How to Stop Win­dows 10 From Sav­ing Files to OneDrive | Guiding Tech

In today's video, we will show you how to stop windows 10 from forcing you to save files to OneDrive, instead of saving them locally.
Cloud storage apps are cool and great to use until they are forced down your throat. What if a person doesn’t want to use it? Or what if they are happy using a different app such as Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.? Fortunately, you can stop OneDrive from taking over your computer.
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[@alpinetutorials]

Microsoft will quickly lose fans to this infuriating one drive. It felt like they were trying to steal my files and make me pay for them. Thanks for super helpful tutorial, you're a star!

[@jackskudlarek3138]

literally how i felt. *buys cpu with 2 tb storage* Onedrive: "that'll be 15$ a month"

[@farahsanda3837]

Yes, i think so

[@rabbiakhalid83]

You're so right

[@MichelleJongbloets]

So true. Not only that but privacy breaches as well 😡

[@Kewlausgirl]

I just bought a new laptop and find it automatically saves to One Drive. I was super excited to see that change! If you only knew the horrors of losing your hard drive back up.... I have my files locally on my desktop PC, but back stuff up to another hard drive, and then back up so my photos and important stuff to one drive as an automatic back up. Then I have just a few important files that I might need on my Google drive (which is the free version) just in case anything happens to my PC (your SSD could fail at any time... Lol) my portable SSD, oh and my USB key too... Which I don't really care about that one. But if anything in IT has taught me: always have a back up of a back up. Plus the best thing is one drive is free if you already pay for a family office 365 subscription. Just stare it with your family, your parents, get them to chip in on the annual fees. This is the move forward to make it easy for folks to automatically save their files to the cloud so if anything happened to their PC, they have a way to get it back. If it was really about money, they would have been more like Apple and do the d*CK move of enforcing it so you couldn't turn the automatic save off lol. But you can sooo.... Just turn it off if you like the old school method. But whether you like it or not, that's the way everything is going now!

[@lemonfork]

This is a life saver! I play the Sims 4 and whenever I download cc (custom content) for the game I always think that it's being downloaded onto my actual computer storage, but it was being uploaded to one drive as well. My storage was filling up quickly! (I had the free plan 5gb). Uninstalling one drive was the best option, all my files are still here and now I can download more cc!

[@lemonfork]

I apologies for the wordy paragraph!

[@brinda2553]

ah another simmer!! same issue here lol T^T

[@JosePArce]

That's exactly why I'm watching this video xD

[@brinda2553]

​@@axellenjomo3099 uninstalling usually keeps the cc, so i wouldn't see how it would make a difference. i had to transfer all of my cc to a hard drive and then once onedrive was disabled (unlinked) for my documents folder, transfer all of it back. lot of work, but totally worth it bc now i can actually use my onedrive for schoolwork!

[@jaydenisfrog9117]

Same here

[@jessdanowski3516]

I have been sitting here fighting with my PC for like a 1/2 hour, and you just saved me and my sanity. Thank you so much for your helpful and detailed video.

[@farahsanda3837]

exactly!!

[@zheng4real404]

Hear Hear!!

[@binxwinx8434]

Onedrive has completely taken over my pc! I thought I had been saving files to this pc, but somehow onedrive has taken over it and now asking me to pay for more storage!! I am so peed off!

[@bhavnarajpoot8787]

Me too what to do

[@hindipoika8768]

I just deleted mine

[@kittybud]

@@hindipoika8768 do you still have your files?

[@hindipoika8768]

@@kittybud yes

[@TheLaTonyaThompson]

IKR it happened to me today!! I was like, there has to be an END to this madness. I knew I didn't have to have the service but wondered how to redirect my saved files to save to THIS PC

[@aphroditeanonymous3638]

They make it so hard to figure it out!!! Thank you so much!!!!

[@stevebusby6618]

Thank you! This is just what I was looking for! My computer has always saved my files to the computer. But for whatever reason, just recently, when I wanted to "Save As," it started going to OneDrive instead. I had no idea how to change it back to save to the recent locations on my computer until I watched this. This video instruction has saved me a lot of frustration and headaches! Thanks again!

[@flyingstars2998]

I give this video a 100/10 for helping me with my One Drive issues. Thank you so much mate! I wish I could like this like 10,000 times in apprication. I can finally view my files without them being mere thumbnails because one drive wanted me to pay for more space.

[@savagetothebones1642]

The dislikes came from all of the Microsoft employees that are fuming right now. Thank you very, very much Guiding Tech! I was about to lose my mind over this load of bullcrap that is OneDrive!

[@lisarkippen2182]

OneDrive uploaded and locked all my files on it's backup site and I no longer have files on my hard drive and I cannot access any files unless I log into the OneDrive Storage. I don't want OneDrive. I just want my files back on my hard drive. Unhappy

[@kaylenedawnbuteaufitnessbu2282]

Me too. Did you figure out what to do?

[@calvinhobbs89]

Login to one drive, save them to a storage drive sb USB an then erase off one drive , I think is how I did it last time , what a pain in the assssss one drive can be

[@LynnTerrySkinnyB]

Know you’re not alone! I kept annoying the virtual assistance until I got a call back and it was helpful... they actually gave me a code to delete it after I pitched a fit!.... didn’t know I’d already deleted it by pure luck

[@binxwinx8434]

Same here.. I hate Bill Gates!!

[@calvinhobbs89]

@@ts757arse system restore , lol

[@Connor_Dempsey]

You are my hero! I've been using this OneDrive for quite some time. Got a new laptop and it was syncing my desktop. For real.... I don't won't my frigging desktop synced. If I want a sync, I'll manually put it in Onedrive or Google Drive. I never knew there was extra syncing in this backup section. GREAT VIDEO. YOU ROCK!!

[@carolyngover3886]

This was extremely helpful, I was getting very frustrated!

[@luanmello9184]

ikr, thank goodness i found this vid

[@bionikpulse]

I literally hate one drive

[@Tampabruh]

And the worse part about it is i get emails threatening to freeze my ability to save files if u don't purchase an expensive monthly or yearly subscription!

[@nishattamanna2372]

Couldn't find myself. You saved my life. Thank you.

[@firedragon8207]

Bro thank you so much I didn’t realize my whole family could see every single photo and download on my pc from one drive

[@OCReiven]

bad boy 😂

[@MixSonaProductions]

Never share cloud with family

[@oatmansrevenge6831]

thank you so much i spent like an hour trying to figure it out

[@Tone-Oz]

This may help others: In Windows Explorer, the 'OneDrive' drive and the 'This PC' drive lead to the same files (For me, 'My Documents' was the concern). Sometimes the file directory includes "/OneDrive/" in the name and other times it didn't (to me). Number of files + folders in each of the directories was the same, also the data amount. I wanted out of OneDrive, and didn't want to pay for extra space so I right-click copied the contents of the My Documents in 'This PC' drive (in Windows Explorer) and pasted to an SSD external hard drive. I then copied it all again as another backup to another HD. Then I 'safety disconnected' both external HDs. Then I went to the OneDrive icon in the task bar and right-clicked to get settings, Backup, Manage backup. At this point I 'stopped backup' as all my files were safely on two external HDs. Doing this lost all files in My Documents (Explorer), as expected. Then, I unlinked OneDrive via the same icon/settings - in blue font it says 'Unlink this PC' (button). Then I reconnected SSD harddrive and copied all that I call 'My Documents' back on to the 'This PC' drive/my Documents. Folder structures all remained the same. After that, I uninstalled OneDrive desktop app via the Windows button with a search for OneDrive. All is good... It has caused me grief not knowing where my files were being saved. One of the best things is that now I can see the file previews in Explorer as they should be seen - As files weren't synced in the cloud, I had lost these previews which was annoying as hell. The 'Status' column no longer has scary red cross icons. Finally, back to work... Hope this helps everyone and thanks for the video.

[@balancemyself]

Hey I want help I signed in with my Microsoft account in pc but the document folder in the one drive what do I do 😢

[@Tone-Oz]

@@balancemyself Hello, I'm not an expert in this at all. I just did what I have to described in my message above And for me now OneDrive is not in my system, thank goodness. It is a pain and is just designed to take money and cause confusion. At this time I don't need it and can't afford it either. I hope this helps.

[@shigmonty]

Watching this video is like the tail end of an ice-cream headache. the relief part. Onedrive has been plaguing me for too damn long!

[@honjohorikoshi]

Praise the lord one drive is finally not trying to hold my files and email hostage! Thanks for the video!

[@robsonnvula9285]

Exactly what i needed, thanks a lot for this video as i was just about to go nuts! Microsoft is really now pushing people to the limit with this forceful arrogant approach on how we "should" use their products. It's about time to seriously start looking for alternatives and bin these evils.

[@ratgenerationx2946]

I have never thought about using a Mac till now.

[@MsMeiv]

Seriously, you've saved my sanity and my life

[@lvp6216]

You are THE MAN, YOU ARE THE MAN.....A DOUBLE Hi-5 with both hands, with Happy Dance Happy Feet...I couldnt for the life of me figure out how to get my document folder and picture folder out of One Drive....I dont know how it got there, and didnt want it there.....My sanity, out the window...others had wanted me to do the impossible, BUT you KIND SIR....THANK YOU.

[@shabrazk5182]

thank you so much, i just un installed one drive once for good as it was showing red and green marks all over the system

[@chamanthapa9506]

Finally a channel worthy enough to be called a tech channel.

[@mohammadsarosh2771]

OMG i was about to have a panick attack thnx alot you saved me haha.

[@omkargidde492]

Thank you so much . This was extremely helpful 😊, I was getting very frustrated. This was exactly what I needed 💯👏👏

[@ulisessantana2792]

I searched "add or remove programs" in settings >> OneDrive >> uninstall. This worked for me

[@khalidrobinson6804]

This has been bugging me for ages. Many thanks 👍

[@WisdomTree3]

FANTASTIC! Thank you. OneDrive has been so annoying.

[@vwolfuart]

Oh my gods, thank you so much! I was frustrated at this point.

[@chrissmith4568]

Currently (Oct, 26 2021), I cannot find any option to "not" save to onedrive. Where you tell us to look, it is simply not there. I have a fresh win install as of 2 days ago, there is no "this pc" anywhere! I have now followed 4 different methods including uninstall...and it STILL saves to onedrive. Very UN-happy with Microsoft.

[@MixSonaProductions]

How could onedrive still work after uninstall

[@user-cx5ni7me6l]

Thanks for this video. Next time i'm probably going to get an apple instead of windows, for the first time, because of that horrible fully integrated onedrive. Now I have multiple maps for everything, and can't find my files sometimes. Thank you for this video! : ) Onedrive is such a disaster in my opinion.

[@BabyGirl_28]

All I wanna do is my photography uni work... onedrive was so frustrating! You saved me THANK YOUUU! :>

[@toolbar2345]

You explained it so well and made it easy to do what I needed. Thank you!

[@javierramires2814]

Men, what a relief to have found your video.

[@presman2760]

It did this and like half my icons were just deleted off my desktop (they were still installed but like it’s still annoying)

[@melhaniegean903]

Thanks bro u saved my life, no annoying notifications anymore

[@SuperBrendanCarroll]

Thanks for your help.Your advice has really solved a problem for me.

[@chaddydaddycomputers8794]

Oh, thank you!!! Damn, thing took over my computer too!!! Everything I put on the desktop was saved to ONE-Fn'-DRIVE!!! The "One Drive" that I didn't want it saved on!!! Thanks again...

[@williamlord2674]

Great video. I tried uninstalling, but for some reason, my PC still wants to extract files to a OneDrive folder. This is the whole things I'm trying to avoid in the first place! I don't understand why this folder even exists after I uninstalled OneDrive.

[@MixSonaProductions]

Wow thats insane So it cannot be avoided?

[@owuwygb3637]

THIS LITERALLY SAVED MY PC THANK YOU KING

[@jbrock8596]

This was a very helpful video, except for the 2:40 mark where you say we can just sign in to One Drive and get "the existing data". I don't want any existing data on the cloud, that is the point. I wish Microsoft would get it through their thick skulls that not everyone wants cloud storage or, maybe more specifically, doesn't trust microsoft with their information.

[@AimeeA222]

exactly! how do we get all our data off onedrive completely and unlink completely and never have to deal with onedrive again

[@OrbitalSnapshots2455]

I make Stop Motion animations and it saves all my 1000s of pictures into Onedrive and it's annoying. Thank you for this.

[@JeffraySzczodroski]

Old video, very helpful information. I can't even send an email because it stored everything from my new computer on it and maxed out the 5G. Keeps pressing to upgrade and locked my outlook up. Thank you.

[@harshsoni8852]

Bro you helped me alot... You take me out from a serious circumstances... Thank you alot bro💖

[@Quintaline]

I always cried,it disturbs me alot. The third option was successful. Thanks

[@davidlegoff1913]

Dude! I thought this would be easy and good following your video but it ended up deleting my information from my computer. It's been a headache getting it all back from one drive because it's been at max storage limit for a bit now. (Never use one drive for backing up when starting your new PC. Just use physical hard drives and save yourself time and money)

[@Dricon1997]

My OneDrive does not look like that at all. Mine is a smaller, white background tab of a few settings. And it has no Backup or anything I can deselect... And it still begs me to pay for storage. I just want my OneDrive to stop syncing my files randomly. If any files should be synced, it should be those I choose. And even that does it not want me to decide.

[@xxcheesethiefxx782]

Thank you! It's so annoying that Microsoft started saving my personal files to my school OneDrive account.

[@msolqq]

This is excellent information and very useful to solve a very infuriating issue. One comment, please forgive me if its not appropriate, but first time I couldn't understand the presenter, so I slowed the rate to .75 and everything was perfectly clear. Thats a great option. Now I will subscribe!!

[@cieloantonette2246]

Thank you! it was annoying that it keeps asking to upgrade to have more storage. I uninstalled oneDrive! Thanks again!

[@sameerdesai4494]

Excellent info.... to the point... no bhankass or time pass... Thanks dude

[@christopherbentley7289]

My OneDrive has been straining at the bit for some time now, 'kindly' informing me that I should upgrade my account (ie., pay them!) to get more storage, so this advice is beginning to come in handy, thanks Varun. I'll see how I get on with it over this next few days.

[@createwithakash7360]

My problem solved with option "Unlink this pc" Thanks brother...!

[@kelkiiii]

thanks a ton. honestly, i don't mind that onedrive is a thing, cloud storage is great and I think everyone should utilize it. however, the way it's implemented kinda sucks. the fact it shows up and pretty much replaces the actual physical folders in the machine makes it really weird to look at when you want to do stuff. in my case i was doing some file creation/moving in git bash and my file explorer didn't reflect the changes i was making on the command line. so fucking annoying.

[@KyleC3577]

Thank you this whole time my pc has been saving to one drive and I didn't know until I ran out of space the hell must I do with 5gb

[@tristramemerge]

One of the non-friendly thing microsoft done in its existence. People mostly don't want ONE Drive i just installed it because notification is annoying now trying to restore and making my files back to where it is located. Making my PC dirty. tsk2x. Thanks for the video.

[@xiaoshuili]

Thank you so much. Onedrive was driving me crazy

[@alexunlv]

Any tips on stopping Word from Autosaving? For example: When you do NOT have One Drive activated, you can have a Word template opened, make changes to it, then click Save As and save as a different file. However, b/c OneDrive is activated and auto-saving, now the original file has been modified with the changes and those changes have been saved to the original file. A very annoying thing. Any way to stop this?

[@patrickmba9614]

Thanks . I felt a bit annoyed by Onedrive. This helps a lot

[@2684dennis]

thanks man, my one drive got floaded, and no emails couldnt get in and microsoft try to get me extra space for a monthly ammount, now i got it disconected and can be happy again.

[@leahhooker8559]

Thank you! this was exactly what I needed

[@farahsanda3837]

Excellent! this tutorial is very helpful. So now i know how to unlink onedrive from my laptop after i was confused for a few days ago

[@yashsri807]

Was really helpful and straight forward. Thanks!

[@ArzoCanada]

THANK YOU!!!! I was hitting my head into the wall. Now that I have unlinked, can I delete the data from one drive and still have it on my PC? I am out of storage on one drive

[@JayBaggio]

This is great thanks! What about for android mobile? How to unlink and how to remove files on oneDrive but not on the phone?

[@borntobegame]

What happen if my file folder save at one drive for example my cyberpunk idk why it move to one drive I wanna move my file folder to c drive can I do that?

[@Nancielee09]

Thank you! I work with protected health information and was losing my mind, because I don't want it saved to the cloud. Subscribing because I'm sure you've made some other videos I can learn from. Thanks!

[@SureshBabu-de5wm]

Thank you, this one drive is causing lot of problems to me, Hope it will solve my problem.

[@Suzuki-wi5dh]

Thanks man helped a lot !!! Liked and subscribed

[@Shimoda248]

Good and simple video presentation. Thank You, You answered all my questions on how to limit One Drive when saving files.

[@Tenken89]

Thank's so much this was driving me insane!

[@cadcTV]

thanks for this, I was tired of my images not loading in windows explorer cus my one drive was full.

[@hashee888]

Thank you very much brother.... Facing this issue in couple of days...

[@daleo1475]

what if i want to stop it but after wards pick the files i want to sync/upload to onedrive to have it on my phone can i do that? If so how?

[@omarhernandez7707]

Be blessed bro, thanks for the tutorial

[@seanmadden3620]

Thanks so much - exactly what I was looking for

[@VirgoMagna]

You forgot to tell people, in your first method (Settings, Backup tab), that if they uncheck the folders, the content will be wiped out of their PC.

[@MixSonaProductions]

This

[@khushipitaliya5047]

Thank you so much for the explanation...finally I was able to get rid of onedrive trying to conquer my pc

[@AlBergstein]

Thanks for a very clear and quick overview.

[@connieparker7733]

Thank you! I was getting very frustrated.

[@felicianomorales1052]

Thank you so much! this was really helpful!

[@tristramemerge]

Just a tip for those who experience this and puzzled if your files are deleted because you deleted your One Drive files (online) you can retrieve all sync files in the recycle bin (but if you empty your recycle bin before that my condolences). All files that are in your Original Files Location are gone so what will you do is to open your C: drive then find user/USER/OneDrive, so what you will do is to drag One Drive folders to the default/original location example (One Drive Documents ---> Documents)

[@antoniobacic5674]

Fantastic explanation, really very helpful! Thank you so much! Always annoying MSFT engineers' ideas ...

[@ValorantRivals]

Beautiful, they updated the settings so it's harder to stop the sync, but OneDrive is so annoying!! They pretend to have free options like Google but with forcing us to use OneDrive it advertises to get OneDrive upgrades. It's not free it's just annoying.

[@danielisgamer]

Ok but how do I do it with folders inside the document folder? I'm trying to unsync certain programs/games that I know I won't be sad when I have to redo

[@ratgenerationx2946]

Thank you! One drive has made a mess out of my pc 🖥

[@Pawansbp123]

Thank you Man. Very helpful. It was so frustrating.

[@mindsetmatters13]

All the files in that folder I stopped backup for are now not available on my PC

[@AnonYoBizness]

THANK YOU OMG!!! EVERYONE YOUR HUNT IS OVER!!!, THIS IS THE VIDEO TO WATCH!!!!

[@zline5184]

I was just checking Bluetooth setting in my PC and saw a notification on onedrive and without thinking just clicked on and accidentally backup my pc desktop and about 18GB size. It will take a long time plus never want to backup items in the desktop. When click on Onedrive icon >Setting> Backup>Manage Backup and unchecked all the checked items but still see OneDrive syncing and worst almost all the folders in the desktop is now gone! Dislike they way Onedrive work probably will stop paying for it. Is there a way to put a full stop to Onedrive syncing instead of pausing?

[@DJ-sw5hg]

thank you for making it so simple

[@DuttonWebb]

THANK YOU!!! Gah this was so annoying to try and figure out.

[@chasbo2]

Really helpful, thank you so much!

[@air.e.aragon1876]

Thank you!!! Even after setting it to not auto upload it kept doing it so i just wanted it gone! 😩💖

[@shalinirana5637]

Bhai bht badiya video hai 🥺❤️❤️ Very helpful ❤️❤️❤️

[@lx5421]

Thank you it was always trying to sync 23gb worth of files. This helped me a lot thanks

[@NikolaCebic]

Thanks a lot, I found a way to take my school's account off the OneDrive app on my PC.

[@JyoKaPa]

Thanks a ton. Those forced backups are super annoying!

[@spiandbeyond]

First one made it so I had to go through OneDrive to retrieve any of my files. Second didn't work - those options didn't exist in my OneDrive settings. Finally uninstalled. Didn't realize I would lose all my files. I had to go to OneDrive and download everything all over again. There's gotta be a better way.

[@dragonwarrior4300]

The video was truly a saviour

[@frenchistic4598]

everything got deleted from my desktop once I stopped the back up. How can we not let that happen

[@interstellar-renegade7.591]

wish whne i first set up pc there was an option for onedrive to not sync and all cuz its annoying thank you soo much for vid dude