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
    2020-11-14T07:06:06+00:00

    DropBox has had this same issue and they finally solved it with a setting change through their webportal. One drive will need to do the same thing. Somehow Finder does not correctly interpret the file sizes.  With the DB fix, now I cant see the filesize online prior to downloading. DB must have figured that this would then be a workaround for Finder.  C'mon Microsoft, fix this please.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-11-11T14:48:44+00:00

    I've been experiencing this same issue and my MacBook keeps telling me that my system disc is almost full even though I have 37GB of data set to "on demand"?

    Even checking disc space in TERMINAL still shows the disk is almost 99% full !!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-11-11T03:41:23+00:00

    All,

    I saw one poster offered a quasi/workaround solution.  Go into Help & Settings --> Preferences; then click on the 'Account' tab - here you'll see an option to 'Choose Folders' for what is available to see on the Mac.

    If you deselect the folders that have lots of contents, then the 'About This Mac' storage bar chart will show it correctly.

    Obviously just a workaround because I don't see a solution to be able to:

    1. See those folders on your Mac AND
    2. Have the 'About This Mac' storage bar show properly what is actually on your Mac's SSD/HDD

    The other workaround is to ignore the bar and simply use the statement above showing X GB available of Y GB.

    Cheers,

    Nate

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-11-06T17:01:01+00:00

    I have the same issue,

    I don't understand why it has not been resolved nearly a year after it was reported.

    Has anyone successfully removed OneDrive and freed up space without a MacOS reinstall?

    Unlinking the account shows the 'hidden' space that OneDrive was using. Nearly 120GBs in my case.

    Update:

    I decided to try and clear down all of the hidden used 'update' space following unlinking the account.

    I installed the MacPaw CleanMyMac X software to try and do this.

    I went though all the clean up steps that that product offers, which helped me free up a lot of disk space, but it did not clear down the space left as 'other' after unlinking one drive.

    So I rebooted. After reboot all this 'other' space disappeared.

    Now this does not solve the issue of OneDrive using up more space, but at least it is possible to uninstall it and get that space back, you just need to reboot after unlinking - you don't need CleanMyMax X for that.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-10-27T22:23:22+00:00

    Same problem- fix it Microsoft you amateurs.

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