Why is OneDrive so terrible?

Anonymous
2024-03-30T14:40:28+00:00

Why would MS think that anyone would want the entire contents of their personal hard drive to be uploaded to a cloud? And further, why would it make sense to delete the local files if someone deleted them from the cloud? In what world does this make sense. It is a poorly designed system and it's a huge violation of privacy of your customers. I have nearly lost all my files because I "deleted" them from OneDrive. I guess I stupidly thought that my local files were safe, as I did not try to delete them. OneDrive, in its ineptitude, decided for me that since I didn't want them on some server somewhere, that I must not need them at all.

Please move to an opt-in model instead of the current opt-out model. And upon opting in, there should be a tutorial of the functionality of the software. A tutorial that an idiot can understand. And it should default to sharing a single folder, not the entirety of a computer.

If it was designed this way to artificially increase "usage" of the terrible software, you did a great job. But you increased usage to impress whoever at the cost of your customers' happiness and at the cost of their privacy. As a basic rule, people don't like their personal possessions (including data) being taken without their knowledge or consent. If you are going to steal our data anyway, at least be sneakier about it.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-18T06:11:13+00:00

    One drive is the most unintuitive, intrusive piece of absolute garbage "backup" software you can imagine.

    I have saved files to my desktop on my PC.

    One drive backs up those files To the cloud. (Or so any reasonable person would assume).

    I no longer want these files backed up as my One drive is full, so I go through and remove them from my "backup" on One Drive.

    Excellent, now I seem to have space to use the One drive for something else.

    I go back to my desktop to finalise and organise the files I had saved to my desktop.

    I CANT FIND THE FILES AND MY DESKTOP IS COMPLETELY RUINES BECAUSE ONE DRIVE DEEMED THE ENTIRE THING AS ITS OWN DOMAIN.

    ABSOLUTE LOAD OF GARBAGE, INTRUSIVE, HIGHLY UNINTUITIVE AND WORST OF ALL, HAS A HUGE POTENTIAL FOR DESTRUCTION OF DATA.

    DO NOT USE ONE DRIVE. IT HAS A FAR HIGHER CHANCE OF DESTROYING YOUR DATA OR MOVING IT WITHOUT USER INPUT AT ALL.

    THIS DOES THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT ANY REASONABLE PERSON WOULD EXPECT OF SUCH A PROGRAM.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-04-22T14:04:40+00:00

    Yep , you summed it up !

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-04-30T05:55:12+00:00

    Please let me borrow your sludge hammer when you're finished with it. OneDrive is the worst thing EVER! πŸ–•πŸΏπŸ–•πŸΏ OneDrive and Microlimp too!πŸ–•πŸΏπŸ–•πŸΏπŸ–•πŸΏ

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-05-14T21:33:43+00:00

    The main problem with OneDrive is its glacial speed. I worked on a file at 530am, now I am one the road its now 7:30am and it still hasn't synched to this computer, with OneDrive sitting there dumb & stupid telling me that all files are synched (and yes I am connected to the internet).

    I will admit this time frame is rare but 10mins is common but total unacceptable.

    And this BS about workflows & multiple people working on a file in the cloud. I have the words "synchronisation problem" burned into my screen

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-05-15T07:17:29+00:00

    My team uses software that writes many hundreds of files whilst "building" an output. Once you see the output, you might spot an error and need to rebuild the output a minute later. Since Windows 11 pushes you to put everything under Documents, which is synced to OneDrive by default, naturally the useless OneDrive can't keep up and and the whole thing goes wrong very quickly. Consequently, we have gone back to the 1990s, with all our work arranged inside a C:\WORK folder! We can properly sync/backup that folder at a time of our choosing, using the software of our choice. Everything works nicely, and our backup is fully controllable. OneDrive is nothing but a danger to people's work and creativity.

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