One drive online files take space on Macbook

Anonymous
2019-12-16T05:50:07+00:00

I have One Drive installed on my MacBook.

When right-click on the One Drive icon in my Finder and click “get info” it says under size:

172.298.589.945 bytes (39,5 GB on disk) for 57.162 items.

So the way I interpret this is that only 39,5 GB should take space on my Macbook disk. Which is in line with the documents I store offline on my mac (some pictures and music)

However, when I look at the actual disk space used (I click apple icon on home screen, click “about this mac” and then under Storage tab it shows me that my stored documents use 178,4GB. And with that my Mac storage is almost full.

I have no other documents on my Mac, I keep everything in One Drive or ICloud. Icloud is totally online, no files are offline. And One Drive I have only a few files offline.

So why does it seem to take all my storage nevertheless?

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-08-11T09:16:51+00:00

    Hey Nikola,

    thanks for the nice advise :) if I have no more space left and really need to do that I will turn off files on demand. The problem with this is for me that I have a very big folder structure and really need my directory tree as I need many files "on demand". and I hardly can plan which ones this will be as I have to look up some stuff when it comes up. But as there is perhaps no other possibility to fix this I think this is the best way to go.

    Thanks again and have a nice day :)

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-08-11T07:57:57+00:00

    Hi Max,

    I hope Microsoft will fix this issue, it is very cumbersome to deal with it.

    I have previously posted a solution that have worked for me (a few comments back there is detail description)

    My solution is to not use "files on demand", and instead use "choose folders" and manually select which folders do you want to have in cloud, and which folders do you want to be downloaded to the computer.

    It is much easier to use Time Machine to restore files and apps (as I described previously), so that you don't bother with resetting the one drive and other apps

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-07-14T06:35:11+00:00

    Thanks !! I will try this

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-05-05T09:28:59+00:00

    I have considered getting rid of OneDrive too, but while we (as a family) still need MS Office,  the O365 with its included 1TB storage is convenient, and I also don’t want to pay yet another subscription.

    If it wasn’t for O365 then I’d just use iCloud for all the files.

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-05-05T07:03:18+00:00

    Previously, I reported the issue was solved on my Mac with the Big Sur update.

    And truly, it was. Until one day, without rhyme or reason, it wasn't again.

    But I've solved the issue.

    I reset my Mac to factory conditions, took out a Dropbox subscription and migrated everything from OneDrive to Dropbox.

    Mind you; this didn't go without a hitch. Initially, online files from Dropbox were also taking up hard disk space.

    BUT (and this is crucial): I was able to immediately start a chat with Dropbox support, which referred me to support by e-mail, after which the issue was SOLVED in 3 e-mails over the course of 3 days.

    Meanwhile, over here in Microsoft-land: this thread had been going on for one-and-a-half years (which has been IGNORED by Microsoft), I've been in multiple calls with OneDrive-support and have exhausted e-mailchains with them. Without a solution. Infuriating.

    My recommendation: forget OneDrive. Go to the competition.

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