One drive online files take space on Macbook

Hi Mirjam,

Thanks for posting here.

To confirm, you have enabledFiles On-Demand feature and most of the files in OneDrive have the first status(Online-only), right?

We have tested on Catalina, and the result matches your description. I think it is an identification issue between Mac Storage calculation and Files On-Demand. It most likely counts 172.298.589.945 bytes(172GB) into the whole storage, but if you right-click those files->info, it will show 0 bytes on disk, so we don't need to worry that the storage is being exceeded.

However, given the situation, you could also click the OneDrive icon on the upper-right corner and click more, then click Send Feedback and let OneDrive product team notice this behaviour, as Microsoft is committed to continuously improving your experience with our products.

If I misunderstand your meaning or you have any experience to share, please feel free to post back.

Have a nice day: )

Best regards,

Oliver

    Same issue，I am very sure that the cloud files on onedrive are taking up my Mac local disk, although they are displayed in the cloud. It's not a calculation error or a display error of finder.

    I guess the working principle of onedrive for Mac is to store all files in the Mac and hide the files that are not downloaded to the local. As a result, if I unlink my onedrive to my Mac, this part of hidden files will become "other" and continue to occupy my storage space unless I reset my OSX.

    I have also try to turn off the Files On-Demand feature, then these original file will still become "other" and continue to occupy my storage space, even if I have emptied the wastebasket.

    You can see the picture above. The sum of all the folder sizes（1.04GB+7.85GB+1.13GB+361.2MB+167MB+54MB+7.2MB+2.7MB+1.1MB+893KB） in the document type is totally different from the actual result（28.91）!

Could you please repair this problem?

Hi Mirjam,

Thanks for posting here.

To confirm, you have enabledFiles On-Demand feature and most of the files in OneDrive have the first status(Online-only), right?

We have tested on Catalina, and the result matches your description. I think it is an identification issue between Mac Storage calculation and Files On-Demand. It most likely counts 172.298.589.945 bytes(172GB) into the whole storage, but if you right-click those files->info, it will show 0 bytes on disk, so we don't need to worry that the storage is being exceeded.

However, given the situation, you could also click the OneDrive icon on the upper-right corner and click more, then click Send Feedback and let OneDrive product team notice this behaviour, as Microsoft is committed to continuously improving your experience with our products.

If I misunderstand your meaning or you have any experience to share, please feel free to post back.

Have a nice day: )

Best regards,

Oliver

Dear Oliver,

thanks for your reply. But I am not sure if this helps me.

I have indeed most of my files as online-only files (similar to the first status in your screenshot), yet my Mac storage is really full with documents. And I have no other documents stored on it. Also if I click in the Mac Storage screen on Manage, I see documents on my Mac that should be online stored only in One Drive.

I am still on Mojave as I cannot upgrade my Mac to Catalina due to lack of storage! 

I am happy to share some screenshots if this helps - but prefer to do that in a private chat as this contains personal data.

Please advise,

thanks

Mirjam

At the very least, Microsoft owes us an update on the status of fixing this issue. It's been 2 months since the initial post was made. 

Very unhappy office 365 customer. Dropbox has figured it out, why can't Microsoft?

Hello,

Has this issue been resolved? I recently purchased a new Mac and have the same issue. All of my OneDrive files are 'online only' however when I look at 'About this mac' -> storage -> documents, it shows that all my 'online only' files are taking up space on the hard drive of my mac.  Thanks!

AJ