Problem syncing text messages in iCloud with new iPadOS 26

I am having a strange issue with the new iPadOS 26 with my iPad Pro (4th Gen). Only problem is with the text messaging syncing to iCloud and not pulling in messages properly. All the other things I checked work perfectly… Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Photos, etc. and they all work great across all my devices, EVEN on the iPad. However, on my iPad Pro, the new/old messages were all messed up, and was actually downloading a bunch of random old messages, some 1-2 yrs old (thankfully not a ton but a random 20-25 of them). Then some existing messages weren’t updating with continued communication. My MacBook Pro 14" M1 is completely fine, my iPhone 14 Pro & Apple Watch Series 8 are completely fine as well. Only problem is text messages on the iPad aren't syncing to iCloud (Messages in iCloud) it's getting "stuck" trying, like it can’t make heads or tails of what to do. Couple days of troubleshooting didn't fix it, we tried all the usual recommendations to start with…. resetting network settings a few different times, nope... tried erasing the iPad and tried both ways of restoring the iCloud backup, both restoring “with another device” and restoring “manually” after setting the iPad up as a new device, nope... even tried both ways with an older OS 26 backup from original install, nope… we tried turning off messages in iCloud and then back on again after 30 sec, even tried after 15 min... tried turning it off and rebooting the iPad with it turned off and then turning Messages in iCloud back on, nope... one minute it would pull in a couple messages at random, then it would quit... waited overnight a couple of times as some people said that helped them and they were just seeing lengthy delays syncing, nope… it was randomly working for "seconds" and then would quit & would get stuck again, not being consistent, and the messages were sporadic... wasn’t getting "all" of the newer ones and getting very random older ones. I did finally try changing the setting for how long to "Keep Messages" from “Forever” to “1 Year” and that actually helped a lot (FYI, Keep Messages choice will change on "all" devices if you change it)... once I did that it got rid of all the old stuff it was trying to pull in. Thought I finally had it fixed after doing that, think it freed up the huge amounts of old stuff previously deleted that it was trying to pull back in again... after that everything seemed to be matched up finally, so I deleted a message on my phone to test it, and it followed through and deleted it off the iPad, then I went in and synced texts to iCloud and it said it was actually synced for the first time since install! Thought I was getting somewhere! So then a few minutes later I had a friend send a “test” text message (SMS, so it wasn’t an iMessage) and that’s when I realized it had stopped working again already. Wow, it had only been a few minutes! It never has come through on the iPad but the other devices are still completely fine (while typing this out, now I’m curious if part of this glitch includes a possible issue with SMS messages because all the “new” iMessages have seemed to work fine the last couple of days on the iPad). OK, so then after my friend’s test text, I tried syncing again (about a half hour later to see if it helped waiting) and it was definitely stuck again and wouldn’t complete syncing (and manual Sync was grayed out of course). Got back on the phone with a senior advisor, and after checking the usual settings, he did a bunch of diagnostic logs needed from the iPad, and he walked me through putting together a screen recording to show what it's doing while he filled out a time stamped summary of events for the engineering team to look at… he said it’s suspected the iPad is not communicating with the server for all aspects of iCloud for some reason and they would get back to me in about 24 hrs. It’s obviously a new glitch with iPadOS 26 because this didn't happen until I downloaded the new release on 9/15/2025, and its not happening with my other devices.

[Edited by Moderator]