I Hate OneDrive

[bungeejumper]

I'm not an unreasonable sort of chap, honestly I'm not, so please excuse the rant. But when my computer starts taking liberties with the storage of my files then I'm liable to get cross.

First Grrrr. I don't ever recall asking OneDrive to act as an automated car parking valet for all my Word and Excel files when I installed Windows 10 a couple of months ago, but it seems to have overridden all my preferences and placed all my data files into a OneDrive folder, which is an obscure subdirectory within my Pictures folder. (I have no idea how that happened, but it wasn't my idea.)

Second Grrrr. Now it seems that my most complex Excel file, which interacts with three other Excel files on my computer, won't load without objecting that it can't find the three other files, which are right there next to it on my computer's home drive, but which it fondly supposes are out there on the cloud somewhere. Result: I ignore the error messages, and the files load up just fine.

Third and most heartfelt Grrrr. Without so much as a by your leave, as I discovered yesterday, OneDrive has automatically uploaded all my most confidential files to the cloud, where all and sundry could probably hack them. I am no Jennifer Lawrence, but my private finances are my affair and nobody else's. Got that, Mr Gates?

They tell me that there are ways to expunge the OneDrive menace from my computer for good. Has anybody here done it?

BJ

[Infrasonic]

In the OD desktop client settings/settings general tab untick the Start OneDrive automatically...

In task manager/startup tab right click OD and 'disable' it. I did this on my sisters PC and it doesn't load at all, but is still there for future use if she changes her mind.

If you switch to 'metered connection' it stops any OneDrive auto sync (as well as windows auto updates) unless you give it manual permission each time after boot. I run my PC this way.

[bungeejumper]

Thanks Infrasonic, that's very helpful. I've disabled the startup option, as you suggest, but I can't find the OD desktop client settings/settings general tab that you've mentioned. That might be because I removed it from the desktop when I first got the machine (along with a gazillion games, shopping opportunities and other crap in my Start folder), or maybe I should do an uninstall from the Start menu on the left of the screen?

Cheers

BJ

[Maroochydore]

They tell me that there are ways to expunge the OneDrive menace from my computer for good. Has anybody here done it?

Sad to relate that I permanently deleted it but can't remember how. Not being especially computer literate I think I must have used CCleaner or possibly Settings/Apps/Apps and features.

[Infrasonic]

Thanks Infrasonic, that's very helpful. I've disabled the startup option, as you suggest, but I can't find the OD desktop client settings/settings general tab that you've mentioned. That might be because I removed it from the desktop when I first got the machine (along with a gazillion games, shopping opportunities and other crap in my Start folder), or maybe I should do an uninstall from the Start menu on the left of the screen?

Cheers

BJ

You should be OK with just the task manager start up 'disable'.

To minimise MS crap repopulation in the MS Store app settings turn off auto update and manually update each app as required by clicking the three dots top right and downloads and updates. The little down facing arrows will give you individual updates, ignore all the rubbish you don't want and avoid 'update all'...
Edit: If you get it wrong you can pause or stop (cancel) the updates using the X.

[Slarti]

Before doing all of the turning OneDrive off, will the OP have to do something to get his files back?

And will there be unsecured backups of the files in the cloud?

Slarti

[modellingman]

Before doing all of the turning OneDrive off, will the OP have to do something to get his files back?

And will there be unsecured backups of the files in the cloud?

Slarti

The answer to the first question is that it depends.

OneDrive on W10 has several ways of operating. Generally, OneDrive just appears as a folder in Windows File Explorer and anything contained within this folder is sync'ed to cloud storage whenever the OneDrive service is running on the local machine. However, one of the settings available for OneDrive is "Files On Demand" which allows files/folders to be held only in cloud storage (the service automatically attempts to download such a file when any attempt is made to access it). Such files/folders can be identified in Windows File Explorer from the associated blue cloud icon (see https://support.office.com/en-us/articl ... c985aa49b3 for more details). Further settings allow folders (and the files/folders within them) to be held only in cloud storage and be made invisible and inaccessible to Windows File Explorer.

However, both of these cloud-only modes require specific non-default settings to be used, so it is quite difficult to land up with them by accident. I strongly suspect that the OP will have been operating as for the general case with copies of files/folders in the OneDrive folder being held both locally and in cloud storage. Assuming this is the case then probably the safest way of dealing with the files/folders is simply to move them out of the OneDrive folder to a convenient location.

Switching the OneDrive service back on temporarily should then deal with the second question about copies held in the cloud. The service will update the cloud storage to reflect whatever is currently in the local OneDrive folder (which is presumably now empty of content).

A "belt and braces" check on what is being held in cloud storage can be obtained using the web-interface (https://onedrive.live.com) with the same login credentials as the OP's Microsoft account that was used to enable OneDrive.

[Nocton]

You now might like to try Dropbox. Just put in what you want as you want. Totally under your control. I've used it for years with no problems. And if you want to share file or folder with someone else or another of your PCs then it is easy.

[Infrasonic]

You now might like to try Dropbox. Just put in what you want as you want. Totally under your control. I've used it for years with no problems. And if you want to share file or folder with someone else or another of your PCs then it is easy.

I use Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive. My one gripe with Dropbox is the amount of time and resources it takes doing the desktop client updates, which seem to be frequent and network bandwidth / CPU hoggy.
Other than that it's great and it works well with IFTTT if you need to automate it to the other cloud accounts for copies/backups et al. I just manually trigger those as needed so the ransomware issue is minimised.

[GeoffF100]

I do not appear to have any of those problems. I use the old fashioned log in, rather than the Microsoft one, and log into OneDrive via the browser when I want to copy files to it. I log out when I have finished. OneDrive does not appear to have infiltrated itself onto my machine. The sure fire way of preventing any of that nonsense is to use Linux.

[modellingman]

I do not appear to have any of those problems. I use the old fashioned log in, rather than the Microsoft one, and log into OneDrive via the browser when I want to copy files to it. I log out when I have finished. OneDrive does not appear to have infiltrated itself onto my machine. The sure fire way of preventing any of that nonsense is to use Linux.

Presumably,there's been no "infiltration" because you do not have a OneDrive client installed. That could be because you are using Win 7 or earlier, where the client was not bundled with the OS. Alternatively, it could be that you are using Linux and haven't installed this.

Precisely how the OP's "nonsense" has arisen is a matter of speculation. However, his OneDrive folder is not in its standard location, so my suspicions centre on inadvertent dragging and dropping of folders - which I find all too easily done with a laptop and touchpad setup.

I find OneDrive very useful. I keep around 150GB of data sync'd between two laptops in different locations simply by having the OneDrive client on each sync'd to the same OneDrive storage account. One machine has W10 and a tiny 32GB SSD, so the files-on-demand feature means I can see and access all 150GB of data using the File Explorer on this machine but without actually needing to store any of my data physically on it. And, of course, as with all good storage services I can selectively make bits of it available to others on a read only or read/write basis and access it from other devices such as an Android phone.

[GeoffF100]

Presumably,there's been no "infiltration" because you do not have a OneDrive client installed. That could be because you are using Win 7 or earlier, where the client was not bundled with the OS. Alternatively, it could be that you are using Linux and haven't installed this.

No, I am using Windows 10 on one machine. I have just typed OneDrive into Cortana. The OneDrive app launches. It knows my user id, and is asking me to type in my password, which I would not dare do. I am using Lubuntu on another machine, and have not installed a OneDrive client.

[Infrasonic]

I find OneDrive very useful. I keep around 150GB of data sync'd between two laptops in different locations simply by having the OneDrive client on each sync'd to the same OneDrive storage account. One machine has W10 and a tiny 32GB SSD, so the files-on-demand feature means I can see and access all 150GB of data using the File Explorer on this machine but without actually needing to store any of my data physically on it. And, of course, as with all good storage services I can selectively make bits of it available to others on a read only or read/write basis and access it from other devices such as an Android phone.

I've not done it yet but apparently it is possible to have the clients installed pointing to an external drive over USB if you wanted a full offline copy of the cloud contents.
Just make sure you file format externals NTFS, not FAT32/ExFAT (which used to work but no longer, probably journaling related).

[AF62]

Third and most heartfelt Grrrr. Without so much as a by your leave, as I discovered yesterday, OneDrive has automatically uploaded all my most confidential files to the cloud, where all and sundry could probably hack them. I am no Jennifer Lawrence, but my private finances are my affair and nobody else's. Got that, Mr Gates?

I find OneDrive incredibly good, but accept for whatever reason you don't. However for anyone that does use it I would recommend turning on Two Factor Authentication for your Microsoft account - https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/hel ... rification

In fact I would recommend turning on 2FA on any online accounts you have, Google, Amazon, etc.

Personally I find it really helpful that every document or spreadsheet I have been working with on my desktop PC is available when I open the (free) Excel or Word apps on my phone.

I also find it incredibly helpful that I can scan a receipt on my phone using Microsoft's (free) Office Lens app and instantly have a pdf of it accessible on my desktop PC.

But everyone has a choice and here is Microsoft's instructions on how to turn off OneDrive in Windows 10 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/hel ... f-onedrive

[Infrasonic]

I also find it incredibly helpful that I can scan a receipt on my phone using Microsoft's (free) Office Lens app and instantly have a pdf of it accessible on my desktop PC.

I use that as well as the built in scanner facility on Google Drive (hit the + on your phone screen).