Can someone please explain all the different user folders? This is too confusing!!!

Many thanks, Abraham

I tried that already. It DID work with changing my desktop from the OneDrive\ desktop to the User\desktop. But when I try it for Documents, it insists that I move the file from OneDrive\Documents (even though I removed all the files), but when I do, it says "Can't move folder because there is a folder in the same location that can't be redirected. Access is denied."

To disable OneDrive I:

1. Set my desktop to default location
2. Deleted OneDrive app from my machine
3. Deleted the User\OneDrive folder entirely
4. In Group Policy\computer configuration\administrator templates\windows components\OneDrive: I disabled "Save documents to OneDrive by Default" and enabled "Prevent the Use of OneDrive for File Storage."

But the Documents folder in file explorer still points to the OneDrive Documents folder, even though it no londer exists, and many of my programs by default want to save files to it. (Oddly, I have three Thinkpad W530s and a fourth Thinkpad drive running Win 10. In one, I have this situation with a Documents icon in file explroer that point to OneDrive. In another other, it's the same, but the icon in file explorer is marked Documents OneDrive. In another other, I have two Documents icons in file explorer - one pointing to User\Documents and the other to OneDrive\Documents.  On the third Thinkpad, running Win 10 version 1708, the Documents icon points to User/Documents with no OneDrive\Documents icon. I didn't set up any of this. It's just all different for some reason.)

I think MS programmers/engineers were really irresponsible setting up OneDrive like this, with duplicate Documents, desktop and other folders in the User folder that are very confusing and easily can have you saving or downloading documents into the wrong places or backing up the wrong files.

Just as an example, as I posted earlier, I spent an hour or more downloading tax documents again and again, not realizing that they were going into OneDrive\Documents instead of User/Documents. The same thing was happening when I was downloading stuff to my desktop not realizing that OneDrive\Desktop is what I was looking at on my machine instead of User\Desktop. Looking at all the online complaints about OneDrive, I see I am far from alone in my exasperation over all this. A friend of mine nearly deleted all of her personal files because she didn't understand OneDrive. Now she's afraid every time she touches her computer that she's going to delete important stuff.

It's pretty clear to me that all this mess is all about MS wanting to charge users for extra cloud space. And it didn't care about how this would confuse users. And why would anyone in their right mind want to put their documents on the cloud, where they can be hacked, anyway? You'd be nuts to do that. They can hack the NSA after all. OneDrive needs to go away in the next Windows version, or maybe it should be a downloaded extra.

Windows 10 is a S--- Show I'll leave it to your fill in the blanks :O) MS need to make one version of Windows and perfect it and stop clowning around with all this BS. I now just learned from others in a separate question here that Win 10 automatically marks all files read-only. Really? Come on! And Window Update is another joke.

Anyway, sorry to get into a speech. I really appreciate your help. If you - or anyone else - can figure out how I can redirect that Doc icon, please let me know.

Thanks again.

Anthony Giorgianni

Hello I am an independent advisor for the Microsoft community. I understand your frustration in managing your documents. Different apps behave differently and choosing the right folder can be difficult if they have the same name or similar locations.

Open up File Explorer and you should be presented with the folders and drives under This PC. You can now set the location of the Documents folder by right-clicking the folder and selecting Properties. Now select the Location tab and choose where you want files to be saved. The default is: C:\Users<username>\Documents

Don't forget to click Move if you want your files to be transferred into the new location.

OneDrive is the cloud app from Microsoft that allows you to save your files on their servers so that you can access them from different devices. If you wish to turn off OneDrive please follow these instructions: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn...

If you are looking for files that you recently saved you can find them in your Recent view. Open up File Explorer and look for the Quick Access folder in the left pane. When you click on it, you will see your Documents folders and under that Recent Files.

When backing up your files please select all your different documents folders to include the Music, Videos, etc. folders.

I hope this helps clear things up for you, please let me know if you have any other questions.

Also, why do i have two desktops, a user one and a OneDrive One. The OneDrive desktop has thousands of items in there. Can I delete them/ Will that affect the desktop I'm looking at when I boot up? Can I delete them? Can I delete all the items in the OneDrive Documents folder? Can I delete that folder?

Is there an older version of Windows that I can install that doesn't have all this stuff. I'm not really crazy about Windows 10 - too many complicated and unnecessary bells and whistles.

Thanks again!

Thank you, Abraham

But it won't let me do that. When I try to change the location from OneDrive Documents to my User Documents, it tell me that access is denied because there already is a folder there. And I don't want the files in OneDrive to overwrite  those anyway, in case they are different.

What do I try next?

Thanks

Anthony Giorgianni

I uninstalled OneDrive. But I see that my Desktop is using the icons in my user OneDrive subfolder. How do I get it to use the desktop in my user folder: User<desktop?

Thanks