timan42 wrote:
Three days ago I shut down my iMac, Catalina, 10.15.7 & went off to have heart surgery. Returned to restart from cold... my desktop files are gone. Mac hard disk and back up disk are up. Novembers Time Machine is missing most of November. There appears to be numerous "desktops" in I guess the Cloud. I kind of got one to open but it is still missing files. The iCloud remains a mystery, I have no idea how stuff got there, everything takes forever to load. I have had Macs since the 512 days and I am finally stymied. How will I ever clean this mess up? Bill
Desktop & Documents in the iCloud Drive—it may have gotten turned on...
Turn off Desktop and Documents
When you turn off Desktop & Documents Folders, your files stay in iCloud Drive and a new Desktop and Documents folder is created on your Mac in the home folder.
You can move files from iCloud Drive to your Mac as you need them, or select all of your files and drag them to the place you want to keep them.
From your Mac > System Preferences>Apple ID>iCloud. (On macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click iCloud)
Next to iCloud Drive, click Options. Deselect Desktop & Documents Folders.
Click Done.
If you turn off iCloud Drive or sign out of iCloud, you have the option to keep a local copy of your files that are in iCloud Drive.
Whether you decide to keep a local copy or not, a new Desktop and Documents folder is created in your home folder. If you choose to keep a local copy, your files in iCloud Drive are copied to a folder called iCloud Drive (Archive) in your home folder. Then you have the option to move any files that were in your iCloud Desktop and Documents, back to your new local Desktop and Documents.
ref: Add your Desktop and Documents files to iCloud Drive - Apple ...
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206985
