Moving Documents Folder to external drive creates a copy

[Nerdio]

Hi
I am new to the Mac world and only powered up my Mac mini for the first time yesterday.
I want to move my Documents and Pictures Folders to an external drive because the amount of data there will be is significantly larger than my internal storage. My plan, backed up by what I have learnt from YT is to move the folders to my external drive and then create Symbolic links in my home folder to the external drive. I did this successfully for Downloads by dragging the folder and holding down <Command>. I tested this with a simple download and it worked fine.

I have now tried to do this with my Documents folder and even though I held down <Command> it seems to have copied the folder.

The Finder window on the left is the Documents folder on my user account. The Finder window on the right is from my external drive.
When I moved the Documents folder everything in the Documents folder moved with it, as I would have expected. But a Documents folder remains on in my user folder, so I cannot create a Symbolic link with the same name. As I did for Downloads.

I created a file from the CLI in Documents to see if the folders were linked in anyway. But they are not. (This is what the hello2.txt file is).
I also notice now that if I open the folder on my user account it is called 'Documents - Local', which I don't think it was before.
I cannot delete the Documents folder from my external drive.

My Documents folder is unlinked from iCloud

I seem to have broken things a bit, which I am sure is repairable, but I don't know what to do next (Mac newbie ).

Any help/advice would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks.


EDIT

I have managed to delete the Documents folder from my External Drive, so I only have the one Documents folder in my User folder.

I think my questions are

1) Why is my Documents folder now called 'Document - Local'?
(Not really that important, but it would be nice to put it back to 'Documents'

2) How can I move my Documents folder to the external drive and leave nothing called Documents in the User folder? (Like I did for Downloads and subsequently create a Symbolic Link)

Thank you

 

[apostolosdt]

I think the common wisdom is that you don't touch anything from the OS; but you can do it with apps you have installed afterwards.

However, if your internal SSD is your problem, you might want to run your entire system from an external drive--but be careful with the choice of the type of SSD for that. There must be numerous threads here on the subject.