OneDrive deleted local files and started syncing old files !

Anonymous
2020-04-03T18:14:49+00:00

Hi,

OneDrive has suddenly deleted files in local folders that was not synced with OneDrive.

I installed OneDrive a while ago on my work computer and copied a lot of different files including Visual Studio projects to the OneDriver folder.

Later found out that OneDrive was causing problems for the Visual Studio projects and even though I had marked all folders to also be kept locally it wasn't working correctly.

So I moved all of the Visual Studio projects and several other folders back to the original location to make sure I had them locally.

Time goes by, and today when I turn on my computer I notice a lot of old files have been synced to my Desktop which is synced using OneDrive.

Then I also realize that the files that I moved out of the OneDrive synced folders have suddenly appeared again and old versions from back when I initially copied the folders are being synced again.

When I look at the local folder that is NOT synced with OneDrive, many of the files are gone - just like that - GONE.

There is no way to get the files back and all my recent work is lost.

I have looked in the online Recycle Bin and the Second stage recycle bin and none of the files are there (since they were never in OneDrive but only locally).

It seems like OneDrive has reverted the old actions of when I moved the files to the local folder and now old versions from back then are being synced.

This is completely unacceptable.

I have lost all my recent work.

How do I get my local files that has now been deleted by OneDrive but which was not synced with OneDrive back?

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-04-18T08:16:39+00:00

    When I stopped backing up files from OneDrive it DELETED my local content. I had to stop synching and then RESTORE files from the cloud back-up onto my computer. this took AGES. OneDrive is SERIOUSLY broken and unusable at this point.

    Users NEED to be able to determine what the source of truth is for files and folders and need to be able to determine if specific files and folders are backed up TO the cloud automatically and determine if a file should restore FROM the cloud. 

    The current implentation of OneDrive is broken and useless without these features. 

    Someone please tell me how I can disable OneDrive without it removing files from my local computer.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-04-09T16:14:49+00:00

    As someone in IT, I couldn't believe this was happening and right before my eyes. I was playing a game that autosaves. I haven't played the games in two days. Started it up today, and it crashed after 4 hours of game play. Started the game back up and all the autosaves from today were reverted back to two days ago. **** Microsoft? What kind of **** is this? There's no option to remove My Documents from OneDrive backup! None! Uninstalled OneDrive and will send a note out to never use OneDrive in our office.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-04-07T07:37:32+00:00

    Seems like im not the only one who got the problem, its 2021, window wanted me to use onedrive, i said ye why not. Now i lost 20 hours of progress cause i worked offline yesterday, then back online today. Onedrive sync older files from 2 days ago and replace the newer one. My restore previous version on my PC couldnt work, older version from onedrive couldnt find the version from yesterday. Yup i **** up...... 
    And for all the devs reply above, NO IT DIDNT ASK TO DELETE ANY FILES OR REPLACE ANY FILES, its just start up the computer and BANG, all your files are now from 2 days ago, and onedrive says those files are updated 1 minute ago. Thats it !!

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-04-07T01:56:21+00:00

    I have been having the exact same problem. For example, when I went to C:\Users\User, the Desktop folder wasnt there and the Documents folder lost its icon and I was able to rename it. (You normally cant rename the Documents folder). So I opened the Run... dialog (Windows key + R), and I typed in "C:\Users\User\Desktop", and it said it was unavailable. So I went to This PC\Documents and I went to its properties. I said that the location was C:\Users\User\OneDrive\Documents instead of C:\Users\User\Documents. This has been really annoying and I really dont know why OneDrive does this. 

    Hope this makes you understand my situation. Thank you.

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-03-31T17:57:57+00:00

    Unbelievable.... I spend 10+ hours working on a local document over the past couple days. Saved it last night on my hard drive. Woke up this morning and one-drive had synched the old file in the cloud to my hard drive and DELETED my local copy with no notice or backup that I can find. 

    THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE MICROSOFT!!! ****

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