Where are the boards I create in Freeform

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Level 1

13 points

Where are the boards I create in Freeform

I started using the Freeform application on my laptop. I turned on device syncing and the board showed on my iPhone and on my iMac. I then created a new board on my iMac but it did not show up on my other devices. I then turned the device sharing off on my iMac and the first board disappeared, but my new board was there. The I turned device sharing back on and was prompted to merge the boards. I agreed and the first board reappeared but my new board disappeared. That was really bizarre.

Now I'm trying to recover that lost board, but I can't figure out where the boards are actually stored. I assume I can recover some file using my Time Machine but I have no idea where the files are. I can't find any boards using Siri. Where are the files?

Posted on Jan 3, 2023 7:14 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

JmProjects

Level 1

31 points

Jan 27, 2023 10:57 AM in response to JmProjects

As I dive deeper, it seems that all our boards are stored in a data folder as a combined data file. Boards are not stored as a single traditional file like PDFs, Pages, Jpgs, etc.

No clue why they did it this way but surely makes it hard to backup and restore.

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Answer 2

jsheaney Author

Level 1

13 points

Jan 3, 2023 7:53 PM in response to jsheaney

I meant Spotlight, not Siri. I did a Spotlight search on files modified today. I found a folder with modification timestamps for today. ~:Library:Containers:Freeform:Data. One of the subfolders in there was CloudKit. I restored the Data folder with Time Machine, opened the Freeform application and the latest version of my missing board showed up.

NOTE that I made a copy of the Data folder before doing the restore in place.

That board still did not show up on my other devices, so I duplicated it. The duplicate and the original board suddenly showed up on my other device, so I deleted the copy and all of the boards are now synced up on all of my devices.

That was all rather freaky, but luckily Time Machine saved the day!

Hope this helps someone else.

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Answer 3

vic-113

Level 1

8 points

Feb 9, 2023 9:06 PM in response to JmProjects

I had the same issues with missing boards on Mac Freeform after clicking "merge" to iCloud.

I dug deeper and found the boards were stored in sqlite database.

I assume when you inserted different file types in Freeform, Freeform just created references to the files and respective file opener.

It sounds clever, but once the "merging" incident happened, you cannot rollback the database.

There is no local backup to the boards.

Whoever designed this way is an i****.

If you don't have a Time Machine backup, all your unsynced boards are lost.

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Answer 4

Jan 27, 2023 12:12 AM in response to jsheaney

I lost my boards due to syncing issues. Here is what I did to restore my boards Via Time Machine.

Open Time Machine

Select Macintosh HD

Users

Library**

Containers

Right click on FreeForm folder and restore. A warning will prompt, hit Replace.

Open Freeform and you should get it back.

This helped me get my school work back. I had to copy the boards and move it on a New board so it can sync. To see if it Syncs or not, just try to share it. If it shows Share options, you're good. If it gives you an error, open board and copy it to a New board. Copy Paste.

I hope this can help someone. It worked for me.

**(If you don't see Library, Go to top bar, View, Show View options, Check box Show Library Folder, then close View options)

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