Confusion over iCloud Drive Documents / iCloud Drive Pages Folders

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Level 1

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Confusion over iCloud Drive Documents / iCloud Drive Pages Folders

As an ex Win 11 File Manager user, which I knew in side out, I am quite often confused by Finder. Have I now doubled the downloaded files for offline use?

I recently moved my Teaching documents from OneDrive to iCloud. All went well and the files now reside in an iCloud Drive folder called "iCloud Drive Documents" on my MacBook and iMac, useable offline and also in iCloud.

I then noticed the existence of another default Apple folder labelled "iCloud Drive Pages". Not understanding what this was, I read online that its use was to sync documents across all Apple devices, much like the OneDrive I was used to - and, indeed, much as I though iCloud Drive Documents (well, iCloud in general) did. Anyway, somewhat confused, I followed instructions and dragged the iCloud Drive Documents subfolders into the iCloud Drive Pages folder.

I now appear to have two sets of the same documents downloaded and taking up disk space. Do I delete the first folder, "iCloud Drive Documents"?

Your sage advice would be gratefully received!

Steve

Posted on Jul 14, 2023 12:09 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

72,096 points

Jul 14, 2023 02:23 AM in response to scampo2426

Do not delete anything...

iCloud Drive works much as a regular drive, as in you can create your own folders on it - as you did.

On the other hand, it also supports iOS and iPadOS devices, where typically documents are saved "for each application". So you may end up with folders called "Pages", but also "Preview", etc. Note that each of these folders has a specific icon.

For example, if you save a document from Pages and you select iCloud, it will end up in that "Pages" folder.

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Answer 2

Owl-53

Level 10

100,321 points

Jul 14, 2023 02:47 AM in response to scampo2426

Only as an illustration from what previous contributors' was talking about.

The below is an image of my iCloud Setup

Container for Pages where all my Pages Doc are kept, Numbers for Numbers Docs etc.

Using 2 - M1, 1 - M2, 1 Intel and 1 iPhone all using the same setup in 1 Apple User ID Account on all units

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Answer 3

scampo2426 Author

Level 1

25 points

Jul 14, 2023 08:29 AM in response to Owl-53

Thanks to this wonderful resource and you helpful people, I am now wiser and understand better the way iCloud works.

This is what I now gather to be the case: there are two default Apple folders in iCloud Drive, Documents and Pages. It seems to be a choice which to use except that the Pages app by default now uses iCloud Drive Pages, so, in starting my switch from Word to Pages app, I have now downloaded my files only to the iCloud Drive Pages folder and have (safely) deleted them from iCloud Drive Documents folder which was using up double the disk space.

I think Apple truly have made this more complex than it should be and any web search is made more difficult by the app called "Pages" and the drive location called "Pages.

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,250 points

Jul 14, 2023 09:32 AM in response to scampo2426

It’s complex because iOS is more secure and apps only have access to their own storage locations.

If you don’t create/edit documents on iOS, you don’t need to use the app-specific folders.

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Confusion over iCloud Drive Documents / iCloud Drive Pages Folders

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