How Do I Get Windows 11 to Stop Saving Everything To OneDrive Folder Location?

Hi Idris,

I do have not set and account for OneDrive yet and am reluctant to do so well it has my Computers Documents and Pictures directories located in the c:\Users<me>\OneDrive.

I have tried to change the Location (in the folder properties tab) back to the non-OneDrive location using Restore Default, yet this does not work. It refuses to shift the location no matter what I try.

I expect that as soon as I provide an account for OneDrive it will sync all those Documents and Pictures. I do not want this to happen, ever. The documents I have on my computer are sensitive client details that must be legally retained under my complete control at all times (if they leave my control I am required to provide a report to various legal agencies and bodies).

So, the bottom line is I must have absolute control from the very beginning as to what is and isn't synced to OneDrive. I am happy to use it if I know with absolute certainty that it will only ever sync files from a single specific directory. If Microsoft was serious about security it would provide a system level, yet computer owner (me) controllable, account for OneDrive that by default Denys access to everything until I say otherwise.

So how do I establish absolute control of what OneDrive will sync before **** turning it on?

Cheers,

Alan C.

PS: I provided an account for OneDrive and it did everything I feared it would. After this I stripped it back to only what I hope will be a single folder that is synced. Fixing up the mess and getting Documents, Pictures, and Desktop back to their proper locations was a royal pain. Then of course deleting everything in OneDrive that must not be there.

Microsoft has little respect for personal, and professional and legal obligations, with regard to users' security. They're like that creepy laborer you hire to fix your kitchen up or something and they go off and rummage around in your linens draw and home office taking copies of everything. It is long past time we had some serious enforced regulations about this kind of behavior. All these companies are the same, not just Microsoft, creeping around where they have no business.

I don't think a restatement of the problem helps.

We all know what's happening - per MS marketing materials..

The issue (and apologies for terseness) is that defaulting cloud, irrespective of your definitions, means data is being copied from your laptop to another location.

Irrespective of MS intentions it's a significant data and privacy breach. UAC isn't even triggered when your data starts to flow to onedrive.

As the owner of my data, and being an informed consumer, I do not wish my data to be uploaded anywhere without my express and explicit action to do so - to a location of my choosing.

To have this occur invisibly and by default, without any indications or control, is a mad mad breach of privacy.

Ok for anyone else struggling with this, I have some additional steps and finally worked. If you run into the problem trying to change the location of Documents and Pictures with the error popup that the location exists or can't move for whatever reason, go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

and

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

and every **** place you see onedrive in the path value, delete that part of the path so it is pointing directly to the Documents, Pictures, etc folder immediately under your user directory. Restart

Now if you click on documents or pictures in the quick access, it might say something like an app isn't associated with this (because for some reason microsoft made the absurd decision to have some indirect weird **** application system between you and your directories). Do the Location tab thing again and select your documents and pictures folders directly under your user directory and hit apply. If you don't have a Documents there, make one, also copy all your stuff from the onedrive pictures and onedrive documents into the ones in the sane location. At this point I was able to click on the original Documents and Pictures quick access links and they would resolve to the correct locations.

Remove onedrive if you in desperation reinstalled it to try to unlink ****, and delete that onedrive folder after you copied your stuff to the sane location.

This is a disgusting situation and Microsoft needs to make it very clear and a single toggle switch in settings or account to completely undo this convoluted ****.

That's not correct. I turned off all syncing to OneDrive, and yet files are still automatically saved to a onedrive folder in my harddrive c:/.

I did not have this problem with my prior windows version. I am using Windows 11 today.

I'm trying to do this right now on windows 11. It worked for Desktop, but Documents and pictures give me "The folder can't be moved here. Can't move the folder because there is a folder in the same location that can't be redirected. Access is denied".

When I try to path to said intended location: C:\Users\myUserDir\Documents.............. It just happily takes me to C:\Users\myUserDir\OneDrive\Documents............ Which we have ALL established should have someone in jail for life!

Anyone figured out this part yet? I love how all the microsoft answers to this issue try to be as vague as possible. Like how blatantly do you have to be shoving edge and onedrive down our throats for us to all move to linux lol. If you didn't have the best gaming platform I would have been gone a decade ago. So insanely frustrating.