One drive online files take space on Macbook

Hey Eric,

Its a fellow dutch huy here.

So i have this issue with some of my clients who use a Mac.

I will clarify the exact steps i did:

1. Unlink Onedrive
2. Deleted the local files (which shouldnt be there anyway)
3. Linked Onedrive again and made sure files on demand is turned on.

End result:

Files are still coming back and using local space.
Ive tried the option to "Clear room" (ruimte vrijmaken) multiple times.
Then i identified that the files came from Sharepoint which is linked in Onedrive.
So i deleted the sync between Sharepoint and Onedrive and only used the option to make a shortcut to onedrive.

But still these files will sync and take up local space.

Any advice would be welcome.

PS im not a Mac expert at all.

Hello,

I have spent the last hour or so reviewing the information on this thread. I have a 2019 Macbook Pro and have recently upgraded my iOS to Big Sur. I cannot figure out for the life of me how to keep my files online-only. I was wondering if anyone can be kind enough to assist me.

Thanks so much,

Andrea

Hi Andrea,

Well, as you have by now read; a lot of users have had a technical problem for the past year or so, caused by a bug in OneDrive. For a couple of users and myself, these problems have been solved with the Big Sur update. I can give you instructions for how it *should* work. If it doesn't work, it may mean the bug is still plaguing your setup.

I'll add screenshots to these instructions. Please note that my OneDrive is set to Dutch, I'll do my best to translate the settings to English (although my translation may differ a bit from the actual English-language version of OneDrive).

To configure files on demand:

Click on the OneDrive icon at the top of your screen, then Help & settings at the bottom of the pop-up and lastly Preferences in the menu that appears ('Voorkeuren' in the screenshot, the second option from above).

In the preferences pane, turn Files on demand on.

Now please note, that every time you open a file, you Mac will download the file at that time. If you go to your OneDrive-files in the Finder, you will see a status icon behind the file. It will either be a) synchronizing with the cloud, b) stored in the cloud only or c) downloaded to your Mac.

In order to change the status of a file: in the Finder, secondary click on the file to open the contextual menu  (you can also select multiple or all of your files and folders at once). At the bottom of the menu, you'll find the options to a) share the file, b) Always keep the files on your device or c) Clear space.

Select the latter to keep the file(s) in the cloud, but remove the downloaded version of if on your hard drive. You will need to do this from time to time to clear hard disk space.

I hope this helps and that OneDrive is working correctly for you!

Erik

Hello,

I have spent the last hour or so reviewing the information on this thread. I have a 2019 Macbook Pro and have recently upgraded my iOS to Big Sur. I cannot figure out for the life of me how to keep my files online-only. I was wondering if anyone can be kind enough to assist me.

Thanks so much,

Andrea

Thank you a lot for taking the time to answer my question.

When I have time, I will make also a full factory reset and share the outcome on this thread.

Have a good day.

First thanks a lot for taking the time to share your results.

You suggest that the problem could be solved by resetting the mac, I have already done that a few months ago with Catalina only for the problem to reappear even after big sur upgrade.

So please, could you try to delete some files locally and inspect if the change in size of the folder is registered and tell us the result ?

That would be very helpful because, resetting my mac a second time would be rather painful and this time I want to be sure it is helpful.

Also, if it ever caught the attention of Microsoft software engineers :

Big Sur does not fix the problem.

I have installed Big Sur, but the problem is still there, see attached image.

As you can see, I have made a local copy of one of my folder which is on the cloud, then I deleted some files locally.

After verification, the files were also deleted in the cloud, and the size of the folder on the cloud diminished, however the size of the folder remained the same locally.

I have waited 20 days, expecting that Mac Os could register the change in size but 20 days later the problem is still on.

I've double checked this, as per your request. And on my Mac at least, OneDrive is still working as it should after the steps I described previously and installing Big Sur.

I had a bunch of files in my OneDrive stored locally. Just now, I selected the option to clear space so that all OneDrive files are only stored in the cloud. 

In a couple of minutes time my disk space went from 17,83 GB available to 21,82 GB available. And of course, I did not do anything else while the clear space operation was running.