Missing files off desktop, aliases in their place?

Near the bottom of the Sidebar, click on "iCloud Drive". Do you see a Documents folder in there? Do you see a Desktop folder in there? Is your content in those folders?

Note: it is easy to take screenshots directly on your mac (and it spares our necks too 😎).

Just press Command-Shift-4 and drag to select the area of the screen that you want. By default, the screenshots will be saved to... oh wait, your Desktop. We can choose a different location, but for now let's try to concentrate on fixing the original problem.

You need to calmly explain what you are seeing, and where.

Press Command-Shift-D. What do you see? (there should be a window showing the contents of the Desktop folder)

Press Command-Shift-H. What do you see? Post a screenshot.

I have not used Dropbox for some time now, and when I used it, I made sure to create a specific folder to sync - i.e., not sync directly any of the standard mac folders, like Documents, Desktop, etc.

The way I would approach this now is to turn off DropBox syncing (I am understanding that you had the Desktop synced to Dropbox, right?).

I would recreate the Desktop folder manually, and then also manually copying stuff from Dropbox.

Apologies I'm using my phone whilst starting at the screen. No checked the iCloud but I think I have found the problem. I was deleting Dropbox because it take us so much gb and the files have gone there but they are on my online account now since I deleted the app and now it won't let me redownload it to move it as the files are to big to download directly from the web.

Control shift d =