iMessages being deleted without action on my part
Several times now over last month or so a HUGE bunch of messages have been deleted without my asking…these for a handful of family and important contacts. Note that I have ALL my devices set to a) backup to iCloud, and b) keep “forever”.
Odder still, while these were largely intact on my iPad, both my iPhone and MacBook had these deleted.
FORTUNATELY, I noticed in time and was able to restore MOST, but not all, but accessing the “recently deleted” and pushing the restore button. Even this only restored maybe half.
Also, when I tried the “synch now” button on all devices, this made matters worse, deleting ALL messages for the 2 devices! Which again, was able to only partially restore by recovering from “recently deleted”.
The only solution was to turn off the upload to iCloud, wait for it to then DOWNLOAD all messages, then turn back on. And even then, while this worked for my iPhone, the MacBook stubbornly refused until I first did the synch now, again resulting in deletion of same messages, then wait 5 minutes, and then again RESTORE.
Finally, when I reviewed all three devices under iCloud, each showed a different number of messages stored, albeit all within maybe 50-80. Zero help or advice from Apple Support as to WHY (the heck) this happened!
HUGE problem as I rely on these for information exchanged with the handful of contacts.
iPhone 13, iOS 18
