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

You will find OneDrive in the system tray if it's not visible on the taskbar. In Settings, go to Personalization > Taskbar and open the "Other system tray icons" section. You'll find an option to make OneDrive visible. Then you do need to run OneDrive in order to turn it fully off.

In the OneDrive settings, under Account, choose "Unlink this PC."

Quit OneDrive if you didn't already.

Disable OneDrive in the startup apps in Task Manager if not already done.

Uninstall OneDrive.

All that aside, you might want to take a step back and think dispassionately about OneDrive. It's a cloud storage facility that has uses.

OneDrive installs with Windows, or you can install it if it's somehow been previously uninstalled. There aren't "about a dozen ways" it gets there.

When you install Windows with a MS account, OneDrive grabs the Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders and you can't simply move them where you want them.

1. Open OneDrive using the system tray icon.
2. Click the gear icon and choose Settings.
3. Under "Sync and Backup" turn off everything you can find that can be turned off.
4. Under Account, choose "Unlink this PC."
5. Accept the warning.
6. Click on the system tray icon and choose Quit OneDrive.

After unlinking the PC, you will find that Desktop, Documents, and Pictures are no longer shown as being inside the OneDrive folder. This is the key that unlocks the dungeon door...

The "Location" tab in the Desktop, Documents and Pictures folder properties will now function as expected, and you can move them to wherever you prefer. (I put the Documents and Pictures folders on separate drives from the system drive. How you arrange things is up to you.)

Once you have things the way you want them, restart the system.

Open OneDrive and relink the PC. OneDrive will now be its own folder, although you will find it has a "Docs_OneDrive" folder and a Pictures folder that will try very hard to be your friend, but

This is just insane -- the implementation should should not have been to hijack the files and force people to use OneDrive by default.

All the tips and workarounds and the Microsoft Support documents have wrong information. Nothing seems to work in Windows 11 to "unhook" OneDrive

files should be going to c:\users\username

not

c:\users\onedrive\username

Naming items in OneDrive as Desktop, Documents, Pictures, etc is very misleading and causes tremendous confusion to users. They have no idea where their documents are stored. Microsoft should never have done that-- they should have labeled them as Onedrive-Desktop, Onedrive-Documents, Onedrive-Pictures. That would have been real clear. They should have left the original Documents, Desktop and Pictures alone.

Now with

the backup stopped

and the device unlinked from the computer

Files are lost (they are not in the Onedrive\username\documents folder

File explorer still shows Documents pointing to OneDrive but the folder is empty

This is just sheer madness.

This does not work at all.

Documents in File Explorer still point to username\oneddrive\docuemnts

Windows 11 just does not want to let go of Onedrive

We lost all the documents that were in that onedrive\documents folder

as well as pictures that were in the onedrive\pictures folder

It will not let us resurrect the original username\pictures folder in File explroer

Why is this so complicated?

Stop[ed the backup

unlinked device

That should have been the end of that story and File Explorer should have gone to being normal without OneDrive.

Get this Microsoft ---people who want to save to OneDrive can do so at their peril. They can learn to upload what they want into the cloud. It should not be the default.