Why the iCloud Alias files?

Question

Why the iCloud Alias files?

I'm a long time Mac user but like many people have been forced to live in a MS Office environment for many years. In trying to move out of that environment and completely into iWorks I've run into a showstopper. Converting all my hundreds of MS Office files was easy, but I can not live without a folder structure. So, I moved about 20 folders from Microsoft OneDrive filled with lots of Pages, Numbers, and PDF files into my iCloud Drive folder on my Mac. (Note: each folder contained all types of iWorks documents).

Now, every time I open any iWorks document in any of these folders it creates a corresponding iCloud alias file in either the iCloud /Pages, /Numbers, /Preview, or /TextEdit folder in iCloud. So this means if I eventually open these hundreds of iWorks files in the various folders, there will be hundreds of corresponding alias files displayed in the four iCloud iWorks folders.

Far be it from me to tell Apple their cloud system is messed up (thousands before me have already tried), but people still need folders with different types of files in them. Apple would have me to put all my Pages files in one place, Numbers files in one place, etc. It just can't happen. If I have a folder named /Family it's going to have Pages, Numbers, Preview, and TextEdit files in it...but then I'm going to have the alias files every time I open one of the files.

So, if there is no solution to the alias files issue, I'll just simply convert all my iWorks documents back to MS Office documents (sadly) and go back to a folder-structured life and hope that one day Apple "gets it" when it comes to the cloud. Thanks for any insight.

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10), null

Posted on Mar 23, 2015 8:49 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 24, 2015 8:00 AM in response to Larry McJunkin

To make this matter worse, I just noticed that all these alias files are the exact same size as the ones in the original iCloud folders. This means whatever content I have in iWorks files is actually duplicated. Surely there must be something I'm doing wrong here?

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Answer 2

Mar 24, 2015 11:51 AM in response to Larry McJunkin

In researching this issue, I've found that it only happens when opening iWorks documents in folders I have placed in iCloud Drive. If I keep my iWorks documents in Dropbox, or any other cloud service, I can open them just fine with iWorks apps and not create alias files. Odd that Apple would discourage me from storing iWorks files and folders in iCloud Drive (by creating these alias files) when, in fact, they changed from iCloud to iCloud Drive in an effort to open it up to other files.

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Answer 3

rickatk

Level 1

33 points

Feb 13, 2016 8:36 PM in response to Larry McJunkin

Larry McJunkin wrote:

I'm a long time Mac user but like many people have been forced to live in a MS Office environment for many years. In trying to move out of that environment and completely into iWorks I've run into a showstopper. Converting all my hundreds of MS Office files was easy, but I can not live without a folder structure. So, I moved about 20 folders from Microsoft OneDrive filled with lots of Pages, Numbers, and PDF files into my iCloud Drive folder on my Mac. (Note: each folder contained all types of iWorks documents).

Now, every time I open any iWorks document in any of these folders it creates a corresponding iCloud alias file in either the iCloud /Pages, /Numbers, /Preview, or /TextEdit folder in iCloud. So this means if I eventually open these hundreds of iWorks files in the various folders, there will be hundreds of corresponding alias files displayed in the four iCloud iWorks folders.

Far be it from me to tell Apple their cloud system is messed up (thousands before me have already tried), but people still need folders with different types of files in them. Apple would have me to put all my Pages files in one place, Numbers files in one place, etc. It just can't happen. If I have a folder named /Family it's going to have Pages, Numbers, Preview, and TextEdit files in it...but then I'm going to have the alias files every time I open one of the files.

So, if there is no solution to the alias files issue, I'll just simply convert all my iWorks documents back to MS Office documents (sadly) and go back to a folder-structured life and hope that one day Apple "gets it" when it comes to the cloud. Thanks for any insight.

I find this to be an interesting topic. My experience has been that it does not matter where the original document is situated, if the iWork app handles the document an alias is created.

The following link may be helpful:

https://mindnode.com/blog/2015-01-21-what-are-icloud-drive-aliases

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