"The folder you tried to unselect contains the windows documents folder, which is an important folder in windows and is currently pointed to Onedrive"

You do not understand the problem Craig. Windows is identifying Onedrive as the Documents folder and in my case it renamed Onedrive Documents. I renamed the folder back to Onedrive and to no avail it is still identified as Documents when I try to uncheck a folder from being synced. I unlinked Onedrive and reset it up but still when I uncheck a folder an error occurs that the sync cannot be unchecked because the folder is in the Windows Document folder. Which it is not. It is in the Onedrive folder. It has been this way since 3/1/2024 when I was forced to do a reinstall after a Windows Update broke Windows 11. An update caused a nest of Blue Screens. By the way System Restore is broken. I read that Microsoft fired the Quality Control Department and is now making the customer quality control. If I am right I am lodging a complaint. I do not have time to be constantly fixing Windows!!!

"The folder you tried to unselect contains the windows desktop/documents/pictures folder, which is an important folder in windows and is currently pointed to Onedrive"

Weird thing is the message is the wrong way around,

"The folder you tried to unselect is contained by the windows desktop/documents/pictures folder, which is an important folder in windows and is currently pointed to Onedrive"

Which doesn't mean much in any case, the actual situation is the files and folders in question are being synchronised, so no touchies. Easy way around it without stopping the backup is to make a copy of the folder somewhere outside of desktop/documents/pictures and login to OneDrive in the browser to delete it from desktop/documents/pictures linked there. Then copy the folder back in to its original location to find OneDrive not syncing it any more.

HTH

Ok, I definitely dont see myself doing that (manually and repeatedly fixing what Microsoft engineers messed up).

Why pay for an annual service if it's going to be this difficult to use?

The backend engineers need to figure out what they did in the beginning of September and find a way to get it back to a workable state.

Using the "Free up space" feature seems to be the only way to keep files from filling up your PC's storage space at the present time.

Or you can remove files from the OneDrive folder on your computer. I don't know what else you can do.

If you remove the folder from the Documents folder but keep it in OneDrive then you can uncheck it.

Better yet, you could name the folder "Inactive projects" and instead of unchecking it just right click it and select "Free up space".

But if you use the Free up space you won't need to remove the folder from the Documents folder.