"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
    2023-11-18T01:51:14+00:00

    Windows did an update on my pc, and what do you expect the whole onedrive settings are messed up again. They automaticly added all folders in documents again to onedrive. Onedrive filled up its 5 gb, and then once the 5gb is filled up, you cant deselect anything or make any changes. Really messed up

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  2. Craig Long 18,630 Reputation points
    2023-11-19T00:43:31+00:00

    Windows did an update on my pc, and what do you expect the whole onedrive settings are messed up again. They automaticly added all folders in documents again to onedrive. Onedrive filled up its 5 gb, and then once the 5gb is filled up, you cant deselect anything or make any changes. Really messed up

    Microsoft wants you to become a paying subscriber for sure. (I'm trying to say this nicely)

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-11-19T04:37:13+00:00

    I doubt it. I've been a paying customer since 2018 and Microsoft still screwed me over.

    If you pay for your subscription, they won't use the money to hire competent engineers. They'll just use it to add useless new features (like force you to tell them why you're closing OneDrive) or to break existing features that were working fine (like what we're experiencing now).

    Don't become a paying subscriber if you've managed to avoid it so far.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-11-22T18:23:01+00:00

    Microsoft wants you to become a paying subscriber for sure. (I'm trying to say this nicely)

    This is happening with OneDrive for business - it's bundled with sharepoint and teams and such. Not sure how much more of a paying customer we can become as an organization.

    This has suddenly become a huge issue - I have a new machine I need to migrate to, and after signing in to onedrive, it is forcing me to download everything from onedrive, and I still get the "Can't stop syncing folder" message when selecting the folders I want.

    Why is this an issue? Because my onedrive is filled with about 1TB of files and my local machine only has a 475GB drive.

    Either I'm supposed to let my local drive fill up and leave my machine unusable, or I have to stop the sync and only access files through the browser.

    In what world is this acceptable?

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  5. Craig Long 18,630 Reputation points
    2023-11-22T21:24:28+00:00

    Folders that are not selected at "Choose folders" cannot download from the online OneDrive and sync to your PC. Certain folders that are checked cannot be unchecked since they are not allowed to be removed from your PC.

    For some reason that I cannot explain, you can no longer uncheck any folders within the Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos folders. You must use the Files-On-Demand "Free up space" option to keep those files and folders from making local copies to your PC.

    So in File Explorer right-click and select "Free up space" on folders that you cannot uncheck.

    You can stop syncing your local folders to OneDrive at the OneDrive Settings > Sync and backup > Manage backup. But then you are not backing up these locations which is the whole idea of using OneDrive.

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