OneDrive moving Desktop, Documents, Pictures to its own folder!

[DonS]

I have seen this three times now, all of which have proven insanely annoying. Apparently a new feature or option with One Drive?

Desktop, Documents, and Pictures "folders" appear normal, but upon further inspection, the data is actually now stored under the One Drive folder under their own Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders.

Horribly annoying and is causing issues in terms of locating files that now just show empty folders (the traditional Desktop, Documents, and Pictures). I even had a client who did not even have OneDrive installed with this issue.

Anyone have any clue what this new behavior is and how to revert it? I have tried the option of clicking on the new OneDrive folders and telling it to revert to default, but it has only worked for the desktop. Documents and Pictures fail to revert with the error that the folder already exists.

 

[Porthos]

Anyone have any clue what this new behavior is and how to revert it?

It is how one drive backups those folders when users have office 365 and have the use of the 1tb free storage.

 

[DonS]

Thank you for educating me. I am slacking on this information apparently.

 

[Porthos]

Thank you for educating me. I am slacking on this information apparently.

Now the key to educating users to practice file management.
Since those are the only 3 folders backed up users need to move documents and pictures from the download folder to the proper folder if they want them backed up.

 

[Markverhyden]

The folder thing has been that way for quite sometime. But I do agree it's annoying.

 

[Philippe]

How I revert it: Disable the One Drive backup option, select each folder then right-click / properties / location & put it back in c:\users\xxx

 

[nlinecomputers]

The real issue is that not all programs are aware of it. Your My Documents folder can be anywhere but programs have to call the correct variable and not the assumed path.

 

[fincoder]

Your My Documents folder can be anywhere but programs have to call the correct variable and not the assumed path.

That would have to be some nasty old program if it didn't use the library folders properly. It has been common for years to relocate folders like Documents or Pictures to a second drive for storage management with smaller SSDs. I've never come across a program that ignores those relocations.

Old programs might not even use library folders, then it would be the user's responsibility to navigate to the correct save location.

 

[fincoder]

The real issue is that OneDrive backup doesn't work when Outlook data files are present in the Documents folder, you know... the default location for Outlook PST files!

It would be one thing if the PST files weren't synced, but it actually prevents the entire Documents library from being synced!

Anyone have an easy solution for this? I've moved PST files to a different location for some users, but then they aren't backed up. One user I wrote a tiny batch file to copy the PST files to the OneDrive folder on demand, so they can double click an icon to backup outlook files when required (we all know they'll likely forget to do it!).

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

They introduced the "Backup" feature about 2 years ago....but back then you had to turn it on. I love it. Takes over folder redirection, syncs users multiple computers....you know, that's what OneDrive for Biz is for! It's a wonderful thing having my laptop here that I'm typing from...match my desktop computer at the office, and my home computer.

Last summer or early fall an update to OneDrive made it enabled by default.

 

[Philippe]

Btw, is this at least a real backup? Moving files to the cloud isn't without redundancy (another copy somewhere)...

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It's a gray area...to call it a "backup" or not. Some people argue it isn't. I'd say it "for the most part, pretty much is".

*I can burn my laptop right here...light it on fire, watch it melt. I can go get a new Thinkpad laptop, unbuckle the OS, go right to www.office.com, sign in, setup my Outlook, setup my Teams, and "sync" my OneDrive...and BOOM...all of my data is back. oh ..sign into Chrome and sync too. NOW all of my data is back..haven't lost a thing that was important to me.
*OneDrive has revisions. And depending on your settings..."never delete" policies can happen (but not by default, and I'd wager most people never enable that policy). I can get hit by ransomware, and roll back my files easily.
*Microsoft stores your data in multiple/redundant locations...so it's not just 1x thing that could also break.

**However, some people prefer to have backup be by a different/independent party. Say some ransomware evolves that could "kill" revisions in 365. Hey, may be possible, lots of existing ransomware can kill shadow copies/previous versions from your OS.

So there are valid points on both sides of the coin.

A year or so ago, some store owner called me, she had been hit by ransomware. Small 2x computer (quickbooks point of sale) gift shop. Most of her important stuff was in her Documents folder. She didn't have OneDrive, she didn't have any "real" backup...but she did use Dropbox (quite similar to OneDrive). I went into her Dropbox web UI....cleaned things up, she was up and running again, didn't lose anything.

DropBox also grabs use libraries now, I forget when they added it, but last summer or around there I was working on someones computer that used DropBox and it had their Docs, Desktop, and Pics. I was setting up a new computer for her, so went and installed Dropbox on it for her..and saw that it grabbed them.

 

[Philippe]

Thanks, very informative post!

 

[Sky-Knight]

As long as the cloud storage medium has at least 30 days of rollback, I call that a backup. (Onedrive only has this if it detects a crypto, so grey area)

But, for businesses I prefer them to have an ARCHIVE. Should be the same thing, but isn't. Because that word implies at least a year's worth of various points in time to be referenced.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Remember, "retention policies" trump any other settings. I set clients tenants to "never delete" for retention policies.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@YeOldeStonecat I just ran into a problem on my own tenant because of that, it was holding all the things for 7 years and this included mailboxes as soft deleted items.

The problem? Three of them had my name on them, so I couldn't force their deletion without risking my primary mailbox and I needed to get rid of one to make some changes to how my mail works.

Never delete is great! Right up until it isn't... also it took TWO WEEKS to clear the flag. So if you ever run out of space and need to delete stuff, you're hosed for 14 days.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Most of what we do is E plans....so when you phase archiving in....it's reeeeeeeally difficult to run out of space. Haven't run into it with Biz plans either come to think of it. For the needle in the haystack person that bloats their storage from 88 trillion pictures or something....I'd handle that exception to the rule without complaint, as the never delete has just come to be worth it so many times.