Sierra: iCloud Drive - documents no longer on laptop??!!

Question

Sierra: iCloud Drive - documents no longer on laptop??!!

Is it true that once my Documents and Desktop items are uploaded to iCloud Drive with Sierra OS that they are NO LONGER on my laptop? It is taking a long time for them to all be uploaded - and I was obviously uninformed when I decided to enable that upload. But if it's true that they will now no longer be on my laptop how can I "reverse" that whole process?

I really was only thinking it would be kind of like a backup, and maybe something that I would occasionally utilize to see some documents from my iPhone. I certainly didn't want all of those files to no longer be on my laptop. So what can I now do to put things back the way they were - and NOT use iCloud Drive for Desktop and Documents?

Posted on Sep 23, 2016 12:43 PM

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Answer 1

FoxFifth

Level 10

475,437 points

Sep 23, 2016 12:51 PM in response to Marcy Matties

Go to Apple menu > System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive Options > and see whether you have a check mark in front of "Optimize Mac Storage" at the bottom of the preference window. If you don't have a check mark in front of that then the files will always have a local copy on your laptop. If you do have Optimize Mac Storage checked, they may or may not be on your laptop depending on the space available.

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Answer 2

Sep 23, 2016 1:37 PM in response to FoxFifth

OK. Thanks. And will they be where they've always been - Documents Folder and Desktop folder? Or are they somewhere else? After actually thinking about it I DON'T want them (Documents and Desktop) on iCloud Drive, but it seems like if you click to turn that off it tells you that if you do those files will only be visible in iCloud Drive...

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