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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments

158 answers

Sort by: Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2020-10-16T19:31:19+00:00

    Hi Michael,

    I was not able to solve the problem at all.  I went to all the library folders where "other" files are supposed to stored, but I found nothing to help clear it out. Another user above said it had something to do with the disk volumes.  However,  I was not able to get that to work.

    Sorry :-(

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2020-10-21T20:42:42+00:00

    I am having the same issue. Please fix :(

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2020-10-23T13:59:42+00:00

    I have the same issue.  The Mac Storage Manager is calculating that I have more in my documents than my hard drive size.  It seems to be that the manager is calculating the full folder size for OneDrive and SharePoint vs the "On Disk" size

    But if you ignore the colored graph, my "available disk space" is accurate (see image below).  

    First image is pre-OneDrive and Sharepoint (168GB available of 250GB with Documents at 5.38GB)

    After Installing SharePoint and OneDrive shows 166 GB Free of 250GB but documents has jumped to 331GB which isn't possible on a 250GB HardDrive.  If you look at the info for OneDrive and SharePoint they show 154 + 170 GB which explains the 300+ but OnDisk is only 3.8MB plus 4.4MB.  So the 331 GB they are showing in the calculator isn't in fact on my HD (everything is in the cloud and on demand files is turned on).  The OnDisk number increases and decreases as I open files and "free up space" which is correct. 

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2020-10-27T22:23:22+00:00

    Same problem- fix it Microsoft you amateurs.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  5. Anonymous
    2020-10-30T16:45:00+00:00

    This is terrible. We're also seeing this issue too. You do realize that "you dont have to worry because its not actually taking up that space" but IT IS. MacOS will not allow any software to install, or downloads when the storage is full. MacOS is assuming the storage is full. This makes OneDrive completely useless on MacOS because its taking up all that space, it doesnt matter if the files actually exist or not. MACOS ASSUMES THEY DO. It would be better if the files actually existed so you dont have to download them each time if that was the case since the OS already assumes the files are there. Microsoft needs to fix this issue. Dropbox and Google Drive do not have this issue.

    Was this answer helpful?

    3 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments