Will my documents automatically return to my computer storage if I stop synching my documents to icloud?

Hey there!

Usually, if you stop iCloud Drive syncing, it will ask you if you want to keep a copy of the data to your Mac, can you recall this?

If you did, you can navigate to the iCloud Drive Archive folder to access them and move them to their original locations if you wanted to:

Open Finder.

On the top menu select Go > Computer > Macintosh HD (Usually) > Users > Your Username > iCloud Drive Archive, they’re usually saved there to that folder or the folders within.

Do you see them there? Otherwise, do they show up at iCloud.com/iCloud Drive? In that same location you can also check Recently Deleted. Likewise, in the “Account Settings” there, on the same web site, is usually an option to “Restore Files” in the case they were accidentally deleted and an archive was uploaded.

Hope that helps! Let me know otherwise!

They never left. iCloud keeps a copy of your documents on your Mac always. If you stop the sync, the documents will no longer be updated in iCloud, but will remain on your Mac.

It's unlikely the sync caused them to vanish.

Where were they before you started to sync?

Syncing as said does not remove files from your computer, it makes a copy in iCloud and syncs them.