New posts

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MacInWin" data-source="post: 1918853" data-attributes="member: 396914">Cutting through the extraneous fluff, you have an MBA with a very small SSD and want to store your working documents in iCloud. It might be an M1, or an M2 (you wandered around a bit in that). Some of your files are on the MBA, some are on some unnamed server in the cloud somewhere, but also saved on a USB drive.Is that correct?  If so, open System Preferences, click where it says "Apple ID" and then you will see a panel open with an option for what to store and sync through iCloud. One of those options is "iCloud Drive." Here is a screenshot from my system:[ATTACH=full]36953[/ATTACH]Click on the button labelled "Options" and you will see another set of choices. Here is part of the offering from my system:[ATTACH=full]36954[/ATTACH]I don't have that checked because I don't want to store my documents in the cloud, but if you do want that, then check the box and it will start to move your documents into your iCloud account.Also, on the first image at the bottom is an option for "Optimize Mac Storage." You can check that as well and it will do what it says, trying to keep some of your more recent work locally, but storing everything else in the cloud.  Below that option will be a bar showing how much storage you have and how much is used in the cloud. You will need to make sure you have sufficient cloud storage to make this work.Be advised that by doing this, you will be depending on your internet connection for any files you may want to work with later. Your drive will still LOOK like it has the files there, but all it will really be storing are links to where the documents are in the cloud. When you open any given file, it will download from the cloud before it can be opened. When you close and save a file, you will see that it will start to upload to the cloud for storage and be replaced by a link to that storage area. All of that is fine if you have a good internet connection, but can be pretty slow if you don't. If you have files on a USB drive that you also want stored this way, you can copy them from the USB drive to the internal drive into Documents or Desktop after the internal drive is finished being moved to iCloud and they will then be copied to iCloud in turn. If you have files on some other cloud service and want them in iCloud, you can download them into your Documents or Desktop folders and they will also, in turn, be moved to the iCloud storage, assuming you have sufficient space in iCloud. Now, there is a service called "iCloud Drive" that also uses the iCloud storage area. But it works  differently in that you put a check mark like I have where "iCloud Drive" is located in the first screenshot, but then on the "Options" page do NOT put a check mark for "Desktop & Documents Folders" and do NOT put a check mark with "Optimize Mac Storage." In other words, just like I have it. With that setting there is a special folder named "iCloud Drive" that should be  on the Desktop. Any document you put in that folder will have a copy uploaded to the cloud and synced to any other device using that same AppleID. So, to share a document with your iPad or iPhone or another Mac, put it in the iCloud Drive folder and it will be copied to the cloud, then shared with all the other devices. But the copy is still on your internal drive, so you are not saving space with that approach, just syncing the file with other devices. I don't think that is what you want, but wanted you to know about it as it can be confusing.As for the rest of what you posted, I still have no clue what you mean, so I'm not going to try to address any of it. If what you wanted is to store documents in the iCloud space, follow what I said and that will happen. It will be very slow to open those documents, depending on the size and speed of your internet, but they will be stored in iCloud.</blockquote>

Verification: Name this item 🌈