iCloud documents mysteriously taking up a large amount of storage space

You can try signing out of your account and sign back in to see if that would help. Alternatively, you could reach out to Apple Support at -- Contact - Official Apple Support as there were a couple of other folks who were experiencing the same issue and were advised to reach out to Apple Support.

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is marked solved, less people are likely to look at it. A new post would be much more visible. You can link to this one.

Contact iCloud Support. You may have to try twice.

iCloud Support

I had the same issue after updating my devices to iOS11, although I'm not certain the two are linked. After (too) much (fruitless) research on what the "Documents" category was and why it suddenly decided to Deebo my storage, I found this thread - thanks mzaur and zinacef!

I contacted Apple Support and explained the issue to a rather nice tech, who ultimately reached out to a senior advisor. The SA helped resolve the issue, similarly noting 'reserve space' for future backups or some such. Problem is, I couldn't use my own reserve space! About as useful as a screen door on a submarine, then, no?

Indeed, it seems they are aware of this issue but have yet to resolve it for all users. Can't help but wonder how many people are unnecessarily upgrading their storage plan due to what appears a known software issue (*ahem!*). But surely it's not a ploy to get a few more bucks...right? Right?? Nah...

Note: the first person you speak with may not be aware and/or capable of fixing this issue. Have them consult a senior advisor. Don't upgrade until you adequately investigate the issue.

I am adding my experience with this issue hoping it helps someone. As I will explain below, it turns out that the iCloud reserve issue can be related to having a large number of files in your Trash.

NOTE: After hitting "Empty Trash" the Senior Tech advised me that my reserve space was back to normal. HOWEVER, she also mentioned that she did something on her end so I am not sure if emptying the trash was alone responsible for eliminating the reserve space and reclaiming my iCloud storage space. Either way I will explain below the particular problem I had emptying the Trash and how I went about resolving it.

Starting from the beginning, I contacted Apple Support about why Documents was taking up so much room in iCloud. I did mention the "Reserve Space" issue to the tech that I learned about from this post. The tech advised that he could see my reserve space and that it looked normal. After walking me through all the usual suspects, I asked nicely if he could look at the "Reserve" issue again. This required me to authenticate and provide a PIN so that he could have more access to my files. After this, he advised me that to his surprise,after "refreshing" he could now see that I had 80GB of reserve space and it was definitely the cause of my lost iCloud storage space.

Upon confirming that, he elevated me to a senior tech. The first thing the senior tech did was tell me to empty my trash. She told me that the Trash can sometimes be the cause of a large Reserve space leading to lost iCloud storage. Turns out the trash on my iMac had a time machine back up in it.

Due to the large number of files in the Time Machine Backup file the "Empty Trash" process crashed. The Senior tech advised that since the files in my Trash had been deleted from an external drive, I would have to reformat the external drive. This would not normally be necessary, but because I had deleted a very large Time Machine Backup that was now sitting in my Trash, the Empty Trash function would not work, or it would work very slowly and usually grind to a halt.

After some digging I came up with a better solution that avoids having to reformat the external drive to empty the trash. It involves force deleting the files using the terminal command. Here is what I did:

1. I had to Force Quit the Finder because it was stuck trying to Empty the Trash

2. After force quitting finder I opened the Terminal Command Utility

Enter the following command into terminal without hitting Enter afterward.

"sudo rm -rf "

3.Control-click on your Trash icon to open it.

4. Select all of the files in your trash folder.

5. Drag the files into the Terminal window. This will fill in the file path for you in the terminal.

6. Hit Enter.

Let the terminal command do its thing - it might take a while. You can periodically open the trash and you should see the folders and files start to disappear. For me it took about 15 minutes. At first it did not seem to work but slowly the folders disappeared from the Trash.

Final note: Because you are deleting files in the Terminal Window be very careful, have back ups etc. The instructions above should not cause any problems but I'm not an expert and iI wouldn't want you to lose any data.

You're most welcome! Glad to hear you're back up and running! 🙂

Hello I have this same issue but instead it involves 49.2mb of storage even though the account has only been backed up once ive tried deleting that backup and it goes back to that error i believe