Why is OneDrive so terrible?

Despite Microsoft promoting OneDrive as a cloud back up system, OneDrive is not and never was intended to be a back up system. It's an aggressive data capturing system based on Microsoft's attitude of dictating to it's customers - something which appears to be the norm these days.

What the majority of hapless unfortunates who constitute OneDrive's enforced users haven't realised - and this originally included me - is that when OneDrive automatically moves all files to the OneDrive cloud, it is saving those files AS BEING THE ORIGINAL ITEMS. i.e. the originals are NOT stored on your P.C., they are stored in OneDrive - the files on your P.C. are the copies. And there is NO backup. This is the antithesis of a file back-up system. No wonder people are confused given how Microsoft promote this system.

Unfortunately, this arrangement makes it very easy to delete files locally and, unwittingly, have that operation synchronised to the OneDrive cloud which means any files deleted from the local documents folder on your PC will be deleted locally AND from OneDrive (as the ORIGINAL FILES) as it re-syncs. Those files are now GONE. Permanently.

Similarly, if a "master user" (by that I mean a person who has shared a OneDrive file of theirs with another person for work collaboration, or to share family photo's, for example), shares a file with another person from their OneDrive, and that other person deletes a file from the shared OneDrive access, that file will be deleted from OneDrive (as the original), as well as locally on the master users PC if synced. Again, GONE. Permanently.

Once you are aware of this set up, the drawbacks are blindingly obvious. So, WHY, Microsoft?

2p. Using OneDrive on a Mac has become impossible, had an engineer rebuild a M4 mac mini from scratch and the only thing installed was OneDrive - tested and found to - report files were synced when they were not, hang on last file in a directory - requires a restart of the mac, showed wrong icons - eg, shows yet to be downloaded from web but it has, and vice versa. Stops responding randomly and hangs machine when nothing is happening on OneDrive. We are MS Office users and the integration on PC's seems fine - not usable on a mac with docs not showing and deletions not happening.

Hello SH_Quietly_be_better, Welcome to Microsoft Community. I am a Microsoft user just like you, I hope you are well. Sorry for the inconvenience. However, if you have your OneDrive synced to a device and you delete a file in OneDrive, it will delete this file across all synced device. Same is applicable to adding a file to OneDrive, this file will be available on all devices. What you ought to have done was move this file out of your OneDrive folder. I understand your frustration but OneDrive functioned as expected. If you do not wish to sync your device with OneDrive, you can unlink OneDrive from your PC using guidance from Microsoft support article: https://support.microsoft.com/office/f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0 Please let me know if you need more assistance. Give back to the Community, Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below. Warm Regards

I'm sorry, but, if that's the case, Microsoft shouldn't call it a backup!

Syncing is a terrible idea. If you delete a file, photo, video, or document, you lose it for life! I've lost precious photos of my late Brother, never to be seen again. All because I was trying to make space on one drive and not realising that by deleting from Onedrive, it also gets deleted from your PC.

This should be bidirectional, where you can choose where it stays.

Time for a new Backup plan, I think!

Hi Raymond. I can see you mean well, but unfortunately, this type of response from Microsoft techies is typical of the frustrating genre, which is, essentially, to always miss the point and give out the same answer to all-comers, which is as follows :

"Look, you poor sap, you don't understand. This app was designed to be ill thought through and cause users serious problems - why do you think we mis-described it as a back-up resource? What I'm telling you, is that because the app worked exactly as we designed it to, that means it's perfect, and YOU, the user, are the problem - bless your tiny little mind"

err NO!

filled my onedrive without noticing now its using 50% of my cpu and its trying to kill it self