OneDrive on Mac "Always Keep on This Device" Problem

Question

I wasn't able to navigate the arcane procedures relinking my education account in OneDrive for my MacBook Pro. *******u.

My system: 2020s MacBookPro, fully updated (Sequoia 15.0.1).

Here's what happened: At some point recently, OneDrive started asking to re-grant access to my OneDrive folder. I somehow clicked the wrong thing (i.e., I clicked a folder instead of the OneDrive drive listed in the "Locations" of my sidebar. So, I like doing the "Always Keep on This Device" so I can work offline, like at the airport. I also find the "Always Keep on This Device" handy because I work both at home and at my office--I have one computer at work and one computer is at home, and I don't want to lug laptops around everyday.

So, I tried grant access to a folder where all my work files are located, but it wouldn't let me. This was before I realized it was asking me to re-grant access to a drive rather than a folder. OneDrive was prompting me to create a new location, and I made the mistake of telling it a new location.

What it is doing now is re-downloading everything onto my home laptops harddrive into a new location. Everything. All 300 GB. No way to stop it.

So, Microsoft, why did a Mac update get OneDrive confused in the first place where it couldn't find the drive anymore? I think that's what happened--it started with an OS update.

Also, there was some sort of MS-Mac confusion on top of MS-Mac confusion: OneDrive was also somehow trying to connect to an old education account that I haven't used in 4 years. That also had something to do with all this, too.

Anyways, I have to go through and delete other set of 300 GB of files now. Hopefully that doesn't get me into trouble.

This was a huge pain. The cloud is a mess, yall, especially across different systems like this.

Answer 1

Dear Drew T_091,

Thank you for reaching out to us. I understand that you've encountered some significant issues with OneDrive on your MacBook Pro, and below are some suggestions for your scenario.

I understand your frustration, I know how hard it is to work when things don’t go as expected. However, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation.

Please check these steps for account confusion:

1.Open OneDrive and go to Preferences > Account. Ensure that you are signed in with the correct account and not the old education account.

2.If the old education account is still linked, you may need to remove it by going to System Preferences > Internet Accounts and deleting the old account from there.

3.After removing the old account, restart OneDrive and sign in with the correct account.

It seems this issue occur after update MacOS, if it possible, you may completely uninstall OneDrive and setup/configure again and verify the result with us. I'm sorry and I apologize for that.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Best regards,

Gina | Microsoft Community Moderator