Following hard drive failure and restore from time machine/icloud [two versions of the document with same date and time]

AnnieBee1 · August 9, 2024, 1:30am

I am having an odd problem with Libre Office. I was using LibreOffice on an old 2015 MacBook Pro which had a sudden hard drive failure. I was unable to fix this. I purchased a new MacBook Air M3, and set it up using my latest Time Machine backup which unfortunately was from Dec 2023. Luckily, I store almost al my documents in icloud so when I logged in to iCloud, all the old Dec 2023 documents were updated, and any missing documents were downloaded. I checked that this happened when I logged into icloud. So far so good!

Anyhow, I noticed an issue when I opened my first document using Libre Office. When I opened it, it said there were two versions of the document but both had the same last modified date and time. I opened both to be safe, and both were exactly the same; however, I thought that some changes I thought I had made to it were missing but I wasn’t sure if my I was misremembering. I have now opened two further documents however and now I am sure that changes are missing.

How could this be happening? It appears that LibreOffice is somehow reverting to old versions of these documents, but how could this happen? Why doesn’t it just open the file that’s there? Why is libreoffice “seeing” two versions of s document when I only have one saved? Why are changes missing? Is there a way I can safely open these ods/odt files without losing the version in iCloud? Perhaps downloading OpenOffice? Sorry for all the questions!!

I am assuming now I’ve opened the “wrong” versions of these documents it’s overwritten the icloud docs and those changes are now lost?

I;ve copied below the version details from LibreOffice. It seems to say that I’m on MacOS 10.16?? But this isn’t correct (and not sure there is a 10.16?), I’m on Mac OS Sonoma 14.5 Old MBP was on Mojave 10.14.

Many thanks for any help! If you need further information do let me know

Sorry if the tag is wrong but none seemed to fit my issue. f there’s more appropriate one, let me know and I’ll change it. TY

Version: 7.1.8.1 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: e1f30c802c3269a1d052614453f260e49458c82c
CPU threads: 8; OS: Mac OS X 10.16; UI render: default; VCL: osx
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

EarnestAl · August 9, 2024, 1:50am

Maybe similar to this post on Apple forum, iCloud overwrites newer version of file with an older one. Any way to recover? ?

See if this Apple page helps, If document versions conflict in iCloud Drive on Mac – Apple Support (UK)

AnnieBee1 · August 9, 2024, 2:40am

Thank you for your reply. I am not sure the problem lies with iCloud (??) as all my files/docs that were restored from icloud are fine except the ones I am opening with LibreOffice, in which case it’s happened on all three documents that I’ve opened. At that point LibreOffice is saying there’s a version conflict, and then an old version of the document appears - I am offered two versions by LibreOffice but BOTH have the same date and time on them - which seems odd if there’s apparently a version conflict - and when both open they are the identical. Why is LibreOffice even deciding there is a version conflict - why doesn’t it just open the one in icloud? What is LibreOffice looking at to decide there is a version conflict?

I wonder if I should try opening some documents with another app of some sort? I would need to find some I know have changed to test it!

EarnestAl · August 9, 2024, 3:15am

Maybe you saved the document with versions,

AnnieBee1 · August 9, 2024, 3:48am

Thank you, I’ll have a look through these tomorrow. However, I;ve just looked through my documents in more detail and I think you are right that’s it’s iCloud It looks like any NEW documents (ie created since December 2023) which would have been missing from the TM backup, have been downloaded from iCloud, but any EXISTING documents that were on the TM backup, have not had any updates made since Dec 2023 downloaded - those updates are lost.

Wanderer · August 9, 2024, 6:34am

Maybe, maybe not. Let’s assume you restored your TM-backup, so iCloud finds now the place to restore/sync occupied by something older, so a version conflict is signaled, when opening the file. (Reading docs, it should also be possible to keep both versions with appended numbers).
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Your first task now should be to create an ADDITIONAL copy of all files in your iCloud. I’d recommend an USB connected disk to have this copy also “outside” the OS. Instructions to do this copy are here:

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Then you have two copies local (one from time-machine, one from iCloud) which you may compare. Unless you save anything manually nothing should change this two copies.
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IMHO you should find your changes in the files from iCloud and can then copy this to your main drive.

I’m not sure, if this dialogue is from LibreOffice. I guess this is your OS with iCloud telling you there is a problem. I don’t think LibreOffice has an internal support for versioning files. (Tracking changes is something different: all changes are logged in the new file).