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How do you stop Windows 11 from saving everything to One Drive

Anonymous
2025-04-10T12:25:45+00:00

Microsoft really made things difficult so that they could NUDGE you (Aka force you) into a subscription, so they implemented One Drive and Office 365. Things you never need, given that there are many office suites just as capable or better for free and you already paid for space on your hard drive when you purchased your computer.

The most annoying of them is ONE DRIVE, so you want to get rid of it. (I would also look into un-installing office 365, great for companies, useless for home use).

ONE DRIVE becomes a hindrance when you generate large files (content creators), where you generate over 1GB a day. OneDrive lasts only one week! Then you are forced into a subscription that wont give enough space 1TB when you need something like 64TB of space, because Microsoft failed to understand their user base.

So, if you don't want to be in a lot of hurt, this is what I think could work. If someone else has a better solution, please advice. FYI, I got so annoyed, I just Un-installed One Drive from my machine, moved over everything to an external drive, and rebuilt it the right way. A LOT OF HURT!

In hind sight, I decided to see what would have been the best option, and this is what my work for others, with a lot less pain.

  1. Disable Syncing:
    • Open OneDrive Settings: Click the OneDrive cloud icon in the taskbar (or menu bar) and then click the gear icon to open settings.
    • Go to Sync and Backup: Select "Sync and backup".
    • Manage Backup: Click "Manage backup".
    • Turn off Syncing: Uncheck the boxes next to "Desktop," "Documents," and "Pictures".
    • Confirm: Click "Stop backup" to confirm.
  2. Un-link your account
    • Open OneDrive: Click on the OneDrive cloud icon in your taskbar.
    • Open Settings: Click the gear icon and select "Settings".
    • Go to Account: Go to the "Account" tab and click "Unlink this PC".
    • Confirm Unlinking: Follow the on-screen prompts to confirm unlinking.
  3. Un-install One Drive
    • Open Settings: Go to your computer's "Settings".
    • Go to Apps: Select "Apps" or "Apps & Features".
    • Find OneDrive: Find "Microsoft OneDrive" in the list and click "Uninstall".
    • Confirm Uninstall: Follow the on-screen prompts to confirm uninstalling
Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-10T12:32:48+00:00

    Its entirely upto the user what Office version/Licence type they buy. The user is not forced to use o365.

    Under a retail o365 version you cannot remove OneDrive

    It seems that you misunderstood the concept of o365 and probably confused by MS Marketings use of the word “Backup”

    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

    And using an external usb drive will cause other issues, with corrupted data

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