files have disappeared following sierra install. How do I restore them?

I too had the same problem when I upgraded to Sierra a couple of weeks ago. What happened differently in my case is that after installing Sierra, it wanted to transfer all of my Documents folder and its content, and Desktop files/images/etc. to iCloud Drive. At first I was going to do it, but in the process of creating the iCloud account, I got the message that there was not enough space in iCloud for me to move all of my stuff to iCloud Drive. They offered to let me pay money to get larger space, but I decided that I didn't want to do that right now, so I canceled setting up iCloud Drive. That's when my files in Documents and Desktop disappeared.

So I did a search in Finder for a picture that I remembered the name of and the picture showed up in the list. And where was it located? It was under my user name in a directory named iCloud Drive (Archive). I opened that directory and sure enough there was my Documents folder with its files, and all of my files in the Desktop folder. I opened the Documents folder and selected all and dragged it over to Documents that's in Finder's Favorites area in the sidebar. Opened the Desktop folder, selected all and dragged everything to the Desktop. Note that it moved all the files rather than copying them. At least I got everything back.

In the Finder, if you use the Go menu to show Documents, does that work?

If that still doesn't show, what do you see with ls -al ~/Documents

Do you know the name of any of the documents which have gone?

Then you can use Spotlight to search for it. See if it has moved.

My documents were moved into a folder called "~/Documents/Old Documents - rufux" where rufux is the name I have given my Mac.

I have turned on the feature which keeps a copy of my Desktop and Documents folder in the cloud. Which means that I can access them if I go to www.icloud.com and from my phone.

I had wondered if that might be the issue. I enabled Desktop and Documents on a fairly clean install, so didn't have much to transfer. I imagine that folder was created as a temporary location until all documents were transferred. In my case, it wouldn't have existed long.

If it is still transferring, there should be a little pie in the sidebar next to Documents indicating it is transferring files.

Do you see any indication of files still being transferred to iCloud?

Can you confirm that all of your documents have been transferred?

Is it possibly stuck because you ran out of iCloud storage?

I'm just trying to understand what is supposed to happen during this process.

As already mentioned, did you enable Desktop and Documents in iCloud Drive?

If you haven't upgraded your iCloud account, your docs will be unavailable to you. Log in to your iCloud account and go to Settings, then click the Help button located beside your screen name in the upper-right corner.

Look under the topic Set Up, it's chock full of good info.

Why don't you offer some help? your reply just avoids answering the question.

The problem I have is that all my Apple docs for Pages and Numbers are now in iCloud, but Microsoft Office files are "gone." Or, as someone so helpfullly suggested, I could use the Go menu to search for each one by name! That's not much help since I have thousands of files organized by folders.

Looks like Apple really created a nightmare with this one.

davidfromsan carlos wrote:

The problem I have is that all my Apple docs for Pages and Numbers are now in iCloud, but Microsoft Office files are "gone." Or, as someone so helpfullly suggested, I could use the Go menu to search for each one by name! That's not much help since I have thousands of files organized by folders.

Looks like Apple really created a nightmare with this one.

There is no "nightmare". Start your own thread instead of thread jacking this one. Explain your issue in detail and someone will be glad to try to help you.

Do a search with Spotlight (the loupe in the top right corner of your screen) or Finder (the search field in any of your Finder windows - a loupe is also shown there) for one of your files and see where it is. The rest of your files are likely the same place.

You can drag a folder to your "Favorites" section in Finder to keep easy access.

Here I searched for ".pps" files, and also found some JPG images I have extracted from a .pps file.

Kind regards

Henrik

Great response! Thanks. All my files back where I want them!!

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Thank you for this answer! It's exactly what I needed. Now, as for this annoying iCloud business......

....that's another thread.