Problem with OneDrive

I have a folder that has been shared with me. I have edit rights. I go to Shared and Shared with me, select the folder then click on Add Shortcut to My Files. Instead of adding the folder to my Windows File Explorer it adds it to my OneDrive My Files. This is on a MS Surface running Windows 11.

Any thought on what the issue might be?

Yes, it is an irksome thing that Windows 11 now sets the location of user folders to Onedrive by default instead of locating these user folders on your local hard drive.
You can prove this is so by going to file explorer, right click on one of your personal folders (ex:documents or desktop), select properties. Observe the location.
To get this folders to be saved on your computer takes a little work.

1. Unlink PC from Onedrive In task tray, click Onedrive icon. Click gear icon to get into Onedrive Settings. Under Account tab, select "Unlink this PC"

NOTE 1: If you do not want to use Onedrive at all and do not want to be nagged with popups about setting up onedrive also under Settings tab - Uncheck start Onedrive automatically.
ATTENTION Note 2: If after you get your folders moved back to you hard drive you can go back into onedrive settings, check this box again, go to the sync tab and choose what folders you want to sync to onedrive.

You first need to decide if you want your user files saved in their default location on C: drive OR if you want them saved to another location such as a second storage drive in your computer. If you choose the default location use the following steps. (If you choose to move your personal files to another location see instruction at end of this post.)

TO CHANGE LOCATION OF PERSONAL FOLDERS BACK TO DEFAULT LOCATION ON C: DRIVE

2. Browse to your user account C:\users\yourusername. Make sure there are folders there named

Desktop

Documents

Downloads

Music

Pictures

Videos

If these folders do not exist, you will need to create them.

Then use the following tutorials to move your files to their default location on your C: drive. In each of these tutorials I suggest you use Brink's Option 3 (.bat file method) to accomplish the task.







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HOW TO CHANGE LOCATION OF PERSONAL FOLDER TO A NEW STORAGE LOCATION SUCH AS A SECONDARY DRIVE

1. Open File Explorer.
2. Click on This PC from the left pane.
3. Navigate to your storage drive
4. Create new folders named Documents, Desktop, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos

Browse back to your user folder C:\users\yourusername

Right-click the folder you want to move and select the Properties options.

Click the Location tab.

Click the Move button and select the newly created folder under the target drive.

Click the Select Folder button. In the explorer window that pops up, browse to the drive where you created the folders and select the newly created equivalent folder to the folder you are moving. Click Select Folder, Click Move. OK or Apply and you'll see a prompt asking whether you want to move files from the existing folder to the new location. In general, you should say yes

Repeat this process for any other folders you want to move to your secondary drive.

I agree with everything glasskuter has written but would like to add:-

Then double-check by running RegEdit [C:\Windows\regedit.exe] & making sure that no references to OneDrive remain in any of the folder paths shown in these Keys
{You can just paste these Key addresses into RegEdit's address bar to get straight to them.
First - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
Then - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders


All the best,
Denis

I have a related but slightly different OneDrive issue. On setting up my new computer (last week) I copied all my data files (hundreds of them!) to the new computer using a USB flashdrive which was the old computer's backup. I did not put them in OneDrive; I put them on the C: drive, and that's where they are. (I don't want to use OneDrive, because I don't trust "the cloud".) But one folder that I copied consists of shortcuts to all my files, and Windows 11 has changed all the shortcuts so they now point to my OneDrive, which is empty. So now the shortcuts don't work!

@Dragon Drop Maybe someone else knows of a way to do it in bulk, but the only way I would know how to fix that would be to manually change the target path of each shortcut OR delete the bad shortcuts and create a new ones. To manually change the path right click on shortcut, select properties, alter the target, OK

glasskuter said:

Yes, it is an irksome thing that Windows 11 now sets the location of user folders to Onedrive by default instead of locating these user folders on your local hard drive.
You can prove this is so by going to file explorer, right click on one of your personal folders (ex:documents or desktop), select properties. Observe the location.

Click to expand...

And of course, if you are a OneDrive user as I am, this isn't irksome at all. Quite the opposite, it's exactly the behavior you want!

After I make sure all my files are where I want them, how do I remove the OneDrive folder from my "user" folder? It will delete but pops right back in two seconds? Any ideas?

Dragon Drop said:

I have a related but slightly different OneDrive issue. On setting up my new computer (last week) I copied all my data files (hundreds of them!) to the new computer using a USB flashdrive which was the old computer's backup. I did not put them in OneDrive; I put them on the C: drive, and that's where they are. (I don't want to use OneDrive, because I don't trust "the cloud".) But one folder that I copied consists of shortcuts to all my files, and Windows 11 has changed all the shortcuts so they now point to my OneDrive, which is empty. So now the shortcuts don't work!

Click to expand...

What do you not trust about the Cloud? Onedrive is supported and maintained by one of the world's largest companies with full backup infrastructures.

Even your home pc will not be as well protected as onedrive servers.

Of course, the conspiracy theory brigade will always claim "They are out to get you." LOL.

cereberus said:

What do you not trust about the Cloud?

Click to expand...

There are other reasons one may not choose to use Onedrive, none which have anything at all to do with trust.
We live in rural areas and do not have instant internet like a lot of people. We have slow and/or undependable internet service. There would times we could not access our data.
Some internet providers allow only so much bandwidth a month. If one goes over his allowance, he pays out the gazoo for it.
We have more data than we do onedrive storage. We're not all 365 users with all that storage unless we pay for it.

Thanks for the reply. I tried the second .reg fix suggested by glasskuter. However, the folder is still there in my "Users" folder, it will delete but it pops right back in there. It really doesn't bother anything. I'll keep my eye on it and make sure files are not being moved there.

merkelck said:

the folder is still there in my "Users" folder, it will delete but it pops right back in there.

Click to expand...

Then this indicates that onedrive is not completely disabled. Did you go through the entire procedure for disabling onedrive and moving your folders.

Specifically, which procedure are you referring to? I have tried so many things, I can't recall what I have done. I finally have my files where I want them now and I just have other things to do.
Thanks

merkelck said:

After I make sure all my files are where I want them, how do I remove the OneDrive folder from my "user" folder? It will delete but pops right back in two seconds? Any idea to

Click to expand...

From my experience you may need to move/save your files specifically to "This PC - Windows (C:) - Users - Username - Document" This location does not sync with OneDrive unless you configure it to. I know mine doesn't. I created a file and selected to save to This PC but it didn't save to This PC - Windows (C:) - Users - Username - Document. It only saves to Home - Documents which in my case is mapped to OneDrive. Maybe remap your Documents under Home to your local folder under the C drive. If you have Pictures, Videos and music I believe you need to map each folder individually to save on your local machine. Delete the OneDrive folder from your C drive. You can also log into your machine as local and not with a Microsoft account.

I thought that I performed every procedure described above but I can't be sure what I have or have not done. I am going to conduct a few tests to see where my system really stands. It has certainly been annoying. To the best of knowledge, this all reared it's ugly head within the past several months. More than likely with some up date to Win11. I have never used OneDrive and I have it unlinked on this machine. What I did find is that after opening Word2013/Excel2013 , the SaveAs option still offers to save a file to the OneDrive path. The recent files still point to the OneDrive path but I was able to find the same files in the c:>users:>myname:>Documents folder. So apparently I had moved/copied things between these folders before.
What a mess. I spend more time fooling with this than I do on productive things....
I sure appreciate all the suggestions here.

glasskuter said:

There are other reasons one may not choose to use Onedrive, none which have anything at all to do with trust.
We live in rural areas and do not have instant internet like a lot of people. We have slow and/or undependable internet service. There would times we could not access our data.
Some internet providers allow only so much bandwidth a month. If one goes over his allowance, he pays out the gazoo for it.
We have more data than we do onedrive storage. We're not all 365 users with all that storage unless we pay for it.

Click to expand...

Sure but the OP specifically stated as follows:

Quote: I don't want to use OneDrive, because I don't trust "the cloud"