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

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.

All folders have been selected by default - even when uninstalling and reinstalling Onedrive, I cannot uncheck any of the folders while configuring the initial sync. On my old machine, I was able to uncheck them prior to this issue, and thankfully, that setting has persisted, so those folders are not being synced. However, on my new machine, those are not grandfathered in and I am forced to download all, hence the issue presented.

I can't find anywhere in the contextual menu an option for "Free up space". I believe Files on Demand has been disabled by the org admin. Which is why I have been reliant upon the feature of selecting/deselecting folders.

Files on Demand is also missing from the advanced section of Sync and backup, as descibed in this doc

Do you have "Manage backup" on the "Sync and backup" tab? If you stop the sync I'm told that you can uncheck folders. I don't want to stop syncing so I haven't tried doing that. I'm not sure what will happen when stopping the sync and unchecking folders.

I have a scroll bar on "Manage backup" and I see you don't have one. Perhaps your administrator has something to do with this?

See this video: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-on-onedrive-backup-4e44ceab-bcdf-4d17-9ae0-6f00f6080adb

See this video: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-on-onedrive-backup-4e44ceab-bcdf-4d17-9ae0-6f00f6080adb

You can move your OneDrive folder to a larger drive and even to an external drive. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-the-location-of-your-onedrive-folder-f386fb81-1461-40a7-be2c-712676b2c4ae

What I don't understand is why Microsoft engineers keep inventing new problems when there isn't one, and randomly deciding to break things that were working fine for years. OneDrive has been working normally since 2018 for me and that all stopped in September.

Dont the engineers have any real issues to fix?

• The junk mail filter is a disgrace - hundreds of spam come through and sometimes a legitimate email ends up in there for some reason and you have to wade through the spam to find it or it gets deleted.
• There's now a random new button you need to click to 'select all' (before you just hover and the button appears under your mouse).

In the end it's us who end up having to do the Microsoft techs' jobs for them and using our own - *unpaid* - time fixing their screwups.

Why are we paying for this subscription again?