Viewing and Restoring Individual Pictures via iPhoto:

On iPhoto '09 or earlier, or iPhoto 11 prior to version 9.2:

1. •Start with the iPhoto application, then click the Time Machine icon in your Dock, or click the TM icon in your menubar and select Enter Time Machine, or select File > Browse Backups from the menubar.
   

1. •Navigate to the desired backup as usual. Select the photo(s) you want to restore , and click the Restore button, or to restore everything, click Restore All.
   

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1. •Note that you cannot restore iPhotos to an alternate location via this method, unless the disk they were saved from is no longer connected.  See the Note above the yellow box.
   

If you're having trouble understanding or navigating the display, see question #15A.

Viewing and Restoring via Contacts/Address Book:

If you're using iCloud, the procedure below will not "stick:"  since the cloud contains the "master" copy, as soon as you connect to it, anything you restored from your backups will be replaced with the contents from the cloud.  For a workaround, see  this discussion post.

1. •Start with the Contacts/Address Book application, then click the Time Machine icon in your Dock, or click the TM icon in your menubar and select Enter Time Machine.
   

1. •Navigate to the desired backup in the usual fashion, or use the search box, select whatever you want to restore, and click the Restore button.
   

1. •Note that you cannot restore Contact data to an alternate location via this method, unless the disk it was saved from is no longer connected.  See the Note above.
   

1. If you're having trouble understanding or navigating the display, see question #15A.

Viewing and Restoring via Apple Mail:

You can restore entire mailboxes or individual messages, including Notes via Apple Mail. 

(See question #28  for ToDo items).

1. •Start with the Mail application, then click the Time Machine icon in your Dock, or click the TM icon in your menubar and select Enter Time Machine.
   

2. •Navigate to the desired backup as above, select the messages you want to restore, and click the Restore button.
   

3. •Note: if you're on Mountain Lion (OSX 10.8.x), the "tick marks" for backups made on earlier versions of OSX (10.7.x and before) will be shaded-out and you can't select them.  This is a long-standing bug we hope Apple will fix.  Until then, there are a couple of rather tedious workarounds in item #E11 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
   

4. •Also note that although the search box is shown in the toolbar, it does not work.
   

1. •Time Machine will make a new folder named Time Machine in the On My Mac section, containing a Recovered Messages mailbox.  This avoids duplicating messages in the selected mailbox;  you can move or delete individual messages wherever you wish.
   

1. •If you restore

   

   additional mailboxes or messages, Time Machine will make a separate Recovered Messages-1 mailbox for them.
   

1. •Note that you cannot restore Mail data to an alternate location via this method, unless the disk it was saved from is no longer connected.  See the Note above the yellow box.
   

If you move recovered messages to mailboxes that exist on the server for an IMAP account, the server may delete any that don't exist on the server.

If you're having trouble understanding or navigating the display, see question #15A.

If you select an item from inside a folder that no longer exists, you’ll see this prompt:

Note:  if you’re restoring from a disk or partition that’s no longer connected to your Mac, DO NOT choose Recreate Enclosing Folders, as Time Machine will restore it to the normally-hidden /Volumes folder at the top level of your internal hard drive.

If there’s already a file/folder of the same name in the same place, Time Machine will give you a prompt for you to select what you want to do.

If you select Keep Both, Time Machine will append "(original)" to the name of the item currently on your system.  The restored item will have just the name.  Each will retain their Created and Modified dates.

Viewing and Restoring Pictures from recent versions of iPhoto:

To restore your entire iPhoto Library, use the Finder as above.  The iPhoto Library is in your Pictures folder by default;  if you've moved it, locate it and restore it.

To restore individual pictures depends on what version of OSX and iPhoto you have:

    (If you're not sure what version of OSX you have, click here.)

If you're have iPhoto '09 or earlier, or iPhoto 11 prior to version 9.2 you can view and restore individual pictures from your backups.  See the gray box below.

On Lion 10.7.x or later, with iPhoto '09 or later, you cannot view or restore individual pictures from your iPhoto backups.  So you have two choices:

1. •Restore the entire iPhoto Library to its original location, via the Finder, as above.  That will replace the existing one entirely.
   

2. •If you want some individual photos, without replacing the existing version, use this workaround:
   

1. 1.Restore it as above, but to an "alternate location," such as your desktop, by selecting and control-clicking (right-clicking) it, then choosing the Restore <name:> to.. option, as detailed under the second screen print at the top of this page, or see question #16.
   

2. 2.Open the restored library
   

3. by holding the Alt/Option
   

4. key while  opening iPhoto. 
   

5. You'll get this prompt:
   

6.                                          
   

7. Select the restored library
   

8. in the prompt (note the
   

9. "path" shows at the bottom)
   

10. and click Choose.
    

11.                       
    

12.    
    

13.                                               
    

3. 3.Locate the photo(s) you want, select them, then select File > Export from the menubar.  Export them to the Desktop.
   

4. 4.Quit iPhoto.
   

5. 5.Open iPhoto again, but this time select the permanent version.
   

6. 6.Select File > Import to Library... from the menubar and import the individual pictures from the desktop.

Documents & Data in iCloud (effective with Mountain Lion)

The samples here are from Pages, but apply to any app that allow you to keep documents in iCloud.  A few are: TextEdit, Preview, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

In most cases, if you need to browse the versions of a file in iCloud, or restore a previous one, your best bet is to use the normal Versions browser, by clicking in the document's Title bar and selecting the Browse all Versions... option, rather than restore from Time Machine.  

One thing that needs to be understood about iCloud is, although we sometimes use the word "sync" to describe it keeping all your devices up to date, that may be a bit misleading.   Most traditional sync apps have a master copy on a device, and co-ordinate updates to others.  With iCloud, however, the copy in the Cloud is the master.  Any device that does an update is actually updating the Cloud;  when another device connects, it downloads the (updated) iCloud master automatically.

You may be able to recover a damaged or deleted file from an iTunes backup.  See Recovering iCloud or MobileMe data from iTunes backups for an iOS device.

But if the file has been deleted, and no longer exists in iCloud, you can use Time Machine to restore it.

Start the app

normally, so the App Open window appears.

Be sure iCloud is selected in the toolbar. 

To go back in time to see the backups of the app's documents in iCloud, select Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine icon in your menubar, or click the Time Machine icon in your Dock.

If the backups you want to use aren't the current set (the Latest Backup shown on the Time Machine icon menu), hold the Alt/Option key while selecting the Time Machine icon, and use the Browse Other Backup Disks option (see FAQ #17 for details).

You'll enter the browser just as with the Finder, but showing previous versions of the App Open window, not a Finder window:

This works mostly like when starting from the Finder, including both external Time Machine backups (purple in the TimeLine) and Local Snapshots on laptops (gray), but with some limitations:

1. •You can control-click (right-click) a file and display it with QuickLook, but not the app.
   

2. •You can't restore to an alternate location.
   

3. •You can't delete any backups, or backups of selected items.
   

You can select one or more files and click the Restore button at the lower-right to restore the backed-up version to iCloud. 

Notes: 

1. •If you restore a file that had been deleted, its Versions history may be gone;  only the single version you restored may be present. 
   

2. •If the document you're trying to restore is hung (frozen) or corrupted on other devices, you may have to delete, rename, or move them on those devices before restoring, as they may not be able to download the version you restored.  If you don't, a version from another device may replace the one you just restored from Time Machine.
   

3. •If you select On My Mac in the toolbar to see this app's documents stored on your Mac instead of iCloud, you'll see a Finder window display, not the App Open window.  You'll have to locate the files yourself;  if you then select Enter Time Machine, you'll be in the usual Finder display, not this special one.