iPad Threw Away My Messages Then Stopped Syncing

[Laisha]

Since my iPad upgraded itself to iOS 12.2, my iPad, Mac, and iPhone are no longer in sync in Messages. In fact, every one of the messages that I participated in yesterday are gone. Poof!

Not only is this inconvenient, but it keeps me from trusting the integrity of any of my messages.

Has Apple decided to throw out the text syncing? Or have they broken it again?

I am not asking for much: I just want it to work the way it used to. Is that possible?

 

[Puonti]

Apple has not decided to throw away text syncing. Since it works for me post-update, I have to assume they have not severely broken it either. There might be a bug, of course.

Do you have any other Apple devices, on which you retain perfect copies of the conversations you lost messages in on the iPad?

If you do, and since your iPad doesn't, I'd try resetting the iPad to factory settings, logging in again with your Apple ID and letting the Messages app download the conversations fully from iCloud.

 

[Laisha]

Ok. I'm about to try that, but want to clarify: Do I need to take the iPad off of iCloud to do that?

And you mean I should set the entire iPad to factory settings? Or just the text messages?

 

[Puonti]

If you have all of your iMessages available normally on another Apple device and a recent iCloud backup of the iPad, then I'd:

1) log out of iCloud on the iPad (turning off Find My iPhone in the process)

2) do a factory reset

3) after the iPad restarts, log in with your Apple ID and restore from the latest iCloud backup