I tried to disable OneDrive & lost almost all my Desktop items

TraderGary said:

@Brink Do you have a step-by-step tutorial on how to make this fix?

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TraderGary said:

Microsoft has royally screwed things up. Microsoft decided that when you update to Windows 11 that they would, without the user's permission or knowledge, automatically move everything from your local Documents, Pictures, Desktop folders to the cloud OneDrive folders of the same folder names. This was obviously not well thought out. The consequences can be seen with what the originator of this thread has experienced. This disaster should never have happened. Microsoft should never have made this decision.

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It's an embarrassment!

Brink said:

Turn On or Off OneDrive Folder Backup Syncing Across Windows 11 Devices

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off OneDrive folder backup and sync for your Microsoft account across all your Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices you sign in with the same Microsoft account. You can use OneDrive to sync files and folders between your computer and the cloud, so you...

www.elevenforum.com

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No thanks. I don't want anything of OneDrive at all. It took me all this time to manually recover everything OneDrive had placed in its cloud recycle bin back to my local drive. I stopped the syncing and backups, then copied all my data to another local drive. I learned that OndDrive treats the "system" folders (Desktop, Downloads, Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, even Screenshots) of your local user as under its total control. I don't trust any policy that claims none of their engineers are authorized access. That's BS. We've seen how people with sufficient high access reach areas to which they're not supposed to be authorized. Over a very long history of practicing law, I have confidential privileged work product I'm required to protect, even from questionable subpoenas. MS support engineers as always blamed me for not having first read their extensive documentation all of which is couched in legalese weasel words to avoid liability. If they had simply warned me up front that they would take full control of all my data, I would have immediately opted out. If I should care to share any data, I will control that. I don't want them even backing up anything for me. This ordeal took me a month to fix.

I do thank everyone who answered and made suggestions, especially @glasskuter. The only OneDrive installation I want is that minimally required for using Office365. I've always been careful never to save any of my documents to their cloud.