Spreadsheet slow down?

[Jimsds]

I hope you can help me, in June I perched iPad Air 2 and until yesterday was 100% happy, I have been using the unit with excel and although the file I mostly use is large it has been working perfectly. I have no idea what has gone wrong but things have slowed right down with the spreadsheet, both imputing text and response to moving your finger across the screen, the other there and most of the other apps also have a slight lag in them. The spreadsheet that the unit is struggling with work perfectly okay on my wife's older iPad with no lag.Has anyone ever seen this before?

 

[NSquirrel]

Have you tried an iPad reset?

From iPad user guide 'Reset iPad. Hold down the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.'

 

[Jimsds]

Thank you, have you ever heard of this happening.

 

[NSquirrel]

No, but a reset is usually the first port of call for the unexpected. Btw, the reset will not affect your data.

 

[twerppoet]

I've had Numbers get very laggy updating cells. A reset fixes it.

If other apps have caused RAM issues, or there are a lot of background tasks going on, that can affect the processor/RAM intensive tasks common to live spreadsheet updates. A reset will cure both of those, at least temporarily. If it's another problem app, or the spreadsheet app itself causing the issue, it will come back eventually.

 

[NSquirrel]

It appears that spreadsheets are now saved on iCloud rather than the iPad -n fact not on the iPad!

Having problems with iOS9 backups yesterday, I deleted my Numbers spreadsheets on iCloud, but kept them on the iPad. I did notice that after I deleted them on the iCloud, I went to Numbers and noticed that the iPad was downloading them again as they had a down arrow rather than an up arrow. (I have seen the up arrow before, but not the down arrow.) Still they opened up and I was able to use them.

This morning they have gone on both! Sh****t. I just hope that the backup onto the PC worked....

 

[twerppoet]

They should be in both places. Numbers always checks iCloud if you have internet, so that it knows if it has the most current version. With no internet there is usually a pause, and the you work with the local version.

You should never consider the iCloud version as a backup. iCloud documents are for syncing. Anything you do in one place, including deleting files, will soon be changed everywhere.

I always backup my important files on Box. Dropbox would also work.

Also, if you have a Mac, have the iWorks apps installed, and have Time Machine set up, then you have a local backup of your iCloud documents there.

 

[NSquirrel]

>>You should never consider the iCloud version as a backup.
Even though backups go there....

So I assume that my spreadsheets are lost.

 

[twerppoet]

Backups and iCloud Documents are completely separate features. Yes, they both use up you iCloud storage space, but that is the only thing they have in common.

However, you may be able to get your Numbers files back, if you are using the newer iCloud Drive and not the older iCloud Documents feature.

Go to iCloud.com on a computer.

Click on your name at the top right of the screen and choose iCloud Settings.

At the bottom left of the Settings page you should see a Restore Files link in the Advanced section.

Click on this and your recently deleted iWorks files should appear. Select the ones you want, or select all, then choose Restore Files.

This is a fairly new feature in iCloud Drive, and only available on the website, so far.

 

[NSquirrel]

Thanks. I tried that this afternoon, but to no avail. A couple of docs from Readdle showed up to restore, but no spreadsheets.

Also I tried restoring from my backup from yesterday morning, but even though that was a full iTunes backup, no spreadsheets.

Oh well, I keep learning

 

[twerppoet]

Sorry to hear that. I hope none of them were full of vital data.

If they were, you can probably get them restored through Apple's Tech Support. If you have a current AppleCare subscription, it's free. Otherwise, you're really going to have to want those spreadsheets badly, because it will cost.

I've never used Apple Tech Support to restore files, but I came close once. I'd lost all my iCloud documents, and called support in hopes that the restore would be easy. The tech said it could be done, but would require a ticket to the server support people, and take a couple of days. Since I had all the documents backed up in TimeMachine (as I previously described), I chose to restore them locally on the iMac instead, and see if they would sync back to iCloud. They did.

Ironically they all went away and then re-appeard a couple days later. My guess is that the iCloud Documents glitch was more than me, and I got caught between the general data loss, and Apple's more comprehensive restoring of their serves.

I lost nothing of importance when this happened, but I could have used the same TimeMachine method to recover if I had.

And as I've mentioned, all my most important documents get sent to Box.com, so those were never at risk to begin with. The downside of this is that it is manual. I have to remember to send a copy to Box every time I edit the documents.

 

[NSquirrel]

Thanks, twerppoet. Box sounds a good idea.

 

[twerppoet]

No problem.

The nice thing about Box, instead of DropBox, is that they support WebDAV, which the iWorks apps also support. It's slightly easier, once you've set it up.