OneDrive Files Disappeared

I keep getting messages to say that I have removed files to the recycle bin - which is not the case - so am having to restore everything each time. Why is this happening and, more important, how do I stop it before I lose something important?

My guess is that it's one of two issues:

1. This is being caused by a bug in OneDrive. Contact OneDrive support via e-mail to see if they can help. When my files were deleted, it seemed to be associated with numerous OneDrive update operations, as if OneDrive couldn't keep up and got confused. For the past year I've minimized my updates, and haven't lost any files.
2. Someone has hacked your account and is deleting your files. If that's the case, the only way around this is to change your Microsoft password.

It would be nice if OneDrive could keep a log of when a file was deleted, and the URL, or computer Id, of the person who deleted it. That way you'd have more evidence of who deleted the file(s).

Hello all,

I am with OneDrive and SharePoint Online escalations.

Firstly, I would like to let everyone on this post know that I personally relate to losing years of files that have been accumulated and many of which had sentimental value.

I have read this entire community discussion. The pattern I see here is that files have mysteriously disappeared and many people have empty folders and sub-folders. A genuine question would be: "Why leave folders and sub-folders and remove the content?" "Why have my files mysteriously disappeared?"

If you are going to perform what's listed here, please read this entire post first.

I may not have specific answers as many users will have customized OneDrive settings and configurations. There are many variables that come to play in missing or overwritten files. Let's first examine complexity:

OneDrive default folder location is paramount; if you reset, remove, unlink, re-add, "stop using OneDrive", be sure to either zip that entire folder up, or better, create a new folder with a new name and copy all content over to it beforehand. To verify it copied everything over, compare folder sizes and particularly, the total number of files, the total number of folders. To add extra integrity, zip that folder into a zip archive to assure file and folder structure remain intact. This may seem excessive and will take up disk space (depending on how many GB you have, if you are like me, 100 GB for a local back up of OneDrive is a LOT of disk space, but in the long run, it's worth temporarily sacrificing disk space to preserve your files).

After that has been done, (it may have taken a while, but again, it's worth preserving your data), perform a clean OneDrive set up. Exit OneDrive completely and be sure it's really exited by checking task manager. Empty the cloud versions, empty the local versions until both cloud and local OneDrive folder is 0 bytes.

How many devices are setup to access your OneDrive files?

If you have OneDrive set up on multiple devices, choose one device to perform all of these steps on --and do NOT attempt to continue this on another one of your devices --to avoid synchronization conflicts.

Allow some time for your other devices to synchronize until they all match up. I.E. they all show as empty. If there are folders remaining on your tablet but on the primary device they are gone, wait longer or perform a manual sync on the device with folders remaining on it. Allow OneDrive to sync itself up on all of the devices.

Take into consideration whether you have a file or folder open on another computer, say your work PC or mobile phone. If you do, don't perform this reset, unlink, or a remove and re-add your account. You are working to have the same information on every device, and on this step, they all need to reflect as empty. Sign out of all but one OneDrive session if you need to.

After you are positive all information is reflecting correctly on each device or web session, you can then perform your next step of reset, re-link, re-add your OneDrive account. Again perform this on one device and make that the primary device for this step. You may want to exercise additional caution and sign out of all sessions and have only one session open --the primary device.

Next, start OneDrive and go through the set up process. After it says "You're all set", navigate to the locally created OneDrive folder. It should be empty, if it's not, you missed something along the way (or if it's just a few folders OneDrive automatically creates, it's fine, you are still in good shape). If the OneDrive folder under C:\Users\Username\OneDrive has a radical name like OneDrive~ or something odd looking appended to it, don't begin moving your files back over to it; instead, start over with the setup process: Unlink OneDrive, Exit OneDrive, make sure it's not listed under the processes in Task Manager. Delete both folders; the oddly named OneDrive folder and the OneDrive folder. Reboot. Start OneDrive and go through the setup process as stated above.

Navigate to the OneDrive folder through C:\Users..... directory and COPY (don't move) the files over to the OneDrive folder. OneDrive might notify you "Processing Changes". Allow it to run its course. Check the properties of the OneDrive folder (C:\Users...) and make sure the number of files and the number of folders equals the folder properties of the source folder. If there are a few extra folders/files, check whether OneDrive added some of the automatically created folders like "Notebooks". If so, that's no big deal and ignore it.

Next, go to your other devices and allow them to synchronize changes. This may take time but again, it's worth preserving your data. Verify number of files and folders are the same across all of your devices.

You are set!

Moving, Copying, Cutting and Pasting within OneDrive.

If you are like me, you will perform folder maintenance from time to time. Some stuff you will want to move off of OneDrive, others, you will want to organize. Please note that moving, deleting, rearranging, cutting, copying and pasting are actions that can be the cause of losing information or winding up with multiple copies of one file or folder. If you are going to overhaul your OneDrive folders, do this from onedevice. Allow all of those changes to synchronize to all of your devices when you have completed your organization. Synchronization is an often used term that tells us, "let OneDrive do it's thing"; yes, that's true, it also means that you should verify everything has fully synchronized across devices and in the web UI. Why should you be responsible for checking? Because everyone accesses the internet differently. You could be on a mobile hotspot connection and it suddenly cuts out without you knowing, and reconnects. You could lose your signal momentarily, your ISP may hiccup, someone on your network is playing an online game and using up a lot of the bandwidth while OneDrive is trying to synchronize....etc, etc. 

I will follow up a post to this article to go into more depth on Moving, Copying, Pasting, Synchronizing and the mechanisms at work in the way we process the OD service in general.

UPDATE: 12-18-19

We currently have a case open with our product development group where the folders not files, are created; if you have OneDrive version 19.123.0624.0002; try downgrading or upgrading. I will update this community thread when the fix is pushed out.

I have files missing that somehow had been 'deleted' over thirty days ago. What is this? how do i recover these precious files? it's like they were deleted off my computer without even notifying me..... FIX THIS NOW..

Same thing is happening to me. I hope Microsoft and not just one person there is looking at this issue seriously.

Microsoft should be made to compensate for the lost data and hours spent by their users trying to recover. This is cost to us, and if Microsoft merely pays lip service to it with responses but not with specific resolution for each and every one of the affected users, then Bill Gates can talk about philanthropy all he wants, but he is being irresponsible here.

Working on it. I'm having to dig through the recycling bin to try to find the affected files and restore them. One thing I'm discovering going through the recycle bin is that some entire project folders have been deleted as well. The deleted date in the recycling bin is actually a week later than the folder date modified, which makes no sense, but as long as I can recover the files, it doesn't matter. The restore is slow-going. It seems to take the recycle bin quite a long time to restore certain files, and I'm probably restoring some redundant or outdated files, just in case. To be continued...