Onedrive is horrible, invasive and impossible

Anonymous
2023-02-09T16:57:08+00:00

Without my knowledge or consent, when I plugged in my new Dell computer and signed in to my MS 365 account, all my files were put in a cloud including copies of driver's licenses, passports, and family medical records. I thought okay, I'll just take them out of the cloud, which as we now understand also deletes them from the desktop.

I have gone back and forth about a dozen times in emails with MS techs. Some of their advice caused all of my files to disappear from my computer. I asked repeatedly if there is a way to choose what to backup and got no answer from MS. I've had a tech at my home twice, and he finds there is no way to manually backup or choose what files to backup. We decided to quit onedrive. I now have duplicates of files and paths still pointing to onedrive, so I will have to get more help with this. Research that I have been working on for years has been convoluted and possibly lost due to multiple duplicates.

I've been working from home for over 30 years and have never had problems like this. I'm used to figuring out solutions, but this is beyond absurd. I simply bought a new computer to replace my 10-year-old machine and am now in this nightmare.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2023-11-01T06:34:15+00:00

Thanks for this, VJA142. I wish I had seen these before I turned on my new PC. After watching the video you suggested and Leo's The Problem with OneDrive Backup, I'm less confused and beginning to wrap my head around it. I don't use the "Documents" folder and have individual folders on my desktop where I save things, but I get the gist.

Good suggestion too about automatic updates. I have always paused updates for several weeks and do one computer at a time to manage the nasty surprises.

Hi Enerak, glad you found Leo’s YouTube videos Re OneDrive helpful, I know I sure did, the light finally came on for me. He also has a web page (ask Leo.com) where he posts articles with links to his videos. The replies to his OneDrive articles are like this forum, full of people (including some IT types) who are all experiencing issues with OneDrive.

What’s crazy is that we all PAID for this Microsoft software, with many of us having invested in new computer hardware, only to turn on our PC’s and have our digital lives literally scrambled and yanked inside out.

I’m glad we’ve had this forum to vent & share info!

Thanks, Vikki

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-09-22T19:29:24+00:00

    This week's Windows 11 problem was that file explorer would not search my portable drive. But it did not say that, it just said nothing was found. I had to click on the file icon, click the three dots, click options, click search, and click include system directories. Why would someone not want search to work on a portable drive? It makes no sense just like onedrive and everything else MS does.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-09-22T22:04:26+00:00

    I got help from a Microsoft representative. He spent about 3 hours over 2 days moving all my files back out of the one drive and onto my pc. I bought a 2tb SSD for my pc to make sure I had enough space.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-09-22T22:05:31+00:00

    Get in touch with Microsoft and they should be able help u with remote access to your pc

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-09-24T16:05:32+00:00

    I wont appear to me using OneDrive in PT-BR has no option like that, also to make the "download all files" the connection speed of download and upload wont pass 1.3 mb/s even with the speed limit off, and the only way it would let me surpass it is if I could edit the limit speed over the 125kb/s that this **** app is lock on and wont let me edit.

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