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

Anonymous
2023-09-06T05:02:28+00:00

When I try to unsync any folder, this error message appears:

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

This is a new thing that started happening over the weekend, as I use OneDrive on a daily basis.

Rebuilding all the folders and subdirectories are not an option since they are time-consuming and there is not enough space on my local drive (which is why I am using OneDrive and turning folders on and off).

Microsoft, please sort this out.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-11-24T19:15:53+00:00

    These are the options I see under Manage backup - not sure what to do here. Most files are under Documents, but I don't want to toggle that, afraid of what might happen.

    Migrating to another drive or external drive is not an option - that's all been locked down.

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  2. Craig Long 18,630 Reputation points
    2023-11-24T22:15:41+00:00

    These are the options I see under Manage backup - not sure what to do here. Most files are under Documents, but I don't want to toggle that, afraid of what might happen.

    Image

    Migrating to another drive or external drive is not an option - that's all been locked down.

    Why does it say "0 KB Backed up"? That's not what mine says. With OneDrive Personal it should say 936.8GB used of 1TB. Not sure I'm much help here since my expertise is in OneDrive Personal, not Business. But you said these files are in the process of downloading, right? So perhaps that's why it says 0 KB has been backed up.


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  3. Anonymous
    2023-11-27T15:45:05+00:00

    I thought that was strange too, this is on my old machine, all the files have been downloaded already and I was able to select the important folders before the "unselect" issue started happening.

    I had to stop onedrive on the new machine because otherwise it would fill up, IT is still trying to figure out a solution for that.

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  4. Craig Long 18,630 Reputation points
    2023-11-27T19:10:07+00:00

    I thought that was strange too, this is on my old machine, all the files have been downloaded already and I was able to select the important folders before the "unselect" issue started happening.

    I had to stop onedrive on the new machine because otherwise it would fill up, IT is still trying to figure out a solution for that.

    Use the Files On-Demand: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sync-files-with-onedrive-files-on-demand-62e8d748-7877-420f-b600-24b56562aa70

    On Windows 11 go to OneDrive Settings > Sync and backup > Advanced settings > Files On-Demand > Free up disk space.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-12-04T20:14:43+00:00

    Hello, if you're seeing "Can't stop syncing folder" in OneDrive, you can try the solutions in this video:

    https://youtu.be/VOYKiLTSh9c

    I hope that helps!

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