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How to Retrieve All "Stuck" Photos from iCloud

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I am currently trying to download all my photos/videos from iCloud. Originally my iPhone 6 was set by default to upload this content to my iCloud account. I received a "Storage Space Almost Full" notification and shut off the auto-upload function on my iPhone. Now, based off some research, supposedly these files are only kept for 30 days (perhaps this only applies to Photo Stream files?), and indeed when I've tried to download the photos both using the Photos.app on Mac and the iCloud for Windows software for Windows, it's not pulling any files because there is nothing in my Photo Stream as I turned that function off, however accessing the Photos section via iCloud.com shows that I have a whopping 2,451 photos taking up all my space, some ranging back to November of 2014 (last fall). These photos are not accessible via the Photos.app on Mac, the integrated iCloud Drive function in the sidebar in Finder, the iCloud for Windows software, or my iPhone. It seems that I can download one-by-one via iCloud.com, but there HAS to be a better way to access these files. The best almost-workaround that I found was to select an entire moment (still, there are hundreds of Moments) and download entire moments at a time, however the I'm able to select an entire Moment and upon hitting the download button, only the first photo of the Moment tries to download. Am I missing something? Can someone explain where these 2,451 photos are stored? Are they technically in my iCloud Drive? If so, why can't I access them via the Finder sidebar? They're not in my Photo Stream, so where are they? Thank you in advance to those that can shed some light on this issue. Very frustrating.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Aug 1, 2015 3:40 PM

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How to Retrieve All "Stuck" Photos from iCloud

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