"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
    2023-10-13T16:18:44+00:00

    Well, they closed my ticket. They said they didn't do anything wrong so there's nothing to fix. This is what I sent when they asked for feedback:

    "That is not a satisfactory response. Mistakes happen, but you could have responded to it better by taking responsibility, apologizing, compensating customers and taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.  None of that happened.Instead, your agent kept denying that there was no new issue, despite ample evidence from the message board with an influx of complaints around the same date.Once it was no longer deniable, the agent then tried to put the blame on customers, and refused to admit that a Microsoft engineer f***ed it up for hundreds of not thousands of customers. Now we are the ones who have to waste our time sorting out an issue caused by your engineers' incompetence and negligence.If you cannot afford to compensate us for your mismanagement then the least you can do is use that money towards hiring competent engineers and managers so that this does not happen again.I will strongly reconsider renewing my OneDrive subscription, as its engineers are no longer reliable and managers are no longer willing to take accountability."

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-10-20T18:45:13+00:00

    Posting here because I am also encountering this issue and it is extremely frustrating

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-11-02T09:31:24+00:00

    "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

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-11-07T22:31:41+00:00

    Same issue - this is extremely concerning. Thankfully I have some spare space on my drive to move things around, but if I did not, I would be severly compromised, especially with the fact that my machine has restricted removable media.

    I frequently move folders to online only since I no longer need them locally and rely upon this selective mechanism to free up space.

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  5. Craig Long 18,630 Reputation points
    2023-11-08T03:59:41+00:00

    "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,

    Yes, I agree.

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