Can I manually sync/refresh data from iCloud

There appears to be a bug in macOS which prevent data syncing over iCloud sometimes.

A workaround is to create a new file/folder under Desktop or Documents folder to trigger the sync. You can delete the temp file/folder immediately.

This is a manual hack to force a sync if the automated sync is failing.

I had a similar problem when saving/copying from one device and trying to access those files from a different device wouldn't show up/sync on iCloud when trying to access the file from other devices.

What finally worked for me is, whatever app/program/filemanager I used to save the file to iCloud I had to close the app so the computer doesn't think the file is still open. Since I have been doing that, I have no problem accessing files from my iPad/iMac/PC.