OneDrive question

[silverback]

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but I am currently very stressed with my PC failing.
If I have to take the PC back to the shop and need to delete personal files beforehand, when I delete them, do they also disappear from OneDrive the next time it synchronises?

Thanks
Silverback

[HansV]

Yes, I fear the files would be deleted from OneDrive too. So:
1) Disable/stop OneDrive before deleting the files, and don't enable it after that.
2) Make a backup copy first to be on the safe side.

[silverback]

Following our PC being mended, I have another OneDrive question.
The chap who mended the desktop PC preserved all our personal files and they are now restored on the desktop. Following Hans' advice in the previous posting, I disabled OneDrive before PC restoration so now I am puzzled about starting OneDrive up again. Will OneDrive detect differences in the files (I had to use/update the files on another PC while the desktop PC was being mended) and synchronise OneDrive to local PC - or does OneDrive treat the files on the local PC as 'the masters' and so synchronise from PC to OneDrive?
Thanks
Silverback

[HansV]

OneDrive syncs the most recently saved version of a document to all devices; it doesn't consider any device as 'master' or 'slave'. That way you can edit a document on multiple devices and always work with the most recent version.

[silverback]

Another OneDrive question I'm afraid.
I'm getting a warning that one of my files (an Outlook .pst file) cannot be protected. Following investigation, I came across this poorly written sentence which I cannot parse.

The following file types can't be protected: Outlook database files (.pst) and OneNote files that aren't already stored in OneDrive (.one, .onepkg, .onetoc, .onetoc2). To continue protecting the folder, move your OneNote notebooks to OneDrive or remove these items from the folder you want to protect, and then try again

Does this mean unequivocally that .pst files cannot be protected? (Bizarrely, the folder which contains the file OneDrive objects to contains two more .pst files about which it is, apparently, not complaining)
Or does it mean that they can be protected if I move them somewhere else. The actual wording of the error given is

We can't protect ****.pst in the Documents folder. To continue, move this file outside an important folder and try again

If it's the latter, where's a sensible place to put them so I can protect them via OneDrive, please?
Thanks
Silverback

[HansV]

You should NOT let OneDrive sync your .pst files. They are far too large, and they are in use as long as you have Outlook open.
If you sync your entire Documents folder to OneDrive, you should move the .pst files to a folder outside your Documents folder - any folder that is NOT synced by OneDrive.

[Jay Freedman]

You should NOT let OneDrive sync your .pst files. They are far too large, and they are in use as long as you have Outlook open.
If you sync your entire Documents folder to OneDrive, you should move the .pst files to a folder outside your Documents folder - any folder that is NOT synced by OneDrive.

This past weekend I set up a new laptop, including Office 2019. Without asking or giving any choices, the Office installer created a Documents folder inside the OneDrive folder, and put the Outlook folder under Documents. When I set up an email account for a POP3 service, its .pst file went into that Outlook folder.

Then I had to go through that marvelous gavotte of shutting down Outlook and moving the .pst file elsewhere. On restarting Outlook, I got the terse message that the .pst file was "missing". At least I already knew where to find the dialog to point to the new location.

[I also moved the Documents, Pictures, and Videos folders to non-OneDrive locations. I do regular image backups on site and use OneDrive only for sharing files that need sharing. But I digress...]

I have no idea how anyone without extensive prior knowledge of the quirks of Outlook and Windows is supposed to be able to figure this out.

[silverback]

You should NOT let OneDrive sync your .pst files. They are far too large, and they are in use as long as you have Outlook open.
If you sync your entire Documents folder to OneDrive, you should move the .pst files to a folder outside your Documents folder - any folder that is NOT synced by OneDrive.

Still in a mess with OneDrive, I'm afraid.
Following your advice, I have moved the folder containing the .pst files directly under C:, where they are not synchronized with OneDrive. Having done that, the OneDrive settings option 'Choose Folders' no longer gave the error that I had to move a .pst file. Thus I was able to click on 'Start Protection'
My system has gone potty! Onedrive immediately said it had to sync 10500 files. It seems that, while the error was extant, OneDrive wasn't actually syncing the files; having moved the offending .pst files, OneDrive started synchronising. The result is that I now have, for nearly every file in Documents, a copy file i.e.
for every file named filename.xxx there is now a filename - Copy.xxx
The only files which do not have a copy are those which have been created in the time since the PC was returned.
I also note the very worrying fact that C:/users/user/documents is empty i.e.This folder is empty, but ThisPC > Documents appears to be fully populated, albeit with every folder containing two of each file.

I am surmising that this is all somehow due to a mixup of creation dates - one being the date that the file was originally created and (somehow) another one when the mended computer was returned and I restored the filestore.

When I restored the filestore, should I have copied it all to C:/users/user/Documents; I did not do that, instead copying it to This PC>Documents.
I can't work out what the connection between C:/users/user/Documents and This PC > Documents is. If I put a file in This PC > Documents, will it automatically appear in C:/Users/user/Documents?

I have unlinked from OneDrive now. I fear the only way to tidy my filestore is to delete everything in This PC >Documents AND OneDrive, restore my filestore from the location where my PC mender saved it, and then restart OneDrive.
Is this the right way to proceed, please?
Silverback

[HansV]

Is 'user' your Windows login name? Your description makes me think it isn't.

Personally, I very much dislike OneDrive; it usually doesn't do what I want. So I don't sync my documents with OneDrive at all, just like Jay Freedman. I sometimes (reluctantly) use OneDrive to share files with others, and I have my own backup regime.

I hope that someone who has a better experience with OneDrive can tell you what you should do.

[Jay Freedman]

One of the things I discovered while wrestling with Windows is that the Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc. folders directly under the This PC icon point to the ones inside the OneDrive folder, not to the identically named ones in your profile. For example, C:\Users\<username>\Documents is not automatically synced, but This PC\Documents (which is really C:\Users\<username>\OneDrive\Documents) is always synced.

[JoeP]

@jay
Which version of Windows 10? On my PC, under "This PC" all point to c:\users\<username>\documents, pictures, etc. NOT to the OneDrive location.

NOTE: I'm running the latest Insider Preview Build and have been for years. I don't recall ever having the structure you describe.

[silverback]

@jay
Which version of Windows 10? On my PC, under "This PC" all point to c:\users\<username>\documents, pictures, etc. NOT to the OneDrive location.

NOTE: I'm running the latest Insider Preview Build and have been for years. I don't recall ever having the structure you describe.

I managed to stop Onedrive synchronising and then Unlinked my PC from OneDrive. This had weird effects like suddenly making This PC > Documents empty.
Anyway, we cleaned up the PC filestore (we had saved the files we'd updated in the last week) and then restored filestore from where the PC mender had saved our files. Reinserted our updated files, and we appear to off and running again - but with no OneDrive. I have this afternoon produced a System Image and saved our user files as well via AOMEIBackUpper.
Head in the sand in may be, but I don't think we'll be going back to (trying to use) OneDrive.
Thanks for the pointers as usual, loungers.
Silverback

[Jay Freedman]

@jay
Which version of Windows 10? On my PC, under "This PC" all point to c:\users\<username>\documents, pictures, etc. NOT to the OneDrive location.

NOTE: I'm running the latest Insider Preview Build and have been for years. I don't recall ever having the structure you describe.

The laptop came with 1709 installed. I should have run WU immediately, but I installed Office 2019 first. Then Windows notified me that it had downloaded 1803 and was ready to install it on the next reboot. It was after that installation that I noticed all the built-in folders were under OneDrive, although it probably was that way before the laptop was delivered.

I don't know whether this is a general Windows thing or was because Lenovo installed their own image including all their bloatware. I've never seen this setup before, either on my desktop (upgraded multiple times from Windows 7 to its current 1803) or in the VM where I run Windows Insider and Office Insider builds.