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
    2020-05-11T23:16:46+00:00

    I have the same issue, however I have had this same problem with Dropbox before I switched to OneDrive. A huge portion of my Macintosh HD disk is taken up by greyed out "other" storage, and when you click on "manage storage", all those files that are OneDrive only are showing up. If you delete them, you gain that space, but if you then put them on OneDrive again, even if purely online, your available space decreases again by that amount. Clearly the Mac is counting these fields towards storage, and the frustrating thing about that is that you run out of space. It's not just cosmetic as the responses here have tried to suggest. I find myself constantly having to empty my recycling because I'm working with a free space of just 3 GB by now.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-05-05T06:57:16+00:00

    I reported this issue to Microsoft Japan Support Team last week.

    And they said they would escalate this issue without other details.

    I don't think Microsoft will resolve this soon but it really impact using OneDrive.

    Dropbox and iCloud have no this kind of this issue.

    So I think this is the Microsoft's problem.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-05-04T17:01:59+00:00

    Just clarifying. It looks like an issue with MacOS, not specifically MacBooks. I'm having the same issue on an iMac.

    I don't see Apple changing their operating system to fix a Microsoft problem. Unfortunately I think Microsoft will have to address this, if it is addressed at all.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-05-04T10:46:06+00:00

    I got some help from Microsoft and found that I needed the latest version of OneDrive on my MacBook which shows in Finder which files /folders are using disk space vs cloud (little cloud icons). Right click for 'Get Info' confirms cloud based OneDrive files are using zero disk space.

    The problem occurs in Macbook Storage Management which recognises OneDrive files as using space when they are not. So don't go deleting files yet until you've got the new OneDrive for MacBook and do some checking. I tried to post a query on Apple support but it didn't go through today. Will try tomorrow. 

    I hope that's helpful.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-05-04T10:33:56+00:00

    I have raised this issue last December 2019. Since then many people have flagged they have the similar issue. But Microsoft is not responding anymore, or so it seems.

    Too bad, as for me One Drive is becoming totally useless now. I consider to quit my subscription with Microsoft and use Dropbox or iCloud instead. This works very fine on Catalina.

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