How to get rid of old Onenote files in Onedrive
I've been using Onenote for many, many years and over that time I have collected several unused files that seem to be un-deletable on Onedrive. I have deleted some of them within Onedrive from time to time but the names seem to remain. Here is what I see. When I click "Files" in One drive I see folders and under that documents which contains my only current Onenote database. The one I use. But, then I click "home" and see six old unused data base files that cannot be deleted. When I click on some of them the screen says "Sorry, something went wrong - Item may have been deleted by another person" Another file will say "This item might not exist or has been deleted". I am the only one who uses this account. I'm not sure what HOME is or what its function is as it doesn't show any folders or files that are active. It only shows these abandoned Onenote databases that nothing can be done with. So, Is there a way to clean this up or is it just not worth the effort. Since I don't know what the function of Home is I'm not sure if it matters. Thanks for any enlightenment.
finding photos by date on One Drive
On the All Photos page the search field states: Find photos by date, tags, location and more. However, when I type in a date it shows zero results even though I have many photos with that date on my OneDrive. I use the same format OneDrive uses. For example: Dec 24, 2023 Any suggestions?
The difference between backup/mirror and move
The terminology used by Microsoft to describe what OneDrive does is seriously flawed. To most people, the concept of backup means duplicating files to another location or archive file. That is a backup provides a mirror copy of files being backed up. OneDrive doesn't backup or mirror files, it moves them to the cloud. They are no longer available offline. You can of course disable syncing which is also wrong terminology because files are not synced, they're moved, which is a copy operation followed by a delete. No problem. You can turn off folder/file syncing and copy the relevant folders/files to your hard drive so they're accessible offline. I then uninstalled OneDrive to make certain. The trouble is, a few days ago my Outlook 365 broke because of a webview2 error which made editing drafts unusable. No problem, I did a repair which didn't fix it, and finally uninstalled office and reinstalled. When I reinstalled office, it also reinstalled OneDrive with the default settings, so OneDrive promptly reenabled folder redirection and the files/folders on the local drive disappeared. 12 months' worth of email, a bunch of documents, gone. No file date/time check to determine the direction of synchronization so that newer files replaced older files, no intelligence whatsoever. I won't quote what I said when I found out because there might be ladies present. Luckily my email service uses MAPI so some time in the future I'll have my emails back, I hope. But updated and new files are gone. Did I have a current backup? I did until someone borrowed my backup drive for something they thought was more important. It wouldn't have mattered if OneDrive had left the newer file copies alone, but the files on OneDrive had all the old date/time stamps from when I turned OneDrive off and that was it. Then there are the little things like if folder redirection was done properly so even the command prompt was appropriately redirected. Not so with OneDrive. Amateur. Backup should not mean my files are moved so there is only a single copy left, ditto with synchronization. So not only is the wrong terminology used, but the implementation of OneDrive also has major room for improvement which may never happen. I also have a MacBook Pro and while I'm much more conversant with Windows, Mark Russinivich's Sysinterbals tools etc, and have done extensive Windows application debugging. I would hope my experience is simply due to ignorance about OneDrive, but I that must be true for a lot of people. It's far from foolproof.
OneDrive Taking up space on C: even when nothing is being kept on device.
Recently got a new device and had all my files on the previous device synced to my OneDrive. The C drive has about 120 GB of my data (including OS) but when I check my Disk space, I only have 5GB remaining out of 256. However, OneDrive seems to be taking about 150 GB on the disk even though all the files have the cloud icons on it.
OneDrive suddenly became empty after university storage policy change Is recovery still possible?
Hello everyone, I am looking for technical guidance regarding a serious OneDrive for Business issue under Microsoft 365 Education. Environment - Microsoft 365 Education tenant. - University-managed account. - OneDrive for Business. - My account is still active and I can sign in normally. What happened On July 16, 2026, I signed into my OneDrive and discovered that my entire "My files" folder was empty. I verified the following: - I am signed into the correct account. - "My files" is completely empty. - The OneDrive Recycle Bin is empty. - "Restore your OneDrive" does not show any mass deletion event. - My OneDrive site is accessible, but there are no files. - I unfortunately do not have a complete local backup. A few days later, my university informed students that they had reduced the OneDrive storage quota from 5 TB to 30 GB due to a Microsoft/provider policy update. I suspect my OneDrive contained more than 30 GB because I had stored backups from my previous computer together with years of academic, personal and work files. However, I would like to understand whether exceeding the new storage quota could actually cause an existing OneDrive site to appear completely empty, or whether this suggests another issue such as: - OneDrive reprovisioning - Site replacement - License reassignment - Site deletion - Storage migration - SharePoint issue - Other administrative problem The university initially described this as a temporary Microsoft incident, but later told me that the files had been deleted because of the OneDrive application, without providing any technical explanation. I have already asked the university IT department to investigate: - Deleted Sites in SharePoint Admin Center - Second-stage Recycle Bin - Retention policies - Previous OneDrive site - Licensing history - Possible restore options My question to Microsoft experts is: 1. Can a storage quota reduction (5 TB → 30 GB) ever make an existing OneDrive appear completely empty? 2. Are there other administrative scenarios that could produce this behavior while leaving the account active? 3. Is there anything specific I should ask my Microsoft 365 administrator to verify that is commonly overlooked? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated because these files represent several years of academic, professional and personal work. Thank you very much.
Missing Files
Previously, I had been using Onedrive to save data on it. I didn't have a lot of data but some folders, files, etc... Last week, on my Mac, I installed Onedrive and it was active. Today, after I signed in to my account, my files were missing. Some of it was cache when I synced it with my Mac. I know stuff was there. Now, after I sign in, there is folders there but they are empty. These folders were not there earlier. There is whole bunch of files in the recycle bin which I didn't put there. Some how the cached files ended up in the recycling bin. I am not able to install Onedrive anymore on the Mac. What is going on?Onedrive sooo annoying but great a same time
I have an some what unwanted computer issue here with Microsoft Onedrive! I have Office 365 and use Onedrive however, it has deleted over 5,500 pictures (yes I have backups and yes I deleted them off OneDrive HOWEVER these pictures were on my computer first so why does Onedrive delete the files even one my PC is the question - is there some setting to prevent this). However, this is so annoying, especially with documents, and IF you stop syncing a folder, OneDrive will delete that folder from your PC - why, especially since the folder was originally on my computer first. So it "seems" Onedrive does things without our consent people tell me BUT I say there must be a setting - anyone know where it is?
