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
    2025-03-08T14:25:35+00:00

    I had the same issue. What it boils down to, is OneDrive is just too difficult to use. One is better off spending a few dollars on a USB backup hard drive to backup important files to. This PC I am currently using has many file issues do to the deleting of file(s) syncing with OneDrive. Using any cloud is just too much bother. Using a USB backup hard drive can be plugged into any PC. I cannot tell you how many times my backup hard drive saved my **** from lost files.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-27T16:58:46+00:00

    The point is that One Drive presents itself as an automatic backup option when in fact it is useless. Apparently it is not supposed to be used directly, but rather we are supposed to work on our local computers and then rely on it to be synced. The problem is that it refuses to sync photos, and if it can't back up photos it can't back up anything.
    Not being able to use it directly pretty much defeats the usefulness of shared folders.

    Perhaps I have misunderstood, but there is so much jargon in the instructions that it is pretty much nonfunctional.

    In retrospect, it is best that local files can't be synced since that action apparently removes them from the local drive. Or something.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-12-06T12:03:02+00:00

    Microsoft prompts to use One drive and so I added my documents folder. Then after syncing I was over my free 5GB limit and so I deleted the documents folder from One drive...... It deleted the actual documents folder from my PC....

    So, I've lost all my documents from my PC. If you view One drive as a backup tool then it's mode of operation really is a complete piece of poop! The engineer who designed this should be fired!

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-11-20T08:22:59+00:00

    Exactly my question since I've made the huge mistake of trying to use it for the first time yesterday. Incredibly confusing, ultimately awful.

    I recently upgraded my laptop and switched to MS 365 and it kept pushing OneDrive on me. As I'm working on a document that I'd like to be "backed-up" frequently, I thought "nice, I'll give this a go".

    What a nightmare. I spent an entire day trying to understand what on earth was happening, why my files were disappearing from my PC, trying to figure out where the auto-save function on Word was actually saving the file (freaked out a bit when I noticed it wasn't saving changes on the SAME document I was making them on, but created a NEW file EVERY TIME I closed and opened the document, which I couldn't immediately locate). I've finally figured out I could at least select what to sync (!), thought "ok, this should work..."

    Except, today I created a test file to see if the sync works... OneDrive claims that it is synced... I click directly on the file and it opens on onedrive.live... but is nowhere to be found when I go to my cloud account.

    Granted, it can just be claimed all of this is "normal" and that *I* just couldn't figure it out...

    ...which is exactly the problem.

    I'm done.

    What a nightmare.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-11-05T19:51:41+00:00

    What they ought to have done is create a software with a user interface that actually allow the user to pick what services they want. Don't gaslight us dude. This software sucks, the whole idea of making your data disappear into the cloud with little to no user interaction is stupid. It's about money and getting your information.

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