All files gone after Ventura upgrade on MacBook Pro

I am not going to lie to you, this is rough.

I am sure you already have, but check your trash bin. If they're not there, someone wiser than I is going to have to help you, unless you have a time machine backup that you can use to restore them.

I am not saying this to add insult to injury, but because I have been through what you are going through right now, about 10 years ago: never EVER do an OS upgrade without first backing up your hard drive to an external drive or the cloud.

I truly hope that you are able to recover your lost files--best of luck and I am pulling for you.

Everything in my Documents folder moved to iCloud -- I want them on my local machine. When I try to copy everything back to the local Documents folder, I can copy individual files, but any subfolders present "The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “” can’t be read or written.

(Error code -36). Doesn't tell me which folder is problematic. VERY frustrating!!!

Where specifically had you been storing your "saved projects, audio files etc." if not in your Document folder?

Is your Dock now empty, or just reset back to the standard builtin applications?