How to recover my lost files

Hi, NANCY CABEZAS

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

When “Documents” suddenly looks empty and Word/Excel can’t open files, the most common reason is that Windows has redirected your Documents folder into OneDrive (so the local view looks blank), or the files are in OneDrive but not fully downloaded or are in the Recycle Bin/version history.

Here are some suggestions you can try:

Check OneDrive on the web first (this confirms whether the files still exist).

Go to OneDrive online and use search, then open Recycle bin to restore anything deleted, because OneDrive often keeps recoverable copies even when the PC view is empty.

Use “Restore your OneDrive” or Version History if folders are there but files look missing.

If many files disappeared or were overwritten, OneDrive can roll your files back to an earlier state (within its restore window), and Version History can bring back older versions of individual files.

Look in the local OneDrive folder on the PC (your files may have moved, not vanished).

In File Explorer, check C:\Users<your name>\OneDrive\Documents because “folder backup / Known Folder Move” can redirect Documents into OneDrive, making the original Documents folder appear empty.

If you want Documents to be local again, stop OneDrive folder backup, then move files back.

In OneDrive settings, turn off backup for Documents, then unlink the PC if needed, because unlinking/turning off backup is what resets the folder targeting and stops the constant re-redirect behavior people run into.

If Word/Excel still won’t open files, check access/permissions and repair Office.

This helps when the files are present but Windows thinks you don’t have rights to open them, or Office components are damaged after a sync/account change.

Hope this helps. Feel free to get back if you need further assistance.

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Has anyone got a Classs Action Lawsuit on these thieving, sneaky tactics. After an update, that snuck past me, all my videos from Public/Videos disappeared, and they moved my User/Videos to User/Onedrive/Videos, and I did not have Onedrive backup on. This is why no one trust or likes Microsoft. If only all developers would stop creating Microsoft Exclusive Software, I would kick Microsoft. I run Linux and Ubuntu Servers on all but one Laptop, and I have had nothing but issues with this one Laptop, that has all their junk woven into it. I did recently watch a video that showed Linux has now become stable on mobile, and man oh man, I sure hope our main editing software can be available for Linux. Huge fan of what Microsoft did with VS code, yet they do the same dang thing with it. Dang right I am upset, I lost 2 months of videos, that were RAW, great content videos, and I dang sure did not place my User/Video directory inside of Onedrive folder. For that matter, most of the time I am running Vscode in WSL, and only have windows up, to get vscode running, and my Video editing software. PLEASE SAVE US LINUX