

If you open the iCloud folder in Finder on the Mac and delete a file, it goes to the Trash like any other file, just as you would expect. Instead of working in the Documents folder on the Mac's disk, why not work in the Documents folder on iCloud? Your files are synced to your online storage. iCloud is built into macOS of course and it just works as they say, except when it doesn't. In theory, iCloud should work the same way. It is an extra safety net in case of problems. You just recovered a file that was deleted even after the Trash was emptied. This is online action is synced to OneDrive on the Mac and the file then appears on the Mac's disk again. The file can be selected and restored, which puts it back where it originally was in your online storage. Just as deleted files on the Mac are removed to the Trash folder on the Mac, this action is synced to your OneDrive online storage and the online file is moved to the Trash equivalent, which is the Recycle Bin. You can visit the OneDrive website in a browser, open the Recycle bin and the deleted file is there. If you empty the Trash or open the Trash and delete that file from it, it is gone from the Mac's storage.

If you use this as your work folder for documents, text files, images, PDFs and so on, your files have more protection against loss than if you store them in the Mac's Documents folder.įor example, if you delete a file on the Mac's disk in the OneDrive folder, it is sent to the Trash folder like any other file you delete.
#OS X UNDELETE INSTALL#
Install the Microsoft OneDrive app on your Mac and it creates a OneDrive folder in your home folder on the Mac's disk (it's an SSD, but I always call it a disk). Here I look at just OneDrive and iCloud, but it works with Google Drive and Dropbox and probably some other cloud storage too. This syncing between local and cloud storage is the key to recovering lost files and deleted files that are no longer in the Mac's Trash folder. All of these provide the ability to work on files on your Mac, but they also sync to your online storage so everything is safely stored online as well. I use OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox and iCloud and I probably have accounts at a few other places too. What can you do if you discover you really needed a file that was in there? After all, no space is recovered until you do.
#OS X UNDELETE FREE#
After deleting lots of big files, perhaps to clean up the disk and free up space, you might be tempted to empty the Trash. Never emptying the Trash is one solution, but it never stops growing and soon occupies many gigabytes of storage. A file was missing, but luckily it was in the Trash and could be recovered. This has happened when sending someone a project and then deleting the original files. You might delete a file and a week or even a month later you discover that you need it. Have you ever emptied the Trash on your Apple Mac only to discover sometime later that you needed a deleted file that was in there? There is a clever way to recover deleted files even after emptying the Trash.
