annettepeyton

Q: Documents MOVED to iCloud

Wow, I just realized, with the new upgrade to Sierra, my Documents folder was MOVED to iCloud. I thought I did quite a lot of reading about the new upgrade before actually doing it, and I don't recall EVER reading that this would occur. I know it said contents of my desktop would be available on all my devices but I don't recall ever reading that my documents folder would me MOVED. Was this written somewhere in Apple's documentation?

 

If not, I would like to express my disappointment that Apple would automatically do this rather than make it an option that I could select IF I wanted to do it. I am an Apple fan, I love their products, do all my work on apple products and have all my memories stored in apple products, but I find this lack of disclosure appalling.  Was this just a way to get people to sign up for more storage?

 

There are many reasons I need my design documents, fonts, customer files, stored on my computer rather than in a cloud so I really wish we were given the opportunity to make this selection, rather than have it made for us.

 

Just needed to vent my disappointment in this issue.

 

Annette

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 26, 2016 1:21 PM

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Q: Documents MOVED to iCloud

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  • by papalapapp,

    papalapapp papalapapp Sep 27, 2016 4:53 AM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 1 (95 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 27, 2016 4:53 AM in response to annettepeyton

    Annette, thank you for posting. I had the same expectations and wouldn't have expected that my documents would be moved away. I thought it would sync the Documents folder across devices.

    Luckily I didn't turn it on. The option "optimise storage" was checked by default when I looked in to the system preferences of "Documents & Desktop".

  • by Bill Cheeseman,

    Bill Cheeseman Bill Cheeseman Sep 28, 2016 4:30 AM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Sep 28, 2016 4:30 AM in response to annettepeyton

    Your documents were not MOVED, but only made invisible on the original Mac, and they were downloaded to any other Mac with the same iCloud id if you turned on syncing on the other Mac. To keep all of your documents on one of your Macs, turn OFF Optimized Storage on that Mac (assuming there is enough room for all of them on that Mac). On any Mac where Optimized Storage is turned ON, some of the documents may be removed from that Mac when storage runs low, and very large files may be kept only on iCloud with respect to that Mac.

     

    Download my article explaining this in detail, as a PDF file, at: http://www.quecheesoftware.com/iCloud.html

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 28, 2016 10:55 AM in response to Bill Cheeseman
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 10:55 AM in response to Bill Cheeseman

    Wow, whatever happened to, if you see the file, IT'S THERE, and if you don't see the file, IT'S NOT THERE!  Why make this so complicated?

     

    So, when I view my documents folder on my phone and my mac, it says there are 74 GIG of data there, but when I click on the documents folder, I can't see any of these magic files. Can someone tell me how to delete these files out of the documents folder so I don't have to upgrade to the next larger plan with apple?  I've tried to see them on my mac, on my phone and via icloud.com and it says DOCUMENTS are taking up 74 GIG of space but I see nothing.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 28, 2016 11:00 AM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 9 (51,136 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 28, 2016 11:00 AM in response to annettepeyton

    Did you look in the Mobile Documents folder as previously advised to do.

     

    A one word answer will suffice.

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 28, 2016 11:03 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 11:03 AM in response to Csound1

    Yes

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 28, 2016 11:07 AM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 9 (51,136 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 28, 2016 11:07 AM in response to annettepeyton

    And? (this is like pulling teeth)

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 28, 2016 11:07 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 11:07 AM in response to Csound1

    I did look in the mobile documents folder and there is nothing in there.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 28, 2016 11:11 AM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 9 (51,136 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 28, 2016 11:11 AM in response to annettepeyton

    Please go to https://www.icloud.com/ and look there as well.

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 28, 2016 11:14 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 11:14 AM in response to Csound1

    As stated earlier, I checked on my phone, my mac and ICLOUD.COM.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 28, 2016 11:15 AM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 9 (51,136 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 28, 2016 11:15 AM in response to annettepeyton

    Were they on the website?

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 28, 2016 11:21 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 11:21 AM in response to Csound1

    I'm not sure how else to word this. I've looked everywhere, there are no document files listed. Everywhere (my phone, my computer, the website) says the documents folder takes up 74 gig of data, but there are no documents shown, so I am unable to delete any documents. I've checked in the preferences on my mac, system preferences>icloud>manage and it says 74 gig makes up documents. But I can't see any documents.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 28, 2016 11:28 AM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 9 (51,136 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 28, 2016 11:28 AM in response to annettepeyton

    Then I have no idea, if they are not anywhere to be found it's a mystery, take your Mac to an Apple Store and ask them to sort it out for you.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Sep 28, 2016 11:33 AM in response to annettepeyton
    Level 10 (141,525 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 11:33 AM in response to annettepeyton

    If you know the name of any of the files that are missing do the following:

    Download and run Find Any File and run the search "File name contains xxxxxxxxxxxxxx".

     

    FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages. If those files are hiding somewhere on your hard drive FAF will find it.

  • by Joseph Delaney,

    Joseph Delaney Joseph Delaney Sep 28, 2016 12:24 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 3 (853 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 12:24 PM in response to Old Toad

    Search should work even with spotlight or siri - these files are not "hidden", they're "packaged" (like the photo library) - the difference being that you can still find and see the files inside the package if you look in the right place (which shouldn't be this hard).

     

    1. Stay away from "mobile documents" - that's now a "package" that Apple has deliberately made difficult to get into, because it would be too easy to accidentally mess it up and destroy the icloud syncing process. (That really, truly is the location of your documents, but it's best not to tamper with it directly).
    2. Click the "icloud drive" icon in your finder sidebar, or use the Finder's "Go" menu and choose "icloud drive", or use the command-shift-i keyboard shortcut.
    3. You should now see bunch of folders for all your apps that use iCloud storage, including your "Desktop" and "Documents" folders (slightly renamed, so you know which computer they came from).
    4. Drag your files (not the folders) out of the iCloud "Desktop" and "Documents" folders to someplace else (I recommend putting them in a new folder that you create in your home directory or "Downloads" folder - just as long as it's not in your "documents" or "desktop" - until you get this fully sorted out. You don't want to run in circles). It should warn you that you are about to delete from iCloud and other computers (which is good - deleting from icloud is exactly what you want to do)
    5. If this involves multiple computers, do the same on each.
    6. Go through your system preferences to make sure you have all the icloud and optimized storage settings turned off.
    7. Put a test file on your desktop, make sure it stays there. Make sure it doesn't appear in icloud.
    8. Move your files back to where you want them.

     

    Here's another article that might help, I think it's clearer than the TiDBITs one I posted earlier.

    https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/icloud-desktop-and-documents-in-mac os-sierra-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

  • by annettepeyton,

    annettepeyton annettepeyton Sep 28, 2016 12:34 PM in response to Joseph Delaney
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 12:34 PM in response to Joseph Delaney

    Thanks for your help. I think I figured this out.

     

    Monday when I initially had this issue, I copied my files out of the cloud documents folder back onto my hard drive on my mac. Then when I saw that my files were securely on my mac, I deleted the ones from the cloud folder. I guess cloud was still seeing them in my trash and calculating their space as still being in my cloud folder. I emptied my trash and my cloud storage went back up and the documents folder says it's back down to where it was before all this started.

     

    I'm still not sure why apple has to make this so difficult. Don't mess with my files, I'll manage them. But I learned a lot in this process and appreciate everyone's help. I learned that drop box is probably a lot more my speed. We all spent way too long on this but again, thank you!

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