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How to get my documents to show on my computer

Anonymous
2024-05-23T22:29:08+00:00

Onedrive has utterly surprised me. First I ought not to have used it at all. It made me dependent on the cloud when often the cloud was unavailable to me. Some large files were very slow, when normally local access on my solid state drive was instantaneous. Second, it hid my files - and so upset all the work and procedures I was used to. It's fine to have backup on the cloud, but it's absurd not to be able to see your files on your computer. Third, on file explorer Onedrive shows me only a subset of the files that I can clearly see on Onedrive.live.com. There is no possible reason that I can see for this. To see these files on my computer I have to download them - more wasted bandwidth. Fourth I constantly am asked to buy and install it. I already have it and have paid for it. The relentless advertising is ignorant at best. Fifth -- it renamed the files I was using regularly -- how could I know that it would do this. And why would it assume I would understand?

Now I am reduced to finding my files online and backing them up myself so I know where they are. This has been 5 days of wasted messing about with software that should not have done to me what it did.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-05-26T01:57:01+00:00

    By the way - Onedrive clearly says it is a backup. It uses the word backup repeatedly.

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  2. Reported
    Anonymous
    2024-05-26T06:18:48+00:00

    Thanks Craig

    I had stopped using Onedrive. So I didn't have the icon to do the login. I tried your advice. I logged in to Onedrive and then went to the cloud icon and it asked me to log in again as if I was a new user. I am getting a bit tired of logging into Microsoft when I am already logged in in more than one way. This is a personal system not a school or business system. And it started scanning and syncing even though I had told it not to use those directories any more.

    I say I have stopped, but of course I can still access Onedrive on the computer and the web - even though the directory structures do not agree with each other as I noted above. Before I stopped using it, I believe I did exactly what you suggested.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-05-26T01:52:20+00:00

    Thanks for the reply. Yes -- I clearly had the wrong idea of what this is. I should not have allowed it to run. I had used it for backup for years. When I purchased 365 it's behaviour changed on me. And it sucked the life out of my internet for days until I stopped it.

    You did not mention a reason for my implied question here: on file explorer Onedrive shows me only a subset of the files that I can clearly see on Onedrive.live.com. Why would file explorer leave out whole directories that are clearly present on the web for my account? I could not get to these files without manually downloading them and defining a new user to hold them for non-microsoft program usage.

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  4. Craig Long 17,825 Reputation points
    2024-05-25T18:51:15+00:00

    Right-click your folders and select "Always keep on this device."

    Go to the OneDrive cloud icon on the taskbar > Settings > Account > "Choose folders" and make sure all folders are checked.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-05-25T17:32:58+00:00

    OneDrive is not a backup, it’s a cloud location of your data.

    The default installation of Office 365 and its OneDrive component uploads all the contents of the PC  \My Documents\ folders to OneDrive, (syncs) and there will be a OneDrive folder in File Explorer containing cached copy of all the OneDrive content. And in Word etc the default Save location is set to OneDrive.

    No Docs/data is stored on the local PC

    You cannot remove OneDrive on a retail O365

    If you dont wish to use OneDrive there are numerous settings that need to be changed in each O365 component, but OneDrive will still be the default save location.

    You cannot 'backup' the onedrive content without specialist backup utilities (or the OneDrive folder content in file explore

    You start eg Word and open the recent doc, it will open the cached local copy, instantainiasly

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