 TM drives with one always stored offsite and
3. regularly rotating offsite drive to onsite, so that BOTH are pretty fresh backups.

IMO: the "back in time" part of the service is AS important as the simple backup part of it. The only way to have plenty of the past to visit is with plenty of capacity.

As to your thumb-drive option: when one has additional capacity, making single snapshots like that to store for long periods is a good idea too. Many argue to mix in some Carbon Copy Cloner and/or SuperDuper apps, which can facilitate whole drive backups like that (and/or be used in lieu of TM in a TM-like way). Anyone who has been using computers for a fair amount of time likely has many old drives sitting around. If they are not dead, load them up with a copy of your files from time time and regularly update them. Instead of laying there doing nothing, they can be another kind of "last resort" recovery option.