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
    2020-10-19T22:46:33+00:00

    Thanks for replying. Unfortunately, the only things in recycling were the few duplicates I'd noticed before I realised the scale of the problem. The main user system folders like Documents, Pictures, Desktop have just vanished and turned up in OneDrive. All the shortcuts to locations like D:user/documents have been magically changed to point to their new OneDrive locations. 

    It feels as if Microsoft have decided that I'm going to base my active files on the cloud whether I like it or not.

    I've got a support contract so I'm going to get them to sort it out. I've spent days checking I've only got one of everything. 

    Let's hope Microsoft don't just reset it again!

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-10-16T19:40:26+00:00

    I was able to find them!  BUT there are a lot of duplicates with various dates!!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-10-16T17:35:46+00:00

    Thanks for the reply. I had started deleting the duplicates that the backup was creating (i.e. * - Copy.*), until I realised there were already about 10, 000 of them! These are the only entries in the Recycling, (local or OneDrive).

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-10-16T17:22:26+00:00

    Did you check your recycling bin? For some reason something similar happened to me and it kicked all my hard drive files there. Every time my computer would update it would resync onedrive (which i had turned off) and do the same thing. After that kept happening i just uninstalled onedrive completely.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-10-16T17:11:02+00:00

    I have the same problem today, 16 Oct 2020. I was working on files until yesterday evening. Today, the "My Pictures" and "Documents" folders have just disappeared, and my PC's "Desktop" folder seems to be based in OneDrive. Also, OneDrive backup is currently copying everything into OneDrive with the suffix " - Copy". I can't stop it - only pause, now.  It's still got over 15,000 files to go. To be honest, I have absolutely no idea what it's doing, so I don't want to do anything drastic like disconnecting OneDrive, in case that makes things worse. I also can't see any of the updated files from last night, so I seem to have lost all that work, too. Until now, I have been using my D drive for work in progress and then copying updates into the OneDrive Folder (which had been within my Documents folder). It may be okay for Microsoft's IT guys with super-fast broadband to stick everything into the cloud, but they need to understand that there are other parts of the world where broadband is slower and/or more temperamental. I purposely bought a desktop with a big hard drive for this purpose and paid for OneDrive to use as a backup.

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