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

I completely second this complaint. MS making this default is a complete breach of privacy and trust. FFS, it's one thing to track behaviours with cookies, but to put all of my personal data and IP into the cloud is absolutely authoritarian.

I don't give a flying rats tail for any assurances by MS that my data is safe in their cloud. Everyone is hackable, and the most important prevention method is to NOT PUT EVERYTHING IN THE CLOUD!!..

Not too mention, I am not going to trust a private corporate, driven by profit motive, and beyond the scope of government regulation, to unilaterally decide on my behalf that I should trust MS!..

This is a very clear violation of privacy.

Thank you Louie TG.

I have been setting up a new Windows 11 laptop and had just purchased Microsoft 365. Part way through the setup, I noticed the OneDrive icon in the taskbar and the unwanted uploading of many GB of my hard drive files to the cloud.

I am in a remote northern location and have a limited data plan. I normally use OneDrive for sharing larger files, not as backup or as a primary location for my data.

Thankfully I was able to follow your instructions to unlink from OneDrive just before my ISP cut off my service at my data limit. I now will have to wait nearly a month before using any significant amount of data - not good.

MS should at the very least set the default to requiring signing into OneDrive before uploading or downloading.

Not everyone has the luxury of fibre and unlimited data plans!

Thank you so much. I will try it. In Win 10 could do it. But in Win 11 so far even though I click my pc it still goes to One Drive.

One Drive is full, and I keep getting pop up to either buy more data or upgrade to Office 365. I have Office 2019 and soon won't be able to use it since I didn't purchase it from MS. I purchased it from Stapels in 2020.

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.

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.