Advice required with lost data on iPad

[stevieo85]

Hello, I'm looking for some advice regarding the iPad and Office 2HD. It's for a friend who is working offshore, so is unable to get online.

He has been working on a word document using Office 2HD on the iPad for the last 7 days. He's been saving his work at the end of each day, then opening it the following day to continue writing.

He opened the file today, wrote a few pages, and then saved it as normal. He then fell asleep with the iPad in hand and with the file still open, and woke up to a blank page. He pressed undo several times but nothing happened. He powered off the iPad and turned it back on, opened the file but it was still a blank page. He's checked to see if it has saved anywhere else under any other name, but it hasn't.

Is there any possibility of recovering the lost work?

Just to be clear, the file itself is still there, but it is now just a blank word document.

I'd really appreciate any help with this. It's over 100 hours’ worth of work.

Thanks

 

[richsadams]

100 hundred hours of work? Yikes! Has he been saving or backing the document up to any service like Dropbox? If so, he should be able to recover it from there. If not, has he been backing up his iPad to a computer, a laptop perhaps? If so he may be able to restore from backup. He would have to open iTunes on his computer (without connecting the iPad), go to Preferences > Devices and check "Prevent iPhones, iPods and iPad from syncing automatically". Then he should connect his iPad, find it in iTunes left-hand menu and control-click or right-click on it and click "Restore from Backup".

Probably prior to restoring from a backup, one other place I would look (with the iPad connected) is in iTunes under the "Apps" tab > File Sharing > Office2 HD and see if the file is listed in the right-hand documents column. If so, I'd drag it or save it to the computer, open it there and see what the contents might be.

Failing that there are a few applications on the market that claim to be able to recover or at least view files on iOS devices. I've not used any of them so can't recommend one or another, but if you Google something like "iPad recover lost data" in the Google search field in the upper right-hand corner of this page you might find something useful.

If he hasn't backed up his files or the iPad I'm not sure there's any way of recovering it otherwise though. Perhaps others can chime in.

Tell your friend best of luck and let us know how things go. I for one would really like to know if he's able to get his file back and how. TIA!

 

[stevieo85]

Thanks for the reply, Rich.

I'm afraid he hasn't backed it up to Dropbox, iTunes or any second device. He's not a technology enthusiast; the iPad was a gift to be used as an easy way to word process while working away. So things like data recovery and backing up are almost a foreign language.

With the above in mind, I think there might be a chance it hasn't been deleted at all and he is mistaken. Does it seem feasible to you that someone could accidently select all the text and delete it, while sleeping next to an iPad? I've only used one a handful of times so I'm not sure myself.

I'll look in to the recovery apps too - thanks

 

[richsadams]

Thanks for the reply, Rich.

I'm afraid he hasn't backed it up to Dropbox, iTunes or any second device. He's not a technology enthusiast; the iPad was a gift to be used as an easy way to word process while working away. So things like data recovery and backing up are almost a foreign language.

With the above in mind, I think there might be a chance it hasn't been deleted at all and he is mistaken. Does it seem feasible to you that someone could accidently select all the text and delete it, while sleeping next to an iPad? I've only used one a handful of times so I'm not sure myself.

I'll look in to the recovery apps too - thanks

Well, it doesn't seem likely that all of the text was deleted...that would take several steps including highlighting all of the text and then confirming a delete. The only thing I can think of is that the document's "Close" button was touched, but even then there's a prompt to "Save" or "Don't Save", so again, not likely. Even the file delete process takes three steps. I suppose if the battery ran out and the iPad died some of the content could have been lost, but at least the original content (prior to the current activity) would be there.

So I'm with you, I'm not sure how the text or the entire file would have been accidentally deleted and it's quite possible that it might still be there.

You might have him try this: Quit the app and then reopen it and take a look at the local files in Office2 HD.

Quit Apps: To quit an app double press the Home button and the Multitasking Tray will appear at the bottom of the screen revealing all of the open apps. Tap and hold any app icon until all of the icons start jiggling. A red circle with a "-" (minus sign) will appear in the upper left-hand corner of each icon. Tap the red circle and the app will close.

If that doesn't do it, he could try restarting the iPad and if that still doesn't do it he could try resetting it.

Restart the iPad: Press and hold down the Home button on the front of the iPad for few seconds until the red slider appears, slide this across to shut the iPad down. Restart the iPad by pressing the power button on the top until the Apple logo appears.


Reset the iPad: You can do this by pressing the Home button and the Sleep/wake button on the top the iPad's case and holding them down together for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo. The iPad should then reset itself. The boot up process takes a few minutes and then the iPad should be responsive again.

More here:

iPhone, iPad, iPod touch: Turning off and on (restarting) and resetting

After each effort he should reopen Office2 HD to see if the file is there.

Hope that helps and keep us posted!