annettepeyton

Q: Documents MOVED to iCloud

Wow, I just realized, with the new upgrade to Sierra, my Documents folder was MOVED to iCloud. I thought I did quite a lot of reading about the new upgrade before actually doing it, and I don't recall EVER reading that this would occur. I know it said contents of my desktop would be available on all my devices but I don't recall ever reading that my documents folder would me MOVED. Was this written somewhere in Apple's documentation?

 

If not, I would like to express my disappointment that Apple would automatically do this rather than make it an option that I could select IF I wanted to do it. I am an Apple fan, I love their products, do all my work on apple products and have all my memories stored in apple products, but I find this lack of disclosure appalling.  Was this just a way to get people to sign up for more storage?

 

There are many reasons I need my design documents, fonts, customer files, stored on my computer rather than in a cloud so I really wish we were given the opportunity to make this selection, rather than have it made for us.

 

Just needed to vent my disappointment in this issue.

 

Annette

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 26, 2016 1:21 PM

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Q: Documents MOVED to iCloud

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  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 26, 2016 2:12 PM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 2:12 PM in response to Csound1

    I was not using spotlight.

     

    I just tryed to open a document that I had been working on last week in Adobe Indesign and the path is broken, indicating that the file is gone or has been moved. It says the file is missing. If there was a copy there, it would have opened.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 26, 2016 2:14 PM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 9 (51,136 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 26, 2016 2:14 PM in response to annettepeyton

    Try to open it from Finder, apps may not understand the change

  • by Joseph Delaney,

    Joseph Delaney Joseph Delaney Sep 26, 2016 2:24 PM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 3 (853 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 2:24 PM in response to annettepeyton

    Nothing has been removed from your macbook. You just have to look in the right place (the "icloud drive" co-exists locally on your mac and in the cloud - so if you go into "airplane mode" you still have full access to all your files, they'll just sync up any changes when you reconnect to the network).

     

    Read "Explaining Sierra's Optimized Storage" on TidBITS for an excellent overview of how icloud and optimized storage work, with warnings.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Sep 26, 2016 2:39 PM in response to Csound1
    Level 10 (141,525 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 2:39 PM in response to Csound1

    All of my documents open from the iCloud Drive window in the Finder but I put them there myself.  I didn't activate the Documents folder in the iCloud preference pane.  So that may be why they all open without a problem.

     

    Doing it manually like I did keeps them on the hard drive but in the "invisible" folder in the Library folder.  Don't know about the new method but according to what I just read it truly may move them off the HD to the iCloud server.  But then I don't know how one would access a file without an internet connection..

     

    Based on this statement:

    This moves files back and forth between your Mac and iCloud abased on your usage. This means it only keeps recently opened files on your hard drive when you’re running low on storage,

    from this webpage: Clean Your Cluttered Hard Drive with macOS Sierra's New Storage Manager

    that tells me that as long as you have sufficient storage you'll have all of your documents on your hard drive. I don't know what free space level the OS will start moving them exclusively to the iCloud servers.


    Apple's document doesn't specify the limit either: macOS Sierra: Store your desktop and documents in iCloud Drive. However, it seems to indicate that the files will only be on the iCloud servers:

    • Download items stored only in iCloud Drive: Control-click the items that you want to download (indicated by the In iCloud status icon ), then choose Download Now. After the items are on your Mac, you can work with them without an Internet connection.

    That limits you to having an internet connection in order to access older documents.  IMO it's limiting.

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 26, 2016 2:49 PM in response to Joseph Delaney
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 2:49 PM in response to Joseph Delaney

    So, in the article it says

     

    When enabled via the Storage Management window of System Information or the master switch at System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive > Options, this feature moves your Desktop and Documents folders from your home folder to iCloud Drive (itself a chimerical folder/volume). Don’t look for them in your home folder because they’re gone —


    ???

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 26, 2016 2:52 PM in response to Joseph Delaney
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 2:52 PM in response to Joseph Delaney

    Also from the article,

     

    In fact, what happens when you turn off that feature is that Sierra recreates empty Desktop and Documents folders in your home folder. You can’t replace those, so you can’t drag the old Desktop and Documents folders from iCloud Drive to your home folder; instead, you must open each folder in iCloud Drive and move (Command-drag) its contents to the local Desktop and Documents folders in your home folder. You can try to delete the now-empty Desktop and Documents folders from iCloud Drive, but in my experience, iCloud keeps recreating at least the Desktop folder.


    So if you have to MOVE files back to their original location on your mac, that tells me they are not in icloud if you turn off Documents & desktop in your icloud settings.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Sep 26, 2016 2:57 PM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 10 (141,525 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 2:57 PM in response to annettepeyton

    Look for them in your Users/Home/Library/Mobile Documents folder. Anything there?

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 26, 2016 3:00 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 3:00 PM in response to Old Toad

    Yes, I can get to some of the documents using that path. However, in the PATH, it says, icloud - documents, etc. That still indicates to me that those are in the cloud, not on my mac. Am I missing something?

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 26, 2016 3:28 PM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 9 (51,136 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 26, 2016 3:28 PM in response to annettepeyton

    Go to the folder indicated, open and look in it. The files in your iCloud Drive are there.

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 26, 2016 3:46 PM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 3:46 PM in response to Csound1

    I've spent long enough on this and I don't seem to be getting anywhere. I appreciate everyone's help, however, from all indications, my files were moved from my computer to icloud. I understand when you say to look in the Mobile documents folder, the icloud folder, etc. Yes, my files were in those folders, but my documents folder was gone from my hard drive. Even when I look in an old time machine backup, the files that used to be backed up from the documents folder from my hard drive, were not present in a backup from a couple days ago. There was no documents folder on the hard drive backup. I've unchecked optimized storage in preferences and moved my files back to my mac. Seems like everything is back to where it was. I hope someone from apple reads this, as I'm still very disappointed that I didn't have a say in this. Or if I'm missing something, you've made it too complicated for the average mac user to understand. I read the article that was linked in an above post and it indicated that files were moved, not synced between devices, so again, if I'm missing something, it's way to complicated for the average mac user.

     

    Thanks everyone

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 26, 2016 3:49 PM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 9 (51,136 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 26, 2016 3:49 PM in response to annettepeyton

    You should do whatever works for you.

  • by Glenn Leblanc,

    Glenn Leblanc Glenn Leblanc Sep 26, 2016 4:09 PM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 6 (11,021 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 4:09 PM in response to annettepeyton

    This was done when you first logged into the new system and set up iCloud. One of the questions was whether or not you wanted to move you documents & data to iCloud. I chose not to as it was clear and I did not want my documents folder in iCloud.

    As was said, turn it off and remove you info from iCloud if you don't want it there.

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Sep 26, 2016 6:00 PM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 9 (50,600 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 6:00 PM in response to annettepeyton

    annettepeyton wrote:

     

    I've spent long enough on this and I don't seem to be getting anywhere. I appreciate everyone's help, however, from all indications, my files were moved from my computer to icloud.

    Here is what I have determined from my Mac:

    None of your files were moved.

    The Desktop and Documents folders now have a new extended attribute that tells Finder to not display them in the Home folder, and to display them under the iCloud Drive folder. The files in those folders are synced with iCloud storage, but they still exist exactly where they were.

     

    You can see that the two folders still exist in the file system by running this command in Terminal:

    ls -alO ~/

    You will see these indications for Desktop and Documents:

    drwxr-xr-x@  7 Barney  staff  -   238 Sep 25 07:33 Desktop

    drwxr-xr-x@ 11 Barney  staff  -   374 Sep  6 06:54 Documents

    The first d indicates they are in fact actual directories, not links (which would be indicated by an l)

    The - between staff and size indicates they are not hidden (otherwise it would say, "hidden").

     

    You can look inside each folder using the same command and see all of the documents inside of them.

    ls -alO ~/Documents

    You can drag the Desktop or Documents folder from the iCloud Drive into Terminal and it will write out the path of the folder. You'll note that it is the path to the folders in your Home folder, not some place in Mobile Documents.

     

    I suppose it is possible that I have a very special installation of Sierra, but I doubt that.

  • by cheeseb,

    cheeseb cheeseb Sep 27, 2016 3:41 AM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Sep 27, 2016 3:41 AM in response to annettepeyton

    I wrote a detailed article about how to use iCloud Desktop and Documents Folder storage and syncing. You can download it as a PDF file here: http://www.quecheesoftware.com/iCloud.html

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Sep 27, 2016 4:31 AM in response to Barney-15E
    Level 9 (50,600 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 27, 2016 4:31 AM in response to Barney-15E

    As an addendum to my previous post, it may be that a small number of "hot" files are maintained on the local drive, so if you have a lot of files (I only had a sparse amount), they may not all reside on your Mac locally.

    The descriptions of iCloud Drive's Desktop and Documents that I have read does not seem to indicate the feature is designed to save disk space, so I'm not sure if this supposition is true.

     

    That tidbit may be in Bill's article linked above (haven't had time to read through it, yet).

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