Strange presentation of my file locations

[omalleyfr]

Working on Mac Mini M1.  Mac os Ventura 13.2.1 (22D68)

I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this strange phenomenon. I have access on my network to Dropbox, One Drive and iCloud as well as external drives. I'm at an early stage in my book writing/production in Publisher 2. Whenever I access storage locations "in the cloud" to open, save or place etc - from any Affinity 2 app, the file hierarchy is always in random order. This is irritating and confusing, because my required folders can be anywhere in a long list of randomly organised files. I thought at first the fault might lie with the Mac finder settings. I've checked them and they seem fine. Internal drives however show correctly, external HDDs present perfectly too. Cloud files are a mess. Am I missing a vital setting somewhere? HDD storage seems the only solution to sort the problem, internal storage on my new M1 mac mini is too small to consider and is reserved solely for apps etc. The reason I've provided myself with cloud storage is to avoid the catastrophe of a failed HDD. Any ideas very gratefully received.

[MikeTO]

I've never experienced this with Affinity and iCloud on any version of macOS and an M1. The files are always sorted in the same order as the last time I opened a File dialog.

Note that Serif recommends storing data on your internal drive because there are some known issues with cloud storage and external drives. I realize that's not an option for you but that means back up, back up, backup. The main issue I encounter with iCloud is I lose access to my file when saving. I don't lose any work, I just Save As to a new filename and continue without further issues. But this happens a lot so back up just in case.