Worried you might have lost iCloud Drive documents or files? Or perhaps you’re wondering if you can recover a deleted file or document from iCloud Drive? Don’t panic, you can probably restore and recover those files from iCloud Drive using the procedure we’ll discuss here.

Files, documents and other data that we constantly use for school, college, and work purposes are always extremely valuable. Some of you may have your important data, files, work presentations saved on your iPhones and iPads to quickly access them when you’re on the move. Apple’s iCloud Drive service has made it easier to back up all these files and securely store them on the cloud, which you immediately could access it from all your Mac and iOS devices. That being said, it’s not too hard to accidentally lose your files, documents and other data, because sometimes all it takes is a mistaken deletion, or a failed or interrupted upload, or even a botched software update.

If you’re one of those iPhone or iPad users who lost your data because of a corrupted iOS update or you just accidentally deleted a couple of files, don’t fret. You’ve come to the right place, and you very well could recover and restore those lost iCloud Drive files.

In this article, we’ll be discussing how you could recover all your lost documents & files from iCloud.

How to Restore Lost or Deleted iCloud Drive Documents & Files

This procedure will aim to help you recover your data from iCloud Drive, whether that data has been lost, deleted, or removed. Follow the step-by-step instructions to use the restore process with iCloud:

• Open any web browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc. from your PC, Mac or iPad and head over to iCloud.com. Sign in to iCloud by clicking on the “arrow icon” once you’ve typed in your Apple ID and password.

• Once you’re in the iCloud homepage, click on “Account Settings”.

• Now, simply click on “Restore Files” under the Advanced section located at the bottom of the page, as shown in the screenshot below.

• You’ll get a new pop-up window where iCloud will start searching for the files stored on the cloud. Give it a few seconds. Once it’s done searching, you’ll get a list of all the recoverable files that can be selected as per your preference. Simply choose the files you want to recover by checking the boxes and click on “Restore”.

• iCloud will now begin the restoration process. If you have plenty of files to recover, you’ll need to wait a couple of minutes. Once it’s complete, just click on “Done” to exit out of the window to and end the procedure.

That’s pretty much all there is to it.

The restored documents and files will immediately be available across all your devices as long as they are logged into the same Apple account and Apple ID with iCloud enabled.

It’s worth noting here that you can’t complete this procedure from a mobile browser, unless you request the desktop site for iCloud.com first.

Additionally, if you manually turned off iCloud on your device beforehand, you will be unable to recover your files as they weren’t backed up to the cloud.

By default, iCloud backup is enabled on your device, and everyone should keep that feature on for myriad reasons including potential data recovery, easy device transitioning, amongst other reasons.

Every Apple ID is provided with 5 GB of free iCloud storage when they sign up for an Apple account. That might not seem like much, but it’s actually adequate to store most simple documents and files unless you’re a power user, or you plan on storing a lot of photos or other stuff in iCloud. If you are a heavy iCloud user, or have a few devices that you want to backup to iCloud, then iCloud plans range in cost from $0.99, $2.99 and $9.99 per month for 50 GB, 200 GB and 2 TB storage space respectively. For the most part, there’s really no reason to have iCloud disabled unless you have serious privacy concerns or have no use for the cloud features it offers.

Apple’s cloud storage platform brings a lot of convenience to the end-user and works seamlessly across Mac and iOS devices. If you have all of the iCloud features turned on, then all your data gets synced and backed up, including contacts, photos, files, etc. are automatically backed up to the cloud when your device is turned on and connected to power.