Would it have been too much to simply add a button that says "Unsync"? How the hell did they mess something like this up? How couldn't they think that people would want to remove things from OneDrive only? It's such a simple yet fundamentally major design flaw that I can't wrap my head around it.

Data should NEVER have left my PC and been placed on some public storage somewhere on the net, A). less my knowing and B). less my permission in the first place. This modern trend of intrusion and liberty taking is infuriating.

Hey man… THANK YOU. The fix was a little simpler than I thought. I have tried in the past to do this, and had trouble. I did it again today, and no trouble. I hate OneDrive !! I like to organize my files in my PC exactly how I want them. On the hard drive. I only want CERTAIN things to be shared. And OneDrive just wants to gobble up everything then tell me “running out of space , buy more “. Nah… I’m not BUYING MORE ANYTHING. Anyway, thank you!

Dude you saved my pc, thank you!

Leo - Thanks so very much for explaining this in a clear and concise manner. I didn't realize items were going to a OneDrive storage - - UNTIL I began to get the message that my OneDrive was FULL! Then I noticed that I was getting ERROR messages on my files. I also noticed there were two Docs folder, but still didn't make a connection. WOW! How confusing! Again, many thanks!

I just want to say that you are AWESOME! I have asked so many people how to do this and no one could offer successful advise or instruction. Thank you for being so easy to understand and easy to follow. YOU ROCK!!!

0:35 Opening One Drive 1:02 Saving on PC only 2:00 Remove files from One Drive Recycle Bin 4:01 No longer want to use One Drive

You are the best! I can't believe how simple OneDrive really is! I've been struggling with trying to understand how it works for years and in one simple video, you've made all the pieces of information I've been able to decipher on my own make sense! I will definitely be referring back to this video whenever I need a refresher. Thank you so much for clearing up the jumble that was in my head! 😃

Thank you for this! Having an absolute nightmare with OneDrive right now. Was clearing space in it and my files were disappearing from my desktop too!

This has bothered me for years and my files were always all over the place thanks to one drive. I finally consolidated everything and can find the files I need. Thank you

You have a gift for explaining things clearly. You saved my computer from this one drive cancer.

Thank you this OneDrive storage was stressing me out 👍🏽

Thanks for the clear, methodical and simple explanation. Worked flawlessly.

I've spent two weeks trying to word the problem correctly to have this question answered. Found your video and was delighted to have my problem fixed. Thank you for the warning us about unlinking your PC from OneDrive and backing up your files. I decided not to do that. However, I have moved my files to my computer and emptied the recycle bin on OneDrive. Just over-joyed. Thanks again. 💕 ~*Shana

You explain everything perfectly. Keep up the good work :)

thank you so much! i wanted to keep my old art on my computer for memories sake but not keep them forever in the cloud. i got really frustrated with it but you made everything really clear. thank you!!

Thank you! I used Onedrive to move items from old pc to new, but it filled up straight away with everything and took over my desktop, lol. Perfect solution!

Thank you ! You saved my Documents ! One drive blocked my email and my computer because I exceeded the size, but I never wanted to store my docs on one drive! I sent myself a test email, I received it in return that the file is full and impossible to receive it! Mind-blowing! Thank you Greetings from France !

I am so glad I found this video, and you, Leo! I am going to bookmark your site and refer to it often.

This was perfect. Accidentally installed 22gb of songs onto one drive and it filled the storage and screwed everything up. This helped so much Thanks

This video answered my original question and also provided how to unlink the onedrive! Thank you!

This helps alot. This garbage program had enabled itself without my permision and was copying my pc's files to it for so damn long so glad to have it gone thanks!

Thank you so much! I was trying to get a folder with a bunch of videos out of onedrive. I couldn't figure it out until now!

One Drive Duplicates everything in your Documents of the "C" Drive and then takes up Harddrive space decreasing your Storage on your Computer.

Very informative. Just the information I was looking for. Thank you very much.

Many thanks Leo, i was coming close to giving my laptop flying lessons.

I love the way you are explaining. Amazingly calm and comprehensible. Thank you very much.

this has been giving me a ton of trouble, thank you so much for the solution!! it feels really shady that there isn't a more intuitive option, everything in onedrive feels clunky and convoluted. i wasn't even aware until recently that the things i was saving weren't saved directly to my pc, and the only thing that made it clear were the storage errors and the constant insistence that the only way to get more space was to buy more onedrive storage (which i by no means have a real need for, i have more than enough space on my pc). again, thank you!

Thank you very much. I did not understand the relationship between onedrive and my computer, so I deleted files off onedrive. THANK GOD for BACKUPS !

Thank you. This is very helpful information, even two years after it was posted.

What a great explanation!! Thanks, Leo!!

Great way of explaining . not only helpful, super helpful. thanks

Oh my god. I had a intense problem with onedrive for 6 months! You fixed it

the only person that made this work, thanks.

Really appreciate this. As I am trying to get file structure organized.

Thank you very much. You explained it in the best way possible.

Thanks so much for this and keeping it short and to the point. It was driving me round the bend till I came across your video.

Thanks for the information Leo. Have a wonderful holiday season.

Thank you so much -- so helpful! I find One Drive very invasive. I was appalled to find out that if you delete something from it, it disappears from your computer and all other devices! I prefer to pick and choose what gets saved to OneDrive.

Thank you so much for these videos! I am a One Drive newbie and this is super helpful!

THANK YOU! I have been using Windows since Windows '93. I have been out of the look since around the launch of Windows 10, and I didn't pay much attention to OneDrive at the time. About five months ago I got my current machine and files have been syncing to OneDrive on their own. I have been trying to free up space on my OneDrive but kept deleting them from being accessed on my laptop afterward. I didn't realize Microsoft made a distinction between the 'pictures' and 'documents' folders under 'This PC' and the user's folders listed under C:/

Really great and helpful, easy to understand tutorial! Thank you.

This is the best of the best one drive video ever.

my brother was on my laptop and put my sims on one drive as u could imagine- that was a lot of storage ty!!

Double thumbs up!!! VERY helpful video 😀

hello! Thank you Leo ..Now I have free my one drive. Thank you so much!

HOW DO I MOVE DESKTOP FOLDER IF IT SYNCED IT TO ONE DRIVE PLEASE HELP

Another One Drive amazing video Leo. Thank you !!!!

Thank you for your service, everything I saw just kept switching to to pictures under "This PC", where in my case, the pictures originated from. With this I just tried the actual Local Disk user and it worked.

great explanation! One drive drives me crazy ;)

Great info, much appreciated !

Thanks for the video. Like an idiot, I did not realize the files were being uploaded.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, YOU ARE A LEGEND

Thank you so much for making this video. It was easy to follow and easy for me to remove stuff from onedrive and place it only on my laptop.

Thanks grandpa, This is helpful. This is the thing I'm looking for, because I'm having trouble with file saving.

Great help, THX Leo !

Hi Leo, I have another problem with OneDrive. Today, I just mistakenly clicked YES to back up my Documents folder in my PC to my OneDrive, which I thought the system would allow me to choose which file, but it happened to be all the files in my Documents folder. The problem is, once I did that, there is no turning back, which I tried many times to unsync OneDrive, unlink it as well as to stop back up the folder. What happened was, all my files in the Document folder on my PC disappeared too. It seems that OneDrive has removed all my files from the PC to the OneDrive folder and never allows me to bring them back to my PC. I hope you could do a video or may be explain here on how to solve this problem.

Why would anyone think that deleting from online BACKUPS would mean I want to delete the main files. Backups are for backups, not for the main files.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH! YOU ROCK!

A follow up video on what to do after removing OneDrive would be great. Like; How to change the file paths for your programs when saving Pictures, Documents etc. For example in Office programs such as word, It will continue to save to the one drive folder still on your PC. Whereas most users would like to have everything saved and routed to the default locations on the PC. One Drive is a nightmare and is a disgusting irritating bug rooted deep into windows and I hate it. I hate that windows is like this. I never asked or gave explicate permission to OneDrive to re route my destination paths for everything. At this point after removing one drive and uninstalling it on my PC, app don't work cause it can't find the paths it used to find. Learning how to create a new path is a real pain. Thanks for you video.

Thank you so much Leo!

Thank You so much for this! I just got Windows 11 and onedrive immediately filled up and put red X's on my PC on every video photo and document I have, and constantly popping up "Buy the upgrade! Buy the upgrade!" so annoying. The only thing I want it for is sometimes it's easier to share a pic with someone through there

Appreciate Leo for amazing advise

Plain and simple. Thanks

Hi Leo, thanks for this video, a question, on my PC the Macros in Word that I record (automated shortcuts for different things that require many steps) disappear suddenly and often, I followed instructions on line how to save and back up but still that continues to happen, do you have an advice on how to save, back up and reinstall macros in Word. Thanks in advance, Paul

Thanks Sir! Very helpful!

Thanks a lot. You were a big help Sir much appreciated.

I need to free space. I CUT and PASTE a couple big folders from my explorer, to a diffeent fodler entirely. but onedirve is redownloading them aghain and reeing no space! WHat is going wrong? NOw I have 850 GB in my windows onedrive flder but it is reporting online drive as having almost 1 TB. I want to clean up and delete eveything from online onedrive cloud that is not sitting inside myt local onedrive folder. Any way? My onedirve windows folder has all the file I want, and onine cloud onedribe for some reason has alot more.

Hello. For some reason my computer started opening up Onedrive whenever I would plug in my phone to download photos to the PC. It seems to have taken over. I am not computer savvy. I thought I deleted Onedrive when I found it in the Uninstall list but it keeps coming on when I plug my phone to my PC. I don't want to use Onedrive at all yet I can not find the Icon anywhere in my taskbar or in the list of Apps. It automatically starts downloading my photos. Does clicking cancel completely stop it? Thanks.

Wow ! That was the best how-to video I've seen on the Internet. So well presented. Thank you sir. I used to lookup solutions on the ask Leo website from the time it started. Glad you are on you tube now !!

Leo always talks sense.

You are my 2021 pc savior! It's pestering me how this one drive icon keeps appearing it is full and that i can't easily open files without that app poppin up.

Thanks for the well thought out video and description! I'm still having trouble knowing whether or not deleting photos from OneDrive is also going to delete it from various locations on my phone and or computer. If I delete OneDrive from my phone does that secure the photos that are inside of my Samsung Galaxy gallery ? I currently have sync turned off in the gallery but I don't know if that protects the images that are within. I tried following the directions and right clicking on the OneDrive icon but it said that it could not connect to the server and that there was a problem.

It's outrageous that private files are automatically updated to Microsoft's cloud without your permission.

Thank you so much, I’m trying to download the sims, you saved me!!!

Thank you very much for this helpfull information !

Im trying to stop syncing desktop, documents, email attachments, music and pictures so i go to this process, right click on onedrive icon - settings- backup tab- manage folder backup- click stop backup in desktop and then all Folder, Icons get delete on my desktop , account tab/ choose folder - unselect all folder and again files on desktop gets deleted. So i go to each file on my desktop including software icons and i right click/ always keep on this device and i do the same process again and still gets deleted. Do you know what else i can tried. I want to know how to stop syncing but not deleting the files on my desktop. I also notice that when i create a new folder and green dot keeps next to the folders and even on the microsoft edge icon that gets delete when i do the process explain above. Only way to keep files and icon this by unlinking onedrive account i can create a new folder but when i link onedrive again gets a green dot next to it and i do the whole process again and it gets delete. I just want to link one folder to onedrive and not my desktop. Can you help? Thank You in advance.

Thank you for the video!

Very helpful. Ty!

I don't understand: You have two 'Document' folders - one is INSIDE the OneDrive folder, and the other one is the *normal* "Document" folder - that you claim has nothing to do with OneDrive. But when you (in Windows Explorer) click on the path to this *normal* folder, it is also in a subfolder of OneDrive! (In this path, it says OneDrive just below the username.) Please explain.

Don't you just wish for the 'good old days', when the Operating System for your PC, came with a Users Manual, that listed all the various commands ?

thank you sm this really helped!

I accidently made almost every file one drive. how do i put files back to pc. is it the same process. can i move an entire file back to c: drive?

If we dont use the Vault, is there any way to get rid of? I dont use it so I would like to delete or hide this folder to clean the list, but if I just delete it, it reappears

May I know how to delete from onedrive but not move to recycle bin in PC. I have delete the file from onedrive, then the file move to both recycle bin in PC and onedrive. But when I permanently delete from onedrive recycle bin, but in PC recycle bin still got the file. How is it ?

4:27 NOTHING is showing in my one drive folder but when I go to open documents it shows they are saving to one drive. How the hell? AND if I try to open one drive it says I have to "set it up.". So how does it save there if it's not set up AND i do not have a one drive icon and so what the hell?

I have an SSD that is full and a 1T HDD that is 90% empty. When I try to move the files e.g. "pictures" I get a message that I cannot do that because "there is a folder in the same location that can't be redirected." I'm sure this has something to do with OneDrive. If you know anything about this your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hi Leo, let’s say I have empty my one drive recycle bin, that means the files are permanently deleted, but I encountered on one thing is that, I saw there is option called restore one drive, I see file there to restore, but what if wanted delete file there as well??

I'm at my wits end with Onedrive! I run Adobe Lightroom, and Windows 11. I imported my camera files to my Laptop 'Pictures' folder, and did not understand that Onedrive was syncing this folder to the cloud. I have struck a problem with Onedrive - it is stuck on syncing 2 files. The toolbar icon, when hovered over, says 'Onedrive - Personal Processing 2 changes'. In the meantime I am not able to make changes e.g to file names in Lightroom. The syncing process has made the files currently inaccessible. After striking problems with Onedrive earlier, I tried unlinking my laptop. Then all my photos in the Explorer directory on my laptop displayed a brown box on their corner. What does that mean? Meanwhile Onedrive still has not finished processing the 2 files. What now?

Sir, thank you for your help, that was great

I bought a new computer and was moving files and folders over from an external hard drive. I kept getting annoying pop-ups telling me I'm filling up One Drive, until the final one that said it's 101% full and I can no longer sync or save data. That freaked me out but now I see it's nothing to do with my latop, just the OneDrive. I never asked to use One Drive, heck I didn't even know what it was. I found I could stop using it but when I clicked on it, it gave me a warning that made me wonder if what's stored there will be deleted. It would be nice if they actually asked us first if we wanted it and what we actually want to put in the cloud, Thank you for your video. I've been searching for days trying to find out what's what and your video explains the whole process very well. I still have a qburning uestion though. Mine says I have 239 sync issues. After watching your video, I clicked to see what was in it and there are so many folders affected with maybe one file each with a X on them. From my point of view, it would be a monumental task to get those files back one by one. Unless you have a better option, although I dread doing it, I can stop the association like you direced, (I do not want anything to do with OneDrive) and then move all 700 gigs of data over to the new laptop again. This, along with many admin issues and my computer forcing me to sign up with MS before I could even download the Chrome browser had me ready to pack it up and return it. I've never had such a hard time settng up a new computer and I've been using them since 1998. I have been Googling for everything which is non-existant in the computer manual and that really has me upset that I've already wasted a week of my time. I'd appreciate any adivce you have to offer.

I have two windows set up side by side so I can clearly see the two destination paths. One says "this PC>Documents" and the other says "OneDrive>Documents" but when i go to move the specific folder (Electronic Arts) from the one drive to the PC, it says "the destination folder is the same as the source folder" so I am confused and don't know what to do.

Thank you so much!

Is it possible to not sync the documents folder altogether? Many pc games use a "My Games" folder mandatorily located in "Documents" to store logs, savegames and other stuff. This stuff is ever-increasing in size and because the path for the folder is predetermined I cannot just move the "My Games" one in another position, otherwise the games won't find it anymore and therefore would crash or something.

So I have a Onedrive folder on my HD which is shared with my Onedrive folder in the imaginary fluffy cloud. Suppose I wanted to encrypt the folder on the HD would that encrypt the cloud folder too or would Onedrive assume this is an updated folder and delete the previous version or treat it as a new folder, therefore, syncing everything again?

@Ask Leo. Leo, my computer says my locally saved files/ documents are actually saved on one drive instead of my PC. Would copying those files into an external SSD hard drive prevent those files from being deleted on my computer if I deleted them from one drive online? Currently if I were to un sync one drive I am not able to access my locally saved computer files since they were saved on my one drive. However I was able to copy the same files from my external hard drive an access them that way. Is there a way to save my local files in to my pc and not have on one drive without copying a new file in to my external SSD This came about because my university had our one drive accounts reduced from 1tb to 20gb which means I am over now, so I am trying to reduce my storage by actually removing my supposedly local files from being saved synced into one drive which is about 20.4gb The problem seems to be that the default location of my saved files/ documents is one drive so I ended up having my document file linked to one drive so I had two, one in my computer and one in my one drive. 😢

My PC is ruined I already deleted ...every time I turn my computer on one drive and cloud starts downloading my directories and settings and duplicating everything to where it doesn't work any longer .... I'm starting new with only local storage rn after this mishap to fix that

My On Drive says it is full and I want to save most of my files on my externas hard drive so this video was very helpful.

Someone help me please I have Android one drive 400 family pics and videos were stored there And never backed up! Today I hit the remove cached documents options in settings thinking it would just clear the cache but all my stuff is gone please help me how can I find and restore the cached documents I removed

Thanks for this video so simple and clear. I have now removed a bulk of the data from the one drive freeing up space. If I decide to now unlink one drive with files still existing in it - will it remove those files permanently?