How can I close this “iCloud” window?

Question

Level 1

71 points

How can I close this “iCloud” window?

Went to close the iCloud ‘window’ (whatever it’s called) and got this message: “If you turn off iCloud Drive [Note: the ‘window’ is titled “iCloud” and NOT iCloud Drive], al documents stored in iCloud will be deleted from this Mac. Your documents will still be available on other devices using iCloud.”

Editorial comment: What a totally CONFUSING mess!

Another Editorial comment: I’m trying to keep stored files to a minimum. They all gobble up storage (both on the main device AND on the backup device), slow the systems down, make it harder to find things, etc., etc. This is called managing one’s devices. Of course, on top of all this, there are cookies and other things that web sites store on one’s devices, also, all gobbling up storage, slowing things down, and most likely, decreasing security. Okay, so the reader knows where I’m coming from, back to my problem.

Let me see if I got this straight: Somehow my wife’s iPad is getting all my photos (she doesn’t know if there is anything else she’s getting). Recently I moved a bunch of old photos from my iPhone to my computer because the phone’s memory was filling up. Okay, and my computer is too but that’s another problem.

Back to the iCloud message: besides the wording problem (iCloud and iCloud Drive), there is the problem with “Your documents”: What documents??? How can I see what the ‘documents’ are that will be deleted? I don’t want anything deleted off my computer until I say so.

Bottom line: The most pressing problem right now is How can I close this “iCloud” window?

P.S. I’m using El Capitan.

Posted on Oct 18, 2015 11:52 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

201,343 points

Oct 18, 2015 3:44 PM in response to Searchin99

Bottom line: The most pressing problem right now is How can I close this “iCloud” window?

Press the "cancel" button. Then iCloud Drive will not be turned off.

“If you turn off iCloud Drive [Note: the ‘window’ is titled “iCloud” and NOT iCloud Drive], al documents stored in iCloud will be deleted from this Mac. Your documents will still be available on other devices using iCloud.”

This means, that all shadow copies off the iCloud Drive documents stored on your Mac will be deleted. You can no longer access iCloud drive from the icloud icon in the sidebar of the Finder window, and cannot access the iCloud Drive documents, when you are offline. You will only be able to access iCloud Drive using the web interface at icloud.com.

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Answer 2

Searchin99 Author

Level 1

71 points

Oct 18, 2015 2:50 PM in response to léonie

Thanks for the reply but I’m still having a very difficult time understanding what is happening.

The “iCloud” window with it’s warning message (the one in the screen shot above” was still there so I hit Cancel on it’s [the warning drop-down] button to revert to the iCloud window.

In the next step I clicked on the red dot in it’s [iCloud window] upper left corner and *poof!* it closed (as it should). However, …...

Now I still don’t know what files, if any, were stored in the iCloud Drive, and worse yet, I have no clue what they were.

This is what my Finder looks like now:

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

201,343 points

Oct 18, 2015 3:28 PM in response to Searchin99

The warning message told you, that the copies on your mac will be removed, but the originals in iCloud will stay, if you proceed with the sign out. If you simply closed the iCloud Preferences, you should still be signed into iCloud Drive. Apparently your iCloud Drive had no documents that could be opened on a Mac.

You can check this using the web interface at iCloud.com:

Open this web page: https://www.icloud.com

Sign in with your AppleID and open the iCloud Drive.app on that page. It will show you the files that are currently stored in iCloud drive.

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Answer 4

Searchin99 Author

Level 1

71 points

Oct 18, 2015 4:05 PM in response to léonie

Well, that was helpful [the link to iCloud.com]. Oh, and by the way, I did give you some ponts for helping me but on your previous post. “Haste makes waste” as the saying goes so if you or someone who follows along later wonders what was helpful they’ll have to read this post to find out. Either that, or they’ll go away scratching their head wondering what gives.

I went there (to icloud.com) and did some exploring though the various applications but couldn’t find any documents, pictures, or other things. What is interesting is there is supposed to be 5 GB of storage space except that there is only 4.98 GB available. Hmmmm….. is this fuzzy math?

If there is nothing in any of the apps then shouldn’t there still be 20 MB available (5.00 - 4.98 = 0.02)? Just thought I’d mention it but I don’t want to change the subject. One thing I’m really glad about is Find my iPhone shows up! Wouldn’t it be neat if it could drill down to the house floor plan???

Since I couldn’t find any files in my iCloud (iCloud Drive?) account I can only assume there were not transferred and therefore none were deleted from my computer, but then there is that word “assume”. There isn’t any time right now but I’ll look into it later. Thanks again for the last post.

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