Time Machine cannot back up because some iCloud Drive files have not finished syncing.

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Time Machine cannot back up because some iCloud Drive files have not finished syncing.

While trying to do a backup using Apple Time Machine I keep getting this error message. “Time Machine cannot back up because some iCloud Drive files have not finished syncing.” Nothing is syncing. I tried disabling iCloud Drive but same error. I tried a different Time Machine SSD same error. Shut downs and restarts haven’t done anything as well as running First Aid. Any other suggestions?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.1

Posted on Nov 7, 2024 5:04 AM

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Answer 1

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DonQ Author

Level 1

34 points

Nov 7, 2024 5:47 AM in response to DonQ

PROBLEM SOLVED!

Apparently due to a separate issue I was having with my Macbook - Apple support asked if I had another user account on my laptop to test with, which I did. We used that ID to try to resolve the problem. What Apple Support never mention was that if I logged out of that test account without iCloud syncing completing, it would impact running Time Machine on my master account. Sure enough I went into my test account, disabled the use of iCloud drive, logged back in my master account and ran Time Machine and it is backing up now.

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Answer 2

Nov 22, 2024 3:28 PM in response to DonQ

In all my searching for an answer to this Time Machine message saying that the iCloud was still syncing and it might take several days, you provided the answer. I disabled iCloud Drive for 2 accounts on our iMac and the backup immediately proceeded. Once the first backup was completed I turned iCloud Drive back on both accounts and the backups are now proceeding as scheduled.

Thank you for posting this and I hope others in the same predicament will see this answer.

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