Question about resetting iMac, files, iCloud, etc.

[ApplePie22]

My wife has a Macbook, iMac, and iPhone. All her devices are synced with iCloud, pretty standard. Her iMac has crashed and burned, the thing takes 15 minutes to do anything, literally opening Chrome gives me a spinning ball for 10-15 minutes, maddening. I've stripped out all the apps and done as much cleanup as possible, but ready just to go nuclear and do full factory reset. Where I'm concerned is if I wipe the iMac, will iCloud also delete anything, and to do a backup on a external hard drive, how do I know when looking at her iMac, which files (Office, Photos, etc.) are already in the cloud?

 

[0128672]

Go into settings > iCloud to see the list of apps enabled for iCloud. Office is backed up to OneDrive if that's enabled.

(that's not me in the photo; it's from https://support.apple.com/guide/mac...le-id-icloud-settings-on-mac-mchlcfdfc3a5/mac)

 

[ApplePie22]

thanks. my concern is i've read that I should turn OFF icloud in that menu to ensure a deletion on the computer does not roll up to the cloud. but before I do that, i need to make sure all the computer files are actually in the cloud. not sure how to do that?

 

[TrenttonY]

thanks. my concern is i've read that I should turn OFF icloud in that menu to ensure a deletion on the computer does not roll up to the cloud. but before I do that, i need to make sure all the computer files are actually in the cloud. not sure how to do that?

Compare whats on the Mac to to whats on the other iDevices connected to the iCloud account.