cannot use onedrive

Question

I cannot work out how to use OneDrive. The Get Started instructions say to open Settings. There is no settings icon in my OneDrive. I have created folders in OneDrive but the path says error > john > personal > Documents. Nothing conforms to the MS instructions. I'm using W11 and W7.

Answer 1

If you do not want to back up the entire Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos folders, you should turn off the sync of these folders at Manage Backup.

If you are getting an error, you may need to reinstall OneDrive.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/back-up-your-folders-with-onedrive-d61a7930-a6fb-4b95-b28a-6552e77c3057

The OneDrive icon may be in the upward arrow at the right in the taskbar. It's the white cloud icon. See the image here:

Answer 2

Yes, I did open OneDrive from the start menu, and no, the cloud icon didn't appear in the task bar. That's not mainly what worries me, since I can't remember why I wanted Settings anyway, other than the MS video that told me I did. I don't know whether I should be worried about the word 'error' in the path. It's not a word I've ever seen in a path. What I've been doing so far (given that there's very little space in my C partition) is created folders into which I copy only the most essential files from my data partition. It's when I started doing that that MS threw 'error' at me.

Answer 3

Did you go to the Windows Start menu, type "OneDrive," and click the OneDrive icon when it appears? That should bring up the cloud icon in the taskbar's notification area at the far right.

The location of the OneDrive folder by default is C>Users>username>OneDrive. Each user has their own OneDrive. Multiple users cannot use the same OneDrive.

You should keep data on a separate hard drive, but you can also keep some data in OneDrive if you wish. For the reasons you mentioned, never keep your data only in OneDrive. If you don't fully understand how it works, you should avoid it until you learn more about it. However, you probably won't go wrong with enabling OneDrive if you have plenty of cloud storage space. It's those that have the free 5GB OneDrive storage that get into trouble.

If you don't like videos, here are some articles for you: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/back-up-your-folders-with-onedrive-d61a7930-a6fb-4b95-b28a-6552e77c3057

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/save-disk-space-with-onedrive-files-on-demand-for-windows-0e6860d3-d9f3-4971-b321-7092438fb38e

Answer 4

Thank you. With vision and hearing problems I struggle with videos, but I managed to navigate through that. I didn't get the set-up and log-in dialogues, so I imagine I did that some time in the past (probably by accident). The video said Setting would appear in the OneDrive icon in the task bar. There is no such icon in my task bar. I'm not even sure that I need access to settings....

That word 'error' in the path worries me. My other concern is OneDrive's location. It seems to be under Users in the C drive. The C drive's available space is much smaller than my files, which are in a D drive partition. (There is a single hard drive). Until I acquired this computer I always kept data on a second hard drive, where they would be recoverable if the system drive ever failed. I have been backing up by copying data to the second drive on another computer. I'm not sure what happens if I put all data in OneDrive. One thing that worries me (given my eyesight problems) is the possibility of accidental deletion wiping out all copies of a file.

Answer 5

Hi, and welcome to the Microsoft community.

Watch this video and see if it helps you sign into OneDrive for Windows. The settings may look different in OneDrive for Windows 11, but they work the same as OneDrive for Windows 10.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sync-onedrive-files-and-folders-3b8246e0-cc3c-4ae7-b4e1-4b4b37d27f68

Feel free to post here if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to help.

Craig