Onedrive took over my picture folder

Hello dalidali52

Thank you for participating in the Microsoft Community, I am Skypper G. I am an independent advisor, let me help you with this

It looks like you have the backup folder feature enabled.

Please copy your picture, and documents folder to a location where OneDrive is not able to synchronize like downloads or another location in C:

see:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/back....),and%20then%20select%20Start%20backup.

Hello Skipper,

Thanks for replying. Unfortunately, now it has already removed my picts and backed up a lot of the ones in the cloud, so even if I were to move the folder I don't have them any longer.

I checked about moving the folder to downloads, but it does not work. I tried music and it said that if I did that I would not be able to restore the default location. Also, the current location is this C:\Users\dalic\OneDrive\Pictures It looks like onedrive has highjacked my folder, and I have no clue how it happened either. Does this mean that if you have onedrive then it takes possession of certain folders? It does not look like I can change it to C:\Users\dalic\Pictures because it said there is another one already there. I wanted to see if the backups were checked and low and behold they were, not by me though, one drive did it all by itself. Also, you cannot go into settings unless you restart syncing.

Where is the place where I can stop that? just tell onedrive not to back up anything unless I put it in it? By the way, following your link above, I never saw stop backup anywhere. That screenshot must be old, I think Microsoft did something devious with onedrive and now it operates all on its own.

Probably now there is no way to go back, undo all the mess right? I will have to download the original pictures and store them again I suppose.

Really not cool at all.

Well thanks for trying to help.

ciao

Hello dalidali52

Thank you for participating in the Microsoft Community, I am Skypper G. I am an independent advisor, let me help you with this

It looks like you have the backup folder feature enabled.

Please copy your picture, and documents folder to a location where OneDrive is not able to synchronize like downloads or another location in C:

see:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/back....),and%20then%20select%20Start%20backup.

The OneDrive folder should be at C:\Users\username\OneDrive. So leave it there.

I would highly suggest that you not move system folders on your own. The only folders that back up to OneDrive are Documents, Pictures, and Desktop folders. To back these up you simply use the OneDrive PC Folder Backup mentioned in the first reply. Don't try to move these folders yourself. Don't try to rename these system folders either.

If you want to backup downloads, music, videos, etc. I would suggest creating new folders for these files and manually place them in the OneDrive folder. I do it this way myself so that I can easily "refresh" Windows 10 on my PC when the operating system gets corrupted. Refreshing your PC puts all the system folders back where they were originally anyway.

Where is the place where I can stop that? just tell onedrive not to back up anything unless I put it in it? By the way, following your link above, I never saw stop backup anywhere.

Correct the error shown in that notification then you will see the "Stop backup" for your Desktop folder at the OneDrive PC Folder Backup window.

Also, the current location is this C:\Users\dalic\OneDrive\Pictures

Great! That is where it belongs when backed up to OneDrive. To stop the backup use the OneDrive PC Folder Backup then move your files back.

It does not look like I can change it to C:\Users\dalic\Pictures because it said there is another one already there.

That is true. Use the "Stop backup" button in the OneDrive PC Folder Backup. After you stop the backup then just move only your files back instead of moving the folder.