iCloud strips folder structure and removes folder colors

Do you have a Time Machine backup of these folder(s) that you can recover the structure from?

Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support

Otherwise, to "get the documents back in their folders" you can start by creating new folders. Then command-click each of the files that belong in the same folder and drag those into whatever folder they belong. Yes, this may be slightly tedious.

To gather 'like documents' together, you can right-click the desktop and select "Use Stacks". This will make little stacks of files on the desktop that you can select (by dragging a select box around) and then deposit into a folder.

Use desktop stacks on Mac - Apple Support

As for coloring the folders, that is not a normal function of the macOS. You were apparently using some third-party add on to make those changes. You may have to revisit that app to revive the colors.

Time Machine doesn't determine which files to replace... you do.

Start in Finder and navigate to the location where the folders should be - in this case Desktop. Next, launch the Time Machine application from the Launchpad. In the resulting TM interface you'll find representations of your backed up folders along with arrows and the vertical time line on the right for moving back and forward in time. Select the point in time you wish to recover files from, then select the file(s) and select Restore.

Please refer to the link I provided earlier for Apple's guidance.

Lauraald4 wrote:

Let me show you what my desktop looks like now that iCloud has spilled 90 miscellaneous documents out of their folders and onto my desktop. Note that on the right, things cover other things.

I see the problem and I can suggest several ways to address this.

• The desktop clutter can be reduced by right-clicking the wallpaper and selecting "Use Stacks". This will stack the loose files and leave only your folders and small stacks of files spread out on the desktop.

• You can also open a new Finder window and navigate to the folder "Desktop". There you can use the List view to manage the files that are on the Desktop. You can sort the list by file name or type or date, etc to help you manage them.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/1b13ec91-a3f1-45da-981d-d020e788a3a9

To give you an example of one of the 90+ documents that spilled out of their folders on my Mac, take the one called "T_A_Gray_seeks_his_wife_Mary_Jane__Hmmmmmm.pdf." (A newspaper clipping; I've done genealogy for 25+ years and the files are voluminous.) You've said Time Machine will tell me which folder it was in. What do I do to locate that document INSIDE ITS FOLDER ON TIME MACHINE? It's possible it was in a folder five layers down: Genealogy > Finding Thomas Gray > Finding Thomas A Gray > 00 On the trail of Thomas Gray > Gray Postings. But it could have been six folders down: Genealogy > Families St. Croix > Name - Gray > T A Gray > Spouses > First. How do I find out which folder it was in from Time Machine?

If you know the name of a file, you can use the search field in the Time Machine backup interface to locate the file in your backups.

Start by opening a Finder window and select the TM backup drive. Then click "Enter Time Machine".

Once in the TM interface, click the arrow icon next to the window to move back in time to a point before this incident. Select a dated backup file and use the Search field to find your file or folder and its location in that backup.

To see the path to your file/folder, click the "Path" button in the toolbar, or enable the Path bar in the Finder before you enter Time Machine. (Click Finder > View > Show Path Bar)

Select your file or folder and click "Restore" and your it should be returned to its proper location on your Mac.

You might consider collecting up all the junk on the Desktop and putting it aside in a new folder. Then restore your properly nested genealogy folder(s) from the Time Machine backup rather than try to sort it all out. If you can restore your folder from the backup as it was prior, then you can finally just delete the new folder with all your spilled files and be done.

Lauraald4 wrote:

[...]

The colors, by the way, are not a 3rd party app. They are a workaround because Apple can't hear our years of requests for this feature. Briefly, you right click on the the folder you want to color, open the Get Info pane, and click on the little folder icon, which copies it to the clipboard in Preview. Open Preview > New From Clipboard. The folder icon opens. Select Markup, and from the Markup bar, open the Adjust color sliders. Mess around with those until you like the color. Copy the newly colored folder onto the little icon in the Get Info window. Pray. Hope this helps folks. Thanks again **. I appreciate you.

You're welcome, my friend.

And Thank You (!) for this great workaround for folder colors. Wonderful! 😃

Not sure why your recovery of 1.5 TB of data from a Time Machine backup would take 20 hours. Very often these time estimates end up being very far off the mark. Your backup drive must be a rotational HDD, not an SSD? The time penalty is peanuts vs the complete loss of files when no backup is made.

About the iCloud interface... I don't believe there is any way to adjust the width of the columns in the online view of iCloud Drive.

Lauraald4 wrote:

Yes. It’s about half a terabyte of stuff. How would Time Machine know which ones need to be put back?

With about half a terabyte of stuff, you’d need to pay a nice monthly fee for icloud… I wonder who told you to put Documents and Desktop in iCloud, in the first place. Apple? FWIW the free tier gets you 5GB of space, you’d need to spring for the 2TB tier…