Made a massive mistake. Need help.

[mavis]

So I've been waiting for Japan to approve the ECG function of my AW4 for two years now; supposedly they finally approved it a few weeks ago, but Apple has yet to enable it (in either watchOS7 or 7.0.1) ... So I took matters into my own hands. In the process, I seem to have made a huge mistake, and I'm wondering if there's a workaround.

Basically, I did the following:

1. Made an encrypted iPhone backup on my Mac, just in case.
2. Signed out of iCloud. Rebooted.
3. Deleted all of the Health devices on my iPhone.
4. Signed into a friend's iCloud account, set up for me to enable the ECG function.
5. Enabled ECG. Signed out of friend's account.
6. Signed back into my iCloud account.
7. None of my health data came back.

Since I signed out of iCloud before messing with my on-device health data, you'd think that the health data would simply download back to the device from iCloud, when I signed in again. But it doesn't. It's simply gone.

I just spent about three hours restoring my iPhone from the local backup I made, and when it first completed, my health data was intact. As it continued syncing, though, it seems to have wiped itself again. All of my data is gone, although (oddly) my activity awards are there (although my 1500 Move Goals award is sitting right next to 1750 Move Goals , which says "0 of 1750 days" ... lol)

Does anyone have any suggestions? It's annoying that I've got my data backed up here, locally, but when I sync it to the phone, it gets wiped. Any ideas?

 

[BrettDS]

It seems like what happened is that when you deleted the health devices and data from your phone, after you reconnected to icloud it saw that the version of the health database on your phone was more current than the one in the cloud, so it synced the ‘newer’ blank database from your phone to the cloud and wiped out the data there.

Now it looks like even after you restore the backup that it’s seeing the blank database that’s now in the cloud as more current than the backup that was restored, so now it’s syncing the blank database to your phone and overwriting the backup that you just restored.

I suspect that you’ll need to call Apple to see if there’s any way they can help you with this. Perhaps they can completely wipe the health data that you have in the cloud so then you can restore your backup without it being overwritten by the newer blank database that’s there now.

Edited to add, obviously it’s too late now, but I wonder what would have happened if you did the following:

Disconnected from iCloud
Deleted the health data from your phone
Connected to your friend’s account and enabled EKG, then signed out of your friend’s account
Restored from your backup
Logged back in to your iCloud account

At that point you would have your phone that has all your health data from the restored backup and the iCloud that has all your health data from when you signed out of icloud on your phone, so no matter which version it decides is more current and decides to keep you should still wind up with all your data.

 

[mavis]

Disconnected from iCloud
Deleted the health data from your phone
Connected to your friend’s account and enabled EKG, then signed out of your friend’s account
Restored from your backup
Logged back in to your iCloud account

At that point you would have your phone that has all your health data from the restored backup and the iCloud that has all your health data from when you signed out of icloud on your phone, so no matter which version it decides is more current and decides to keep you should still wind up with all your data.

Right, but then I'd simply be restoring to a non-ECG-enabled state. Defeating the whole purpose of the endeavor.

I agree with your hypothesis about the database timestamps ... I am on a chat with Apple support now and they're supposed to be having someone from the 'health team' contact me the day after tomorrow. So we'll see. It kind of sickens me to lose all of that data ... especially when I've actually got it RIGHT HERE ... so annoying

 

[edhchoe]

So it thinks you sold the watch to someone and it is protecting your privacy.

 

[BrettDS]

Right, but then I'd simply be restoring to a non-ECG-enabled state. Defeating the whole purpose of the endeavor.

I’m not sure it would be any different than what you were hoping would happen. You were hoping that it would recover your data from iCloud once you reconnected your phone to the cloud, but wouldn’t that also recover the non-ECG-enabled state as it recovered the rest of your data?

 

[mavis]

I’m not sure it would be any different than what you were hoping would happen. You were hoping that it would recover your data from iCloud once you reconnected your phone to the cloud, but wouldn’t that also recover the non-ECG-enabled state as it recovered the rest of your data?

Yeah, but it was supposed to merge with the ECG-enabled stuff. I don't know. Lol

 

[BrettDS]

Yeah, but it was supposed to merge with the ECG-enabled stuff. I don't know. Lol

Good luck with your situation in any case. Let us know how things turn out with apple

 

[mavis]

Good luck with your situation in any case. Let us know how things turn out with apple

Thanks, will do.

In the meantime, I've restored my two-day-old backup to an old iPhone 6s, but disabled iCloud Health sync immediately, so all of my historical health data is there. Hmm ...

I wonder if I could get it to upload to iCloud if I 1) turn off my current iPhone + Apple Watch (so they don't record any new health data) and then 2) just walk around with the 6s so it records activity. That should make its health database newer than what's in iCloud, right??

 

[Apple_Robert]

Thanks, will do.

In the meantime, I've restored my two-day-old backup to an old iPhone 6s, but disabled iCloud Health sync immediately, so all of my historical health data is there. Hmm ...

I wonder if I could get it to upload to iCloud if I 1) turn off my current iPhone + Apple Watch (so they don't record any new health data) and then 2) just walk around with the 6s so it records activity. That should make its health database newer than what's in iCloud, right??

That seems like a logical and worthy hypothesis to test.

 

[BrettDS]

I wonder if I could get it to upload to iCloud if I 1) turn off my current iPhone + Apple Watch (so they don't record any new health data) and then 2) just walk around with the 6s so it records activity. That should make its health database newer than what's in iCloud, right??

I guess it’s possible. I don’t know. You could always try it. It seems unlikely that it would make things even worse than they already are, at least.

 

[mavis]

That seems like a logical and worthy hypothesis to test.

I guess it’s possible. I don’t know. You could always try it. It seems unlikely that it would make things even worse than they already are, at least.

well, I tried and it didn't work. So I'm going to wait for the health team to call me tomorrow, and see what they have to say. Hopefully they can simply wipe my iCloud data so that my local data can upload. Wish me luck!

 

[Apple_Robert]

well, I tried and it didn't work. So I'm going to wait for the health team to call me tomorrow, and see what they have to say. Hopefully they can simply wipe my iCloud data so that my local data can upload. Wish me luck!

I hope they can get it fixed for you or reset your iCloud data.

 

[mavis]

I hope they can get it fixed for you or reset your iCloud data.

Thank you. Me too!

So I've sketched out a plan, to get my historical data AND new (ECG-enabled) data sort of merged. Any thoughts on this list? Anything I'm overlooking?

1. Reset Apple Watch.
2. DFU restore iPhone.
3. Sign into ECG-enabled iCloud account.
4. Set up Apple Watch as new device.
5. Enable ECG. Test.
6. Sign out of ECG-enabled iCloud account.
7. Clean out health device list/data.
8. Sign into brand new iCloud account.
9. Wait for health data to sync/be uploaded.
10. DFU restore, and reset Apple Watch.
11. Sign into the new iCloud account.
12. Pair watch (as new device), see if ECG still works.
13. DFU restore.
14. Restore Sunday night backup with historical health data (DON'T sign into iCloud after restore).
15. Sign out of iCloud (leaving historical data on iPhone).
16. Reset watch.
17. Sign into the new iCloud account. Historical health data on device (from the restore) SHOULD merge with existing, ECG-enabled data from new account, as there are no longer any device conflicts (because I reset the Apple Watch each time, before re-pairing).
18. Sign out of new iCloud account, leaving historical + new (ECG-enabled) data on-device.
19. Wait for Apple Heath team to call and hopefully reset iCloud health data on main account.
20. Sign in to main iCloud account, pushing all data to iCloud.

Obviously this is all contingent on Apple's ability to delete/reset my iCloud health database, but hopefully I can get my local data to the point that I have all of my health data (historical + ECG-enabled) locally on my device. Lots of hurdles to jump through, but it's FIVE YEARS' worth of daily activity and HR data.

 

[mavis]

I hope they can get it fixed for you or reset your iCloud data.

Well, I spoke with someone from Apple’s health team, and they’ve escalated my issue ... however, I’ve since discovered on my own that it’s possible to wipe all iCloud health data, by yourself. All you have to do is go into ‘Manage iCloud Storage’ on any of your devices, choose Health, and click delete. Doing so disables iCloud Health data syncing with your iOS device, and deletes the iCloud Health database(s). From there, you can simply restore your local iTunes backup, and it will re-sync the local health data to iCloud.

 

[BrettDS]

Well, I spoke with someone from Apple’s health team, and they’ve escalated my issue ... however, I’ve since discovered on my own that it’s possible to wipe all iCloud health data, by yourself. All you have to do is go into ‘Manage iCloud Storage’ on any of your devices, choose Health, and click delete. Doing so disables iCloud Health data syncing with your iOS device, and deletes the iCloud Health database(s). From there, you can simply restore your local iTunes backup, and it will re-sync the local health data to iCloud.

That’s great news. Did you wind up with a functional ECG after all that?

 

[mavis]

That’s great news. Did you wind up with a functional ECG after all that?

I did, actually. I've just finished syncing all of my health data, and I have the historical data plus all 800+ activity awards, AND I have an ECG-enabled watch, that was purchased in a non-ECG-enabled region. Yay! The only downside is, I lost the past five days of health data, but I can always add some step counts, etc, manually.

What kind of pisses me off is that when I talked to the Apple Health Team guy, and he asked me what exactly I wanted them to do, I told him that I just wanted Apple to zero-out/delete my iCloud health database. You'd think that would have been the perfect opportunity for him to let me know I could simply do that myself ... but instead, he just told me he'd escalate my case with engineering. It would be great if these Apple support "specialists" actually knew about the products and services they are supposed to be supporting. Like the first guy who told me that when you sign out of iCloud on your iPhone, it should delete your on-device health data ... WRONG. lol

 

[BrettDS]

What kind of pisses me off is that when I talked to the Apple Health Team guy, and he asked me what exactly I wanted them to do, I told him that I just wanted Apple to zero-out/delete my iCloud health database. You'd think that would have been the perfect opportunity for him to let me know I could simply do that myself ... but instead, he just told me he'd escalate my case with engineering. It would be great if these Apple support "specialists" actually knew about the products and services they are supposed to be supporting. Like the first guy who told me that when you sign out of iCloud on your iPhone, it should delete your on-device health data ... WRONG. lol

I think you’re right that it certainly would have been nice if the first line support person knew how to wipe your health database, but really the first line support people aren’t experts in Apple’s products and services, but rather they are experts at solving the most common problems that people have. And I suspect that your situation is pretty unique. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the first person who asked that support rep about wiping out their iCloud health database. In fact, I imagine that most people are more concerned about making sure that their health database stays intact.

This is in no way a dig at first line support people, but it doesn’t make sense to put product experts in that position because 95% of the time they’ll be answering questions like “How do I unlock my phone” or “How do I pair my watch”. They are trained in common problems and solutions and have excellent customer service skills, but the more uncommon cases that do require a product expert get passed on to the higher levels of support, just like it did in your case.

 

[mavis]

I think you’re right that it certainly would have been nice if the first line support person knew how to wipe your health database, but really the first line support people aren’t expects in Apple’s products and services, but rather they are experts at solving the most common problems that people have. And I suspect that your situation is pretty unique. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the first person who asked that support rep about wiping out their iCloud health database. In fact, I imagine that most people are more concerned about making sure that their health database stays intact.

This is in no way a dig at first line support people, but it doesn’t make sense to put product experts in that position because 95% of the time they’ll be answering questions like “How do I unlock my phone” or “How do I pair my watch”. They are trained in common problems and solutions and have excellent customer service skills, but the more uncommon cases that do require a product expert get passed on to the higher levels of support, just like it did in your case.

Fair enough. Anyway I’m glad the situation is resolved, even if I had to do it entirely on my own. Lol