One drive online files take space on Macbook

same problem here

I have about 37gb on my OneDrive. According to the information in the onedrive folder, only 57.4 MB are locally on my macbook pro (first screenshot below). But in the macOS storage manager, it appears as if the 37GB is locally (taking up storage space) - second screenshot (macos shows that the files that are taking up more space locally are the files that are on my OneDrive and are not locally on the macbook pro). Locally I have close to 0MB of documents. The 37GB shown in the macos storage manager is the OneDrive files that shouldn't be counted as "taking up space"

Hi,

To back up files, you could just check OneDrive website, where all files uploaded successfully are shown. As I mentioned before, the known display issue won't affect normal work of Mac and OneDrive, but you could send feedback to Apple to let them notice this weird behaviour. And IMO unlinking may not make sense to this problem, since all files in OneDrive have been online only.

Best regards,

Oliver

Hi Mirjam,

Thanks for the updates, and we have received the info you provided.

1. Those folders having online-only status doesn't mean all files in that folder have the same status, otherwise, it won't display 38.7 GB on the disk.
2. Files in OneDrive are 172GB, more than 121GB(the total capacity of Macintosh HD), so I think those files on-demand are not likely to take up local storage.

We did a test on Mojave with a OneDrive account that contains 20GB files, after signing in OneDrive on that Mac, the total available storage didn't change, although it displays 20GB when we navigate to Manage storage page, as we discussed before, it's an identification issue of Mac Finder.

Anyway, to help determine the cause of the problem, I suggest you select and right-click the OneDrive client folder->Free up space. Then all files in the folder would be stored online-only, and this is also to save the space for upgrading MacOS.

If files with online-only icon still take up the local storage, we could only suggest you unlink OneDrive(click OneDrive icon on the ribbon->More->Preferences->Account->Unlink ) then delete those files, after upgrading to Catalina, you could sign in OneDrive again.

Best regards,

Oliver

Dear Oliver,

First of all Happy New Year! Due to the holidays it took me a while to get back on this.

I tried to free up space as you suggested, now all my files are only online. 

When I check my storage says now 63,48 GB available of 121,12 GB - so it seems to has freed up some space. But under Documents it still states I am using 180,38 GB space. And it shows big files which are only online according to One Drive. So it still looks weird. 

At least I managed to do the upgrade to Catalina, so that is something. But even after the upgrade is is still showing the same. 

I really do not know what else to try, apart from unlinking my One Drive completely. Can I make a back-up somewhere before I do this? I do not want to loose all my files through a mistake.

thanks again

Mirjam

Hi Mirjam,

Thanks for the updates, and we have received the info you provided.

1. Those folders having online-only status doesn't mean all files in that folder have the same status, otherwise, it won't display 38.7 GB on the disk.
2. Files in OneDrive are 172GB, more than 121GB(the total capacity of Macintosh HD), so I think those files on-demand are not likely to take up local storage.

We did a test on Mojave with a OneDrive account that contains 20GB files, after signing in OneDrive on that Mac, the total available storage didn't change, although it displays 20GB when we navigate to Manage storage page, as we discussed before, it's an identification issue of Mac Finder.

Anyway, to help determine the cause of the problem, I suggest you select and right-click the OneDrive client folder->Free up space. Then all files in the folder would be stored online-only, and this is also to save the space for upgrading MacOS.

If files with online-only icon still take up the local storage, we could only suggest you unlink OneDrive(click OneDrive icon on the ribbon->More->Preferences->Account->Unlink ) then delete those files, after upgrading to Catalina, you could sign in OneDrive again.

Best regards,

Oliver

Hi Mirjam,

Thanks for the updates. We did some tests on that but without luck, we could not reproduce the issue you met. Could you tell me how much storage taken by OneDrive is shown in the Manage Storage dialog if you click File Browser? ( Apple->About this Mac->Storage->Manage->File Browser)

I have initiated PM invitation for you, and you could share some screenshots via this link.

Since you mentioned you need to keep some files on the device, we will help you narrow down the issue cause first, before try unlinking OneDrive or Free up storage space.

We appreciate your understanding and patience: )

Best regards,

Oliver

Hi Oliver,

thanks for looking into this. I will send the screenshots through the private link.

The file browser as above reflects 172,3 GB for One Drive. I will include this in a screenshot.

Thanks

Mirjam