How can I keep my folders separate in OneDrive

Question

This might be a silly question but I'm not at all tech savvy and am unsure if I'm doing something wrong. I have a personal OneDrive account, for which I have a 100GB storage and currently backs up the photos on my phone and anything I store on my laptop's desktop. It's about 78% full.

I've recently set up a small business and have taken out an Office business subscription, which I believe comes with 1TB of cloud storage via OneDrive. It's a consultancy business so I'll be wanting to store documents, reports and pictures.

I really want to keep business and personal items entirely separate for simplicity, and have my folders divided accordingly, but I'm struggling to understand how to direct one to one account and one to the other. I've read you should be able to do this with two accounts and, on a very basic level, it sounds as though I could, say, make my photos back up to the personal drive and my documents to business. However, when I try and toggle document sync on in my business account, it keeps telling me I need to turn off sync with my other account (even though I've switched off the document sync on the personal one). Even if that was successful, it doesn't really solve the fundamental problem that I have both personal and business documents and photos etc. so how do I separate those out if MS only provide the very basic pictures, documents and desktop folders for backup? I can see that there's supposedly a way of forcing it to recognise subfolders, but I fear the process might be beyond my IT ability!

Currently all my folders are on my home screen desktop and just backing up to my personal OneDrive via the desktop folder (i.e. I have absolutely nothing in the OneDrive "documents" folder), which I know can't possibly be a good thing moving forwards. It seems daft not to use all that 1TB of space I'm paying for with business (though I mainly took it out for access to Outlook, Word, Teams etc.). and the 100GB on the personal will soon run out. But then, even if I can separate them out, my personal photos will eventually fill the 100GB so I don't know if I need to be thinking of a more long term solution. My brain just can't cope with the idea of mixing the two and using business storage for personal photos (even though my business is likely to always only be me).

Has anybody been in a similar situation and can explain in SUPER SIMPLE terms the best way of ensuring I never lose any important work or my precious photos? I've read about the 3-2-1 rule but still don't entirely understand what I should be doing. I've already had a disaster with turning sync on and off as I somehow managed to duplicate and triplicate hundreds of photos that I then had to go through and delete. So, as I'm sure you can tell, I really need some very basic instructions!

Many thanks :)

Answer 1

Hi @Kate,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A forum.

I would like to share the following information with you:

Normally, when you set up OneDrive Personal and OneDrive Business on a computer, OneDrive is separated into two distinct sections.

You can refer to the illustrative image below:

The reason your photos from OneDrive Personal were unintentionally uploaded to OneDrive Business may be that OneDrive Business sync was accidentally enabled on your phone, syncing all data on the device.

To completely separate OneDrive Personal and OneDrive Business, please follow the steps below:

1. Turn off sync and backup for OneDrive

Step 1: Click the OneDrive icon > Settings

Step 2: Select Sync and backup > Manage backup

Step 3: Uncheck the folders being backed up, then select Keep files on OneDrive

2. Add the remaining OneDrive account

Step 1: Click Settings > Account > Add account

Step 2: Sign in with the remaining OneDrive account

After completing these steps, OneDrive will automatically create two separate folders:

• OneDrive – Personal
• OneDrive – <tenant name>

3. Reorganize your data

Open File Explorer, then review and drag and drop files to ensure that Personal and Business data are stored in the correct locations.

4. Configure separate sync folders for each account

Step 1: Click the OneDrive icon > Settings

Step 2: Select Account > Choose folders

If you would like step‑by‑step guidance, you can contact Microsoft Technical Support for detailed assistance until OneDrive is configured according to your expectations.

How to contact Microsoft Technical Support:

Step 1: Go to admin.microsoft.com

Step 2: Click Help & support

Step 3: Enter the subject: Separate OneDrive Personal and OneDrive Business

Step 4: Click Contact Support

Step 5: Choose your preferred contact method

Once the system receives the ticket and assigns it to an agent, the support agent will proactively contact you and assist you in resolving this issue.

 I hope this information is helpful. Please follow these steps and let me know if it works for you. If not, we can work together to resolve this.   

Thank you for your patience and your understanding. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to share them in the comments on this post so I can continue to support you.

I look forward to continuing the conversation.

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