Photo Sync location for Onedrive with Android Phones

Question

Hi all,

I have already read through all the MS Help on this sync topic, as well as many support posts. But none answer the question about where photos are sync'ed and how to control this location. Articles, talk around the topic of automatic syncing of photos, without actually stating where they go. Some support posts say that the photos go inside a folder called PICTURES. If you choose the option to ORGANIZE BY DATE, it seems to create subfolders, such as '2022' under PICTURES.

But here is my experience:

My android cell sync used to go into PICTURES and inside of PICTURES OneDrive would auto create a folder of whatever year it is (such as 2022) and put the current year photos there. I was cleaning up my photos folders on my laptop and renaming things. I renamed the '2022' folder to 'Misc. Phone Pics 2022' and was expecting Onedrive to make another 2022 folder to keep on syncing any new photos in the future. Low and behold, the sync followed me and all new photos are now syncing to the 'Misc. Phone Pics 2022' folder instead.

Nothing I can find tells me why this would happen. Is it simply because the new folder name still ends in 2022? Is there some secret folder attribute that tells Onedrive to use this folder? What will happen in 2023? Is there someplace where this file path is found?

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi Kim Terry,

Thanks for your valuable feedback and sharing updates with us and I really appreciate your effort and your precious time doing. 

 And I appreciate your kind words.

As you know that when you turn on “Automatic Camera Upload” on android/IOS device, it sync to cloud(OneDrive) and I think the path( sound like server side). And after rename the folder it always goes to the path directly to OneDrive>Pictures>Camera Roll>folder name.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad

Answer 2

Thank you so much for investigating this. It would be good to know what controls this behavior and why the posting of new photos would follow this folder, even though renamed. Do you suppose this file path is in the registry someplace? How would OneDrive possibly know I renamed the folder?

Answer 3

Dear Kim Terry,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

As per your description, please don’t worry, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation.

 If you “Automatic Camera Upload” enabled on your android device, then you will be able to find the photo or video by going directly to OneDrive> “Pictures”> “Camera Roll”> “2020” (Year you took the photo/video) > “07” (Month you took the photo/video).

 As you mentioned, "the sync followed me and all new photos are now syncing to the 'Misc. Phone Pics 2022' folder instead." yes you are correct, based on my test result if I rename folder and all new added photos are sync to same renamed folder.

After search a lot I also cannot find a Microsoft article regarding to explain folder attribute that tells OneDrive to use this folder, however based on my result, if we add new/future photo or video within OneDrive, then you will have to manually upload to OneDrive via creating folder manually and I understand this may cause extra work for you and I really appreciate your effort and your precious time doing those.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad

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