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

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.

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 ****.

Thanks for the fix! I've been racking my head for several days over OneDrive directed folders reappearing in Windows 11 on two Dell replacement laptops. FINALLY GONE and files are saved in the right places without being redirected to duplicated folders in OneDrive.

Where would I enter the info above to delete the Onedrive stuff? I'm a simple computer user and hate everything that is on my laptop since I bought it last week. I do nothing with Office, Edge, or OneDrive. I use Google for everything. I thought I had properly unlinked and uninstalled onedrive, then copied everything from my external hard drive over to simple documents and photos folders. Which didn't SEEM to have any connection with one drive, but upon trying to save something, I saw that it was all buried under a OneDrive folder again. Which I deleted, and lost everything. It's not in my recycling bin.

Furious and not super computer literate.

Those are registry paths. You have to open regedit and enter the paths in the field at the top and hit enter.