Windows 11 - documents folder is linked to onedrive instead of the pc storage. can't unlink it.

Tom,

At some point it was activated. However, there is a sequence that must be followed in order to unlink OneDrive from your computer. Uninstalling the OneDrive App from your computer will definitely make things worse.

Watch this video to see that sequence. OneDrive resides in the system tray. That is what he was referring to when he said to go inot the settings.

you may find this YouTube video to be helpful

Thanks yes.

I have managed through advice in the forum to make some registry changes so that my documents and pictures are all go to my personal folders, not to OneDrive.

I have then got rid of OneDrive by uninstalling this from my system - I have also deleted MS 365/Office and all files associated with this, I will use Libre Office/Gimp etc. going forward.

I had previously managed to copy most of my documents and pictures to a separate hard drive although some may have been lost because the stupid OneDrive limit was exceeded when Microsoft tampered with the system. I now know how to switch it all back again if a future update tries to revert to the One Drive app.

I have lost a lot of music patches for hardware guitar processors and DAWs - but this is not a professional loss, I am finding some of these files and reinstating some of these one by one.

What a pain - why do Microsoft do this? All the goodwill that could be extracted by providing a great update from Win 10 to Win 11 and they blow it completely by forcing something like this on us.

My system working perfectly now - all photos and documents copied automatically onto my NAS drive now plus a weekly backup.

Thanks again for your help and that of everyone else who responded.

I have just found out (because of a storage full message) that my Documents folder is linked to One Drive which I don't use or want - what on earth gives Microsoft the arrogance to presume I want my files uploaded to their cloud?

I need to get this back - seem all my files are now compromised because advice in this thread is both misleading and factually incorrect. Frankly this behaviour from Microsoft is just a poorly implemented ransomware income generator.

I need a definitive way of getting my personal files back into Documents on my PC and a fool proof way of removing all links to One Drive aso that I can uninstall One Drive and get my PC back - PC is "personal Computer" so please Microsoft if you want to promote cloud computing ask next time.

So I guess the good news for me is that I'm not the only person who has this problem.

I thought I had successfully disabled OneDrive synching when I set up my PC, but now I'm not sure. According to my Windows Backup status under my Account, OneDrive is not synching, which seems to be correct. And if I click on OneDrive in the folder view in File Explorer, I'm prompted to create an account, which would seem to indicate I don't have OneDrive enabled. But if I go into Word, I can open files and save them to a location named OneDrive - Personal without being challenged for a login or password. That location appears to be cloud storage; it's certainly separate and distinct from "This PC." That location has a complete copy of my document file structure, which is concerning if it is really cloud storage. The whole thing is very confusing.