Solved I lost my documents folder

I intend to use two computers, both with Windows 11.

I have no intention to use OneDrive. On my new computer I deleted the documents folder in OneDrive. This caused the documents folder to disappear on the new computer. This is a new computer that I have had no creative activity, so I did not lose much of value.

Now that OneDrive has been cleaned up, if I proceed to use my older computer, if I enable sync will I lose my entire collection of documents? That would be a disaster.

Is there a way to view OneDrive in a web browser so I don't have to enable sync ?

H2ONaCl said:

I intend to use two computers, both with Windows 11.

I have no intention to use OneDrive. On my new computer I deleted the documents folder in OneDrive. This caused the documents folder to disappear on the new computer. This is a new computer that I have had no creative activity, so I did not lose much of value.

Now that OneDrive has been cleaned up, if I proceed to use my older computer, if I enable sync will I lose my entire collection of documents? That would be a disaster.

Is there a way to view OneDrive in a web browser so I don't have to enable sync ?

Click to expand...

To get the Documents folder back...

Option One, step #5 here...

I have computer A, which I have been using for years. I don't know what I did to prevent syncing to OneDrive because whatever I did, I did years ago.

I bought a new computer B. I did not know about exiting Windows Reset in order to use the command line to setup a local machine via Shift F10 and "start ms-cxh:localonly". Since I didn't know about that, I tried other ways to avoid using OneDrive. Some of which I don't recall because it was last night and I was tired and in a hurry.

On computer B it appeared that I was browsing OneDrive in File Explorer. I didn't want things to be copied to the cloud so I deleted Documents from a place which I believed to be the cloud. I wanted to delete it because I don't like seeing the same file in 2 places because I might edit the wrong one. In this case I was trying to delete the whole Documents folder from what I believe to be the cloud, thereby preventing myself from ever editing the wrong file which might reside in that folder. Logically it would seem there is no such thing as the "wrong file" if I trust sync, but I was tired and in a hurry, and I don't want to ever use sync. To my surprise this made my C drive Documents disappear on the C drive of computer B. Around this time I learned about "unlink" from ChatGPT.

Around the same time I was looking at computer A and linking and unlinking because I was trying to understand why the cloud icon was missing from computer A. I find it reassuring to see the cloud-crossed-out icon. I can see the cloud-crossed-out on computer B but I did not see it on computer A and I forgot such a thing even existed because it was years since I found a way to prevent computer A from using OneDrive. I was also under the impression that each computer would have it's own cloud copy.

Can playing with link and unlink on computer A cause all of my Documents to disappear from computer A because of my action to delete Documents from the cloud of computer B ?

Did I come close to losing all of my valuable data? Why didn't I lose all my data? It takes a fraction of a second to remove the root of everything and that is what the folder Documents happens to be.

Is there a way to view OneDrive in a web browser so I don't have to enable sync ?

Click to expand...

Yes..

To view your OneDrive account online, sign in at
onedrive.live.com for personal accounts or portal.office.com for work/school accounts using a web browser. Once signed in, you can view, upload, and manage files, photos, and shared documents, as well as check your storage capacity.

Click to expand...

There's also a proper sequence to use with due caution to expunge OneDrive from your PC.

Before you start you need to be sure you understand where your files actually are- only in the 'cloud', or also on your PC.

Example (there are plenty such):

You were warned about the mess one can get into when dealing with onedrive incorrectly. Minimizing the Waste of Time

To view your OneDrive account online, sign in at
onedrive.live.com for personal accounts

Click to expand...

Thank you. I've wiped the cloud storage and thanks to the other advice about Windows local account installations it will remain empty.