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Large chunk of iCloud memory being used as ‘documents’

Hi

i have 200gb of iCloud memory, but when I look at the ‘map’ of the storage space I can see 136gb being used.


it suddenly appeared early last month.


I have tried apple support but I didn’t get an answer that cured the problem.


i have no ideas what is contained in this area, I cannot access it, but it using over half of my 200gb.


anyone out there have any ideas what it is and how to recover it for use?


thanks for looking


eric


Posted on Feb 6, 2020 2:03 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 9, 2020 3:13 AM

My first concern would be safety. Do your computer Documents, Desktop, and Pictures folders contain all the items that should be there? I included Pictures because my understanding is that things in the Pictures folder not created through Photos are synced to the Documents or Desktop folders in iCloud via iCloud Drive. Anyway, the first thing I would do is back all these items up to an external drive or to both an external drive and an alternative cloud. Be aware that you might be backing up some optimized photos, etc. Hopefully, you have never optimized your Mac's storage tho. See: https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/system-information/sysp4ee93ca4/10.14/mac/10.15 I would guess you haven't since you say you have not activated iCloud Drive and presumably not Photos. Eventually, I would extricate myself from iCloud when it comes to syncing Document, Desktop, and Pictures. Under the circumstances, I am not going to speculate on how to do that. Others can fill in the blanks.

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 9, 2020 3:13 AM in response to offcott

My first concern would be safety. Do your computer Documents, Desktop, and Pictures folders contain all the items that should be there? I included Pictures because my understanding is that things in the Pictures folder not created through Photos are synced to the Documents or Desktop folders in iCloud via iCloud Drive. Anyway, the first thing I would do is back all these items up to an external drive or to both an external drive and an alternative cloud. Be aware that you might be backing up some optimized photos, etc. Hopefully, you have never optimized your Mac's storage tho. See: https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/system-information/sysp4ee93ca4/10.14/mac/10.15 I would guess you haven't since you say you have not activated iCloud Drive and presumably not Photos. Eventually, I would extricate myself from iCloud when it comes to syncing Document, Desktop, and Pictures. Under the circumstances, I am not going to speculate on how to do that. Others can fill in the blanks.

Large chunk of iCloud memory being used as ‘documents’

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