Digging out from under OneDrive

Though for the most part I have no longer to deal with OneDrive I'm still buried under its legacy--so much so that I'm having a difficult time even figuring a way to dig out from under it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

First task I believe is to rid myself of empty folders. What free software do you recommend for doing so?
p.s. I'm assuming I can do this safely because I'll be applying these mass changes to an external drive (not the C-Drive). Is this a correct assumption?

jro11 said:

Though for the most part I have no longer to deal with OneDrive I'm still buried under its legacy--so much so that I'm having a difficult time even figuring a way to dig out from under it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

First task I believe is to rid myself of empty folders. What free software do you recommend for doing so?

Click to expand...

The first thing you need to do is this...

Do Option #2, here (skip step #4)... [ make sure to do step 5G (move your files back to their proper folders) ]




THEN.... do Option #1, here...




That should put everything back to the way it was before anyone ever thought of inventing OneDrive.




_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

IF, for any reason you decide to reinstall Windows 11...


1. Disconnect the internet (and any other drives), before installing Windows 11.
2. After the install, do these two things (before you connect the internet)...


3. Use REVO to uninstall OneDrive (and "Scan" for leftovers), BEFORE you connect to the internet.








The tutorials on Eleven Forum, tell you how to do everything... properly.
You just need to read them a few times "before" you start following them.
There are a lot of ... "if this, then do that" things in some of these tutorials.
If you don't read them carefully, you might miss those... choices.


The END

jro11 said:

First task I believe is to rid myself of empty folders.

Click to expand...

Jro, how many empty folders could you have?
Define “Empty Folder” Example.. what is the folder tree like?

What is the drive letter? D:?

Also, confirm what I already know. You no longer have OneDrive because Linda removed it?

In other news. Looked up this morning, yet another deadly Eastern Brown Snake curled up on a rock 10 feet away.
I thought that might excite you.

This country is going to kill me one day.

@garlin did write a batch script that could delete empty folders/sub folders, but I am hesitant to post it because:
A) I don’t know the drive path/drive you’re wanting to clean
B) There are now at least 4 scripts on the page and I don’t know which is the correct script.

jro11 said:

p.s. I'm assuming I can do this safely because I'll be applying these mass changes to an external drive (not the C-Drive). Is this a correct assumption?

Click to expand...

Well, it’s your backup drive, of which I would consider more precious than your C Drive.

What I'm looking at is the wasteland left after OneDrive repeatedly did its thing with/on my files. It's total devastation. There are also my attempts to regain hold of what was happening adding to the malaise.

antspants said:

Jro, how many empty folders could you have?

Click to expand...

oh so many............................................................... with some referring to drives the computer doesn't 'see' because that drive may have been assigned another letter while in the process of being unplugged and replugged in...

antspants said:

Define “Empty Folder” Example.. what is the folder tree like?

Click to expand...

You know what an Empty Folder is.
The folder tree I'm most interested in is a set of folders in the same directory consisting of the names: Room_ (Living Room; Dining Room; Outside; Town Name; Art Studio; etc... all containing shortcuts-to or actual product manuals, product repair YouTube files; Software Programs, etc.)
And then there are scores of photographs, mostly unnamed, and many copies of those, that I would like to save and eventually sort through programatically... When it's time for that to happen I'll ask about programs that sort and eliminate duplicate photos...

antspants said:

What is the drive letter? D:?

Click to expand...

G; O; ... I don't know how I'll deal with this unexpected problem.

antspants said:

Also, confirm what I already know. You no longer have OneDrive because Linda removed it?

Click to expand...

I (believe I) no longer have OneDrive but the computer, annoyingly, continues to send me in the 'direction' of OneDrive when, for example, I attempt to save a new file. In short, the legacy of OneDrive continues to haunt this computer and make continuing to use Windows an uncomfortable experience.
Linda has been and continues to be unbelievably helpful and completely invaluable. I treasure and depend on her advice.

(Note: I'm glad you're here, I didn't know if you would be following events in a forum I'd never posted in.)

Somewhere around here I have a spanking new 2TB drive. It got misplaced when the house interior was painted (when it rains it pours). Rather than attempting to sort out this mess by eliminating the mess (starting with Empty Folders) I'm now thinking the better approach might be to find usable material (files and folders) and transfer them the empty drive, eventually, blowing away the drive from whence they came...

antspants said:

In other news. Looked up this morning, yet another deadly Eastern Brown Snake curled up on a rock 10 feet away.
I thought that might excite you.

Click to expand...

Yeah! Linda told me about the first. Is it true you merely (broom) "sweep" them away?

jro11 said:

Yeah! Linda told me about the first. Is it true you merely (broom) "sweep" them away?

Click to expand...

Probably. They only grow to 7 feet in length and they're very poisonous.

It's not like it's a Australian Scrub Python or anything.

jro11 said:

G; O; ... I don't know how I'll deal with this unexpected problem.

Click to expand...

I’m kind of doing something ATM, but to sort out one issue:

Remove any flash drives or secondary externals.

For the drive you are most using:

• Right click on the Start Menu button and select “Disk Management”

• When it opens, right click on the external drive and select "Change drive letter and paths"

• Click "Change"

• Opposite "Assign the following drive letter" click on the drop down arrow that has the current drive letter

• Select a drive letter you like and click "OK"

• A pop up will show. It says “Some programs that rely on drive letters blah blah so boring" click "YES" because as you have stated, it changes letters anyway so it's safe to say nothing is really relying on a specific letter.

Hopefully, the end result will be that whenever you plug that external in, it should keep the same drive letter.

jro11 said:

Yeah! Linda told me about the first. Is it true you merely (broom) "sweep" them away?

Click to expand...

If it’s a Python, sometimes. But they can get pretty aggressive and as most of them are as thick or thicker than your forearm it’s best to not get the broom out. They can bite but their venom is very mild so dialing 000 (911) isn’t as necessary as getting to the hospital by car.
They can leave a nasty snake bite.

Green Tree Snakes are left alone as they are most beautiful. I have many, here is one on/by front steps:




For most other snakes here (I have about 6 species on my property) it’s best to leave them alone or when on my back veranda or in the house, the Snake Catcher is called. So far this year they have cost me over $1400 ($120 a visit)
he catches them (sometimes gets bitten) and relocates them.

The Eastern Brown that was on the rocks this morning, is one of the deadliest snakes in the world. If it gets any closer, that’s another $120.

He and his wife are very popular here, kind of celebrity like.

I'm hoping @garlin shares his script to remove empty drives with you

Myself, I don't worry to much about empty folders. I'm pretty OCD on a day to day basis when it comes to keeping my stuff organized and clean and it's always been my habit to delete stuff as I see it right then. I get rid of stuff I don't need regarly. My house may get junky and need cleaning but my computer doesn't.
I'm sure I have some empties, but not enough to put any worry into. But, I don't retain as much stuff as you do JRO so I can see where you might could have a lot.

For me, rather than using a batch file or command line, I would feel better to "see" the folders and manually delete them myself. See if Minitool's article about doing it from explorer can be of any benefit. I would keep my search area as small as possible rather than searching the entire computer all at once.

I would also not want to see hidden folders in the search so you would need to go to
file explorer>3 dots>options>view tab>uncheck show hidden files folders & drives

I'm not actively tracking this thread, but my script is safe to use. But before running it, please confirm:
- OneDrive is really disabled, so folder removals don't sync back to your online copy

Run this batch script and provide a target folder name on the command line. It will run in non-destructive mode and report all empty folders it should be able to remove.

If you agree that looks correct, open the batch file in Notepad and edit the last line:

This removes the "safety" mechanism and allows the script to actually remove folders. The script will skip any folders that have at least one file.

@garlin I will be helping JRO. I downloaded your script on my machine so I could get familiar with it, I ran as admin but nothing happened except a quick powershell window that happens so fast I can't read it. Am I supposed to have any user interaction with the script at all. I read your instructions to say I had to point it to a folder. If not, exactly what ran I ran the script on my machine. I'm confused.

You should run it from a CMD window, and not from Explorer.

Feel free to create a random file in one of the subfolders, to see if it knows the difference. Like TEST\1\something.txt.
It should inform you TEST\2\3 is removable, but not TEST\1.

I draw a blank about what you mean. You're too far advanced over this old woman's head, young man. As I've mentioned many times I am mentally defficient and mentally blocked in advanced commands. What I did was right click on your file and run as admin.
Talk to me like I'm a complete newbie here. Give me steps 1-2-3 in simpleton steps if you have time.

This batch file is intended to run from any normal CMD or Terminal window. It's not for clicking or dragging in Explorer, because it doesn't pause at the end for you to read the screen output.

It takes a single folder name argument when typed, which is the folder you want to process. The path name can be relative like "Folder A", or an absolute path like "C:\Users\glasskuter\Documents\Folder A".

If you provide more than folder name on the same line, it only cares about the first folder and ignores the rest. That's to prevent someone from getting carried away.

You don't have to be Administrator when running the script, unless you think the folder may contain a special sub-folder which isn't owned by the user.

antspants said:

In other news. Looked up this morning, yet another deadly Eastern Brown Snake curled up on a rock 10 feet away.
I thought that might excite you.

This country is going to kill me one day.

Click to expand...

I work part time in public works for a small town in N.J. We have what is called a transfer station . Residents can bring their trash and recycles to us for disposal. From there the trash is taken to the county landfill and the recycles are taken to the proper recycling center. A couple of days ago the attendant was cleaning up and he found a Redback spider. We came to the conclusion that it must have come over to the US on a cargo ship.

Winuser said:

I work part time in public works for a small town in N.J. We have what is called a transfer station . Residents can bring their trash and recycles to us for disposal. From there the trash is taken to the county landfill and the recycles are taken to the proper recycling center. A couple of days ago the attendant was cleaning up and he found a Redback spider. We came to the conclusion that it must have come over to the US on a cargo ship.

Click to expand...

Seriosly? Someone at customs wasn’t doing their job.
Did he report it to customs? They have a lot of babies. if there are two of course.

antspants said:

Seriosly? Someone at customs wasn’t doing their job.
Did he report it to customs? They have a lot of babies. if there are two of course.

Click to expand...

It was one spider and there is no way of knowing how it got there or where it came from. I doubt if customs could be of any help. If they could we wouldn't be infested with stink bugs and lantern flies.

Head’s Up