If I delete a document in my Mac would I delete it from the iCloud too?

So are you saying that even though I am

manuslly copying files to my expanded iCloud storage, if I delete the files on my Mac, the files in iCloud will also be deleted? There’s absolutely no way to use iCloud as straight storage? Aside from the syncing through wifi or iTunes, etc. I’m not syncing- I’m dragging and dropping files to iCloud.

To expand, I have external drives which I’ll use, but having things in the cloud provides wider availability for access from other places where my external drive is not. I Ike the auto backup syncing of music & pix, but def frustrated that it doesn’t free up more space on my iPhone and separately in this instance, my MacBook for files. Who needs 12 FB of pix & video on their phone? I’m too old for all this. Thanks for your help.

I can see why iCloud is really only to be used as a syncing service /storage area, as that can happen quickly or slowly in the background without active manual effort, whereas the copying of files to iCloud is time consuming and slow due to speed (perhaps it’s my upload speed of 5 MB’s compared w/DL of 100+). I’ll probably just become more reliant and creative on my physical backups like I use to. It’s so quick and easy. Just putting 100+ GB on a small external (in a housing) that use to be in a laptop that went to Mac Heaven. It’s lightening fast. I wanna shoot myself (figuratively) for trying to use iCloud. Thanks for your time and effort. I’ve heard many people over the years complain about the silly limitations of iCloud, and I’ve perhaps naively defended it as I always defend apple et al. But in this case, I guess they might be right. Apple should address these issues once and for all. I’m going to rethink my monthly 2TB iCloud subscription.after at least 6 years or so, I’m still only using about 600 GB. With 12 gb of pix/vid in photo app on my phone. I’d probably be better off having a smaller amount of synced photos and then a separate back up drive of 1TB or more of pix & video for more rare access. I do have a 2 TB drive to do this. I gotta rethink a better scenario than I’ve accepted, adopted and struggled with out of complacency with Applel. Thanks for taking your time on this. I don’t mean to leak my frustration all over you, but it’s just pouring out, partially cause my phones and computers are also too old and my A/C has been out for two days and it’s been 90° in here , but just now it’s starting to come on after a new motor was put in the air handler. I’ll cool off. 🙏 ✌🏻

Yes, I do use the iCloud storage which I access through the files app on my phone quite a bit every day to put large files, pdf’s etc that I grab online and want access to but don’t want to DL them to my phone. I love the accessibility to save such frequent and large files w/out having to download to my phone or even a computer. It’s so quick. I can save a 700 page pdf to the iCloud in seconds and access it later from my phone and scroll to a page I want to print or section to read etc. 700 page PDFs are not the norm size wise, just an example of one I did yesterday. This reminded me of one of the features of iCloud I really, really like.