Web Archive ! What Happened ? Where Is Everything Previously Saved Now ?

[Robert11]

Hello,

Always something new. Running Mojave.

I "had" a bunch of items on my desktop that Ihad copied and saved to the desktop.
All opened just fine until recently.

The icons are there, with the pix of the compass that Safari apparently uses.
Also, right underneath it says "ARCHIVE".

It seems now that all of these have been converted (automatically ?) to something called Web Archive.

None of these previously saved documents, etc. will open anymore. Just a totally blank page opens.

What is Web Archive ?
How can I get back what I have originally saved ?

Are they (still) saved, somewhere, via this web archive ?

Where is web archive on my Mac ?

I know nothing about web archive, as I have never run into it before.

Does it have something to do with iCloud, which caused me all sorts of problems in the past,
and that I, hopefully, totally disabled a few weeks ago ?

If someone could explain this for me, would be most appreciative.

And how to get items back so they open normally ?

Will blame it all on old age now, but am really stumped with this.

Thanks, truly appreciate, as always, the help,
Bob

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

It may have to do with iCloud, if you disabled iCloud Drive > Desktop & Documents folders. When you do that, it normally puts all of those files in an archive called iCloud Drive Archive. I haven't heard of it converting them to Safari web archives before.

Do you happen to have a Time Machine or other backup of any kind?

C

 

[Robert11]

Hi Cory,

As always, thanks for help.

Don't understand this web archive saving; apparently it's done by Safari (only).
"Crazy" format. Nothing ever there.

Anyway, the way around it that seems to work is to use Firefox rather than Safari, and then
save a a .HTML.

That usually copies everything fine.

So, I can live with that solution. But, I don't understand what Safari does; would like to, just so I can learn something.
But, all set now (I think).

Stay well, best regards,
Bob