Invisible "Documents" folder?

If you enabled Desktop & Documents in iCloud Drive, then your Documents folder is now in iCloud Drive. It actually still exists in your Home folder, hence the warnings you got trying to create a new one.

If you want your Documents stored locally, then disable Desktop & Documents in iCloud drive. Once deactivated, you will have to drag the contents of the respective folders out of iCloud Drive and back into your home folder Desktop and Documents folders.

You tried to create an alias of Documents folder , by the method :

Close all applications press : shift + command + N > rename it as Documents and clicked on enter , so it stated the name Documents already exists - so true .Choose other name .

The documents folder is having question mark , you can follow the article : macOS Sierra: If the Dock contains an icon with a question mark

Now , you accidentally moved Documents folder to the Application , then again tried to drag & drop it to Home folder , Definitely it will reject as in home folder , as you have your original Documents folder ( with original contents in it ) , two folders with the same name can not exist in Home folder .

So , the theme is invisible folder that was having question mark residing in the Dock . Just drag & drop this question mark folder in the centre of the desktop it will vanish or can press control key , click on the folder > option > Remove from the Dock .

Igor_G5 wrote:

Hi Barney, Thanks for the reply. To start out with, I didn't enable anything with iCloud drive, it just came that way.

Well, you did. When the Startup Assistant ran, it asked if you wanted to enable Desktop & Documents in iCloud Drive and the option defaults to on. So, when you just clicked through and didn't read what it was asking, you enabled the feature.

somewhere along the line it got moved into the Applications folder. And now there is an invisible one in my home folder and I can't access it because it's invisible. It doesn't even show up in Save or Open dialogue boxes.

I don't know how you got anything in your Applications folder. Perhaps dragging it there or otherwise. But, that is irrelevant.

Yes, there is an invisible Documents folder in your Home. That is the way the feature works as I explained before.

Stop trying to override it and just Disable Desktop & Documents in iCloud Drive via the iCloud System Preferences.

Once you do that, your Desktop and Documents folders will show up in your home folder.

Then, you drag the Desktop and Documents files out of iCloud Drive an back into your Desktop and Documents folders in your Home folder.

If you have a Documents folder in your Applications folder, drag those documents into your Documents folder in your Home.

I turned “Documents and Desktop” off in iCloud and I still don't have a “Documents” folder in my home folder. And It still won’t let me create one. It seems to me that there shouldn't be an invisible “Documents” folder in my home folder but rather one that I can use.

Turning that off should have restored the Desktop and Documents folders. Try restarting and see if they are there when you log back in.

Are your Documents and Desktop folders still in iCloud Drive? You can log into iCloud.com to check.

Open Terminal and copy the following command and paste it into the Terminal window, then press Return.

ls -leO@ ~/

That will display information about your home folder.

Copy the output and paste it in a reply here.