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
    2021-12-13T16:03:35+00:00

    OneDrive is a mess. I've stopped using it due to loss of data, and strange, unreliable syncing. I use Dropbox instead, exclusively. Support for OneDrive is also lacking, to put it kindly. I regret having used the product.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-12-12T20:44:20+00:00

    We have similar problems. We do changes in files in our local OneDrive directory, they are uploaded to the OneDrive Cloud, minutes thereafter the old versions of the files are downloaded and the changes are overwritten, and not a trace of the changed file is anywhere. First I thought it only happened when I tagged photos and complained to Microsoft (Case #:1027860865, unresolved), but now we have seen that it also happens with Excel files. As a result, we now have to turn off OneDrive syncing completely.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-11-30T08:14:01+00:00

    I have moved to Google Drive as well and it works great.

    Unfortunately I am forced to use OneDrive for work and just had another issue with a lot of old files got synced again and I now have hundreds of old files mixed in between new files. It is a huge mess.

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-11-28T01:04:59+00:00

    Everything in my OneDrive has NOT been updated in a year even though I am constantly syncing!

    I advise anyone STOP using OneDrive as it is a serious data integrity risk. I have recently moved all my files to Google Drive, hopefully I can move away from issues that cause me days to fix.

    Recently I moved a very important folder from my local computer into OneDrive folder.

    There happened to be some problem with syncing, so I unlinked my computer and re-linked it.

    When the syncing finished, the ENTIRE FOLDER disappeared with all its content (more than 100GB of video) on my local computer. It wasn't in my recycle bin, and not in the OneDrive recycle bin too. I simply have no way to retrieve it.

    What's worse, OneDrive started downloading folders to my folder which I have deleted months ago. All of these folders have the folder structure intact but none have any files.

    This is just ridiculous.

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-11-27T17:55:56+00:00

    The same thing has just happened to me. This is awful. Spent a whole day customising my pc and moving files across and now it's all gone. It's changed my settings to over a year a go. Lost it all. Microsoft need to fix this. It's a major problem.

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