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I store Pages documents on iCloud Drive so that I can edit them on either of my Macs. When I browse saved versions, some are missing. Why is this?
Originally, iCloud Drive didn’t support sharing of document versions across all your Macs and/or iOS devices. When you edited a document in iCloud using Pages or another app, only the system that ‘owned’ that document could see and access old versions.
This has changed now, but it doesn’t always capture every version and often shows duplicates. Apple explains how to use versions in iCloud at bit.ly/rstrver, but the issues you’re encountering are not mentioned there.
You might create a dozen versions on the ‘owning’ Mac, of which 10, let’s say, are shown when you choose File > Revert To > Browse All Versions with the document open in the Mac app, or tap Select, then the doc, then Versions in the iOS counterpart. When first accessing a version from another device, you may instead have to click/tap a download icon to make it available for preview or use.
Versions are more likely to go missing when a document is large and your connection to the internet (or iCloud, specifically) is poor. If the next version is ready to save before the last version has been stored in iCloud, your device may cancel saving the earlier version and go straight to the next. Sadly, we’re stuck with this behavior unless Apple changes things so that all old versions are uploaded.