"Free Up Space" Issues with OneDrive for Mac

Copper Contributor

I am having an issue with OneDrive's "Free Up Space" issue on my Mac. While in OneDirve in Finder, I see a folder that has the icon for locally available files that I want to only be in the cloud and not take up space on my hard drive. I right click on the folder and select "Free up space" expecting it to change all the icons to the "online only files" icon with the little cloud. The folder then displays the syncing icon and when looking at the folder the actual files change to cloud and then start re-downloading again and one by one changing from the cloud icon to the "locally available file" icon. I have tried the same action on both individual files in the root of my OneDrive, folders, and files within folders and I cannot get any file to stay as an online only file. I have restarted my computer as well as relaunched finder and I still get the same behavior. Any help you can provide in solving this problem would be greatly appreciated!

10 Replies

Is your OneDrive client up-to-date? If not, worth trying updating the client.

@NiX260 I'm having this issue as well.  Were you able to fix it?

I am having problems with this as well. @sdolson494 any fixes yet? onedrive client does update itself automatically.

@sdolson494 I am having same problem, are there any improvements?

I see this is a relatively old post, but I am having the same trouble, could you fix it?@NiX260 

@NiX260   Same issue here.  any fix?

Yes, uninstalling OneDrive, clearing cache, restaring computer and then reinstalling worked for me.

Hello, @joorn 

 

how exactly did you clear cashe?

@NiX260 I have just noticed that the storage used by OneDrive is NOT NECESSARILY the one presented in Finder information panels. I too was baffled by this but turns out macOS may be tricking us. I set almost all my files to "online-only" and even though OneDrive still reports 50Gb being used, the size ON DISK is just 1.3Mb.

 

Screen Shot 2020-10-22 at 13.36.09.png

 

Yes. This is confusing. Maybe someone who knows more about macOS engineering can enlighten us.

Make sure the Finder extension is enabled (System Presence > Extension > Finder Extensions and make sure OneDrive is checked)