Hello, if I search for particular documents it tells me that they are in icloud drive but I can't find them on my mac. I want to move them to my mac storage. I found numerous discussions which advised to turn off icloud and now documents on my mac is completely empty. I am hoping I have not lost everything. I have yet to find anything easy to do on a mac. Thank you for help.
iPhone 6, iOS 12
Nomadibility wrote: …, if I search for particular documents it tells me that they are in icloud drive but I can't find them on my mac.
If you have found a document, and it says it is in iCloud Drive, then you have found it on you Mac. iCloud Drive is the name of a folder on your Mac. It's a special folder that is copied to iCloud Drive.
If you have Optimize Storage turned on, and if your Mac's drive becomes crowded, then the Mac will delete a less used file from your iCloud Drive folder on you Mac to make room, and it leaves a link so you can get it when you want it. But if you don't have Optimize turned on, everything in your iCloud Drive folder is on your Mac.
I found numerous discussions which advised to turn off icloud
Why? Maybe these discussions were not from well-informed people.
If you disable iCloud Drive and had used Desktop and Documents syncing, you create new folders when Desktop and Documents is disabled. Your old Desktop and old documents folders are now ion iCloud only. If you still have iCloud Drive enabled, simply drag/drop your files wherever you want from the iCloud Drive folder. Otherwise, you can download your files from iCloud.com.
Thank you Richard.Taylor for your helpful explanation. Following instructions in Apple Help to the letter, I have not been able to move or copy files/folders in "iCloud Drive" on icloud.com back to my macbook pro by dragging-dropping or copy-pasting. Nothing happens and the selected files just sit there, unresponsive. Maddening.
But your explanation pointed me to the (not) missing files and subfolders on my hard drive -- as Not revealed by Apple Help (in my searches). It was then easy to drag-move them back to the recreated Documents and Desktop folders (as Apple Help does describe).
Like other lower level mac users here, I've found the latest Apple Help instructions not only incomplete but specifically incorrect/obsolete. Richard.Taylor Is better informed than many -- including the most recent Apple Help writers. Good! This is the point of the community, no? Thank you from one of the misinformed masses.
I have turned icloud drive back on and now this documents folder is also empty??
Move documents from iCloud storage to Mac storage
