Help! None of my files are showing up :(

[profmjh]

I've just set up my new MacBook. I have dropbox and I use iCloud drive and all their files have uploaded to my Mac. But I can't see any of them. I can see all the folders in them, and even folders inside folders, but I can't see any actual files inside the folders.

I know they're there because if I open dropbox from the dock, I can see outlined squares and file names and I can open these.

How can I get my Mac to actually show me my files!

 

[Partron22]

Try restarting the Finder (Force Quit Menu item in the Apple menu). That usually works for me.
If not, restart the Mac. That almost always works.

 

[profmjh]

Problem solved.

Two things were happening. The first was that I was downloading dropbox (which has a huge number of files in it) and early on in that process I made an alias of the dropbox folder to put on my desktop. It seems that what I'd actually aliased was the state of the folder at that time. Deleting that alias and starting again did the trick.

The second was that my iCloud was downloading and that took a very long time. I didn't realise it was still going on.