Computer files on OneDrive, and files saved locally

[paulb203]

TL;DR Summary

Does removing OneDrive remove your locally saved files?

I was on a chat with a Microsoft agent yesterday to resolve an issue related to OneDrive.
I recently finished college, and my free 365 account had been deactivated a few months ago. But the shortcut link for it still appeared when I went to save a document. I wondered why that was still there (not realising it was just a shortcut link; when I clicked on it I was invited to log into my college account which I could no longer do), and why my personal OneDrive wasn't there. I asked him to resolve this.

He couldn't remove the link, said it was a bug, then decided to remove OneDrive from my computer and reinstall it to see if that would remove the link.

My first question; if your locally saved files are synched with your OneDrive, and you remove your OneDrive account, does this remove your locally saved files (normally)?
Second question ; if you merely delete a file from your OneDrive, does this remove that file from your locally saved files, if the two are synched?

Then the agent said he was going to create a new user profile for me and transfer all my files to that profile.
Then we got cut off. When I looked in both the user profiles all my files were gone.

A second agent said there was nothing he could do. The removal of the OneDrive account automatically removed the locally saved files because the two were synched, so he said. I'm now wating for a callback from his manager.

Is the second agent correct?

Last thing. Just before I got in touch with them in the first place, I subscribed to 365 Personal. Which made me wonder again why, when I went to save a document, I didn't see my personal OneDrive, I only saw the link/shortcut for my deactivated college OneDrive.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If it is, as claimed, a bug, I don't see how we can tell you how it will behave. Maybe how it might, but that is different.

 

[pbuk]

My first question; if your locally saved files are synched with your OneDrive, and you remove your OneDrive account, does this remove your locally saved files (normally)?

It depends on whether the file is set to "Always keep on this device" or not. As the files have disappeared, we can assume that this was not the case.

Second question ; if you merely delete a file from your OneDrive, does this remove that file from your locally saved files, if the two are synched?

Yes, otherwise they wouldn't be synced. You can restore the file from the OneDrive account (if you have access to it of course).

Is the second agent correct?

Without a full transcript of the conversation and full access to your account data it is impossible to say, in any case how would it help you if they were not?

Do you really, really, REALLY need these files? If so your best bet is probably to pursue this through your college's IT support, although they are probably quite busy this time of year: if I were them I would probably say "we told you you would lose access to your college MS365 account and you should save any data you needed, we can't help you now".

Last thing. Just before I got in touch with them in the first place, I subscribed to 365 Personal. Which made me wonder again why, when I went to save a document, I didn't see my personal OneDrive, I only saw the link/shortcut for my deactivated college OneDrive.

Last things first: this is because you haven't linked your personal OneDrive account to your device. To do this, click on the OneDrive icon (the cloud) in the system tray of your Taskbar.

.

 

[jedishrfu]

Have you ever emailed copies of the files to anyone?

You might be able to recover the copies.

On MacOS, they have an optimize storage option which when used will maintain selected files on iCloud. If the setting is off then copies of the files are maintained on your local disk.

I routinely backup my machine via Timemachine and discovered that it doesn't backup iCloud files when the optimize storage setting is enabled. I had to turn it off to make sure they would be backed up.

Another trick I do is to mail key files to myself so there is a snapshot in my email account.

 

[paulb203]

If it is, as claimed, a bug, I don't see how we can tell you how it will behave. Maybe how it might, but that is different.

Thanks, Vanadium. The Msoft agents tried, for hours, to remove the shortcut link (to my deactivated OneDrive college account) but couldn't. It was only after a few hours of trying one agent told me it was a bug. The second agent said they can't remove it BECAUSE it's a bug.
Q. Is the bug down to Msoft, given that it's a OneDrive shortcut link?
Q. Could Msoft remove it? Are these agents just unable to remove it due to their limited tech ability? And rather than get a more qualified tech person from their team they just fobbed me off?
I Googled, 'Can all bugs be remove?' The Google AI overview result said most bugs can be removed.

 

[paulb203]

It depends on whether the file is set to "Always keep on this device" or not. As the files have disappeared, we can assume that this was not the case.


Yes, otherwise they wouldn't be synced. You can restore the file from the OneDrive account (if you have access to it of course).


Without a full transcript of the conversation and full access to your account data it is impossible to say, in any case how would it help you if they were not?

Do you really, really, REALLY need these files? If so your best bet is probably to pursue this through your college's IT support, although they are probably quite busy this time of year: if I were them I would probably say "we told you you would lose access to your college MS365 account and you should save any data you needed, we can't help you now".


Last things first: this is because you haven't linked your personal OneDrive account to your device. To do this, click on the OneDrive icon (the cloud) in the system tray of your Taskbar. View attachment 352099.

Thanks, pbuk.
I just created a test file, marked it "Always keep on this advice", saved it locally to my documents, and, having signed into OneDrive, it was automatically saved there too. Then I went into OneDrive and deleted it, to see what would happen. This automatically deleted it from My Documents also. Have I misunderstood the "Always keep on this device" feature? I thought it meant the file will remain on the device always (unless you delete it from your local My Documents)? I thought it would remain local even if I deleted it from my (synched) OneDrive. Or even if I deleted my OneDrive account.
It seems strange to me that deleting something like OneDrive, an app, would cause your locally save files to be deleted.

 

[phinds]

I absolutely DESPISE one-drive. It screws up your local file system and I sometimes can't figure out where files are. I quite using it almost right away.

 

[paulb203]

It does seem complicated for something that is supposed to be user-friendly for the average user. I'm now tempted to get my 365 refund (within 30 days of subscribing), buying Word for £120, and not bothering with cloud back-up, just go back to backing up on flash drives (and double backing up very important files by also emailing them to myself).
Are you now using iCloud, or something similar?
Oh, I'm also considering trying Google Drive again, although the first time I had a look at that it looked complicated, and ugly.

 

[paulb203]

Update. A manager called me back last night. Someone for whom English was not their first language. I can barely follow tech speak in good English but this was excruciating. He eventually elevated the case and I am now (half) expecting another call from them on Tuesday.
Oh, and I just realised my photos and videos are gone (I was so focused on my Word documents at the time of the fiasco).
I naively stopped copying files to flash drives when I first started using OneDrive over a year ago. So it's a year's worth of stuff they've deleted.
What level of tech expertise are these 'agents' supposed to have?

 

[paulb203]

Update. A manager called me back last night. Someone for whom English was not their first language. I can barely follow tech speak in good English but this was excruciating. He eventually elevated the case and I am now (half) expecting another call from them on Tuesday.
Oh, and I just realised my photos and videos are gone (I was so focused on my Word documents at the time of the fiasco).
I naively stopped copying files to flash drives when I first started using OneDrive over a year ago. So it's a year's worth of stuff they've deleted.
What level of tech expertise are these 'agents' supposed to have?

P.S. I've contacted my college. They didn't sound optimistic, but asked to contact a tutor and have a data request form filled in (so it might not be completely hopeless that end).

 

[AlexB23]

It does seem complicated for something that is supposed to be user-friendly for the average user. I'm now tempted to get my 365 refund (within 30 days of subscribing), buying Word for £120, and not bothering with cloud back-up, just go back to backing up on flash drives (and double backing up very important files by also emailing them to myself).
Are you now using iCloud, or something similar?
Oh, I'm also considering trying Google Drive again, although the first time I had a look at that it looked complicated, and ugly.

Yeah, I would say keep a copy of your files (back up every 3-6 months on a flash drive) in tandem with OneDrive, or ditch OneDrive. Also, paying $150 for Word is not necessary, as LibreOffice can save Word files, and is free and open-source.

 

[DaveE]

I sorry your dealing with this. In the future, create our own backup plan. The automatic stuff from MS, Google, Apple, etc. works great until it doesn't. It's just not reliable IMO.

 

[pbuk]

Ooo there's some interesting stuff here, and quite a lot of unnecessary FUD.

Q. Is the bug down to Msoft, given that it's a OneDrive shortcut link?

If by "down to MS" you mean "is this bug [assuming it is a bug] MS's fault" then yes, OneDrive is a MS product and any bugs in it were created (and/or not resolved) by MS.

If by "down to MS" you mean "must MS repair the effect of this bug on my computer and/or data?" then no, no product is guaranteed bug-free. The most they could be liable for (in most conventional jurisdictions) would be the amount you have paid them for the product, less the value of the utility you have derived from the software ignoring the bug - in other words, nothing.

Q. Could Msoft remove it?

Possibly, but this might involve an update to Windows rolled out to billions of users at a huge cost. They are not going to do this just to help you, but it might be included in a future maintenance release.

Are these agents just unable to remove it due to their limited tech ability?

Possibly. Personally I would never give first line support access to my machine or data that was not backed up elsewhere.

I Googled, 'Can all bugs be remove[d]?'

That is a meaningless question, and asking technical questions on search engines does not guarantee a correct answer anyway.

Have I misunderstood the "Always keep on this device" feature?

It sounds like it - perhaps a better name for it would be "keep a copy of this file/folder on my device synchronised with the copy in the cloud" and then it would be clearer that if you delete the file from the cloud, (or from another device synced with the cloud) it would also be delted from your device.

I thought it would remain local even if I deleted it from my (synched) OneDrive.

No, this is not the case. It would however be recoverable for 30 days (for a personal OneDrive, possibly more from your institution's OneDrive) from the OneDrive recycle bin online (and probably from your local recycle bin too).

[I thought it would remain local] even if I deleted my OneDrive account.

Yes, files/folders set to "always keep on my device" on a PC/Mac will remain there if you delete your OneDrive account (the OneDrive app on a mobile device works differently).

It seems strange to me that deleting something like OneDrive, an app, would cause your locally save files to be deleted.

You need to be careful with the word "app". The word "app" is generally used to refer to an application which (oversimplifying) has exclusive control over its own data and usually runs on a device such as a mobile phone, tablet, television, toaster etc. running a locked-down operating system such as Android or iOS.

Applications running on general purpose computers running general purpose operating systems such as Windows, macOS or Linux are generally called 'applications'. The data for these applications is controlled by the operating system.

Unfortunaly both Apple and MS have confused this by using the word "Apps" for application software in their current OS UIs, presumably a case of the marketing departments forcing bad decisions on the technical departments. In Windows the "All apps" screen used to be called "My programs".

I absolutely DESPISE one-drive. It screws up your local file system and I sometimes can't figure out where files are. I quite using it almost right away.

For balance, I don't despise OneDrive; it has never screwed up my local file system (but see "top tip" below); I always know where my files are and I use it every day on different devices where it increases my productivity tremendously. In particular I have never lost any data I did not want to lose in the 15 years I have been using it, whereas in the 25 years that went before using dedicated back-up software I don't think I ever successfully recovered any data that I had lost.

Top tip: if you have more than one Windows computer do NOT select the option to "synchronise your documents with the cloud" (or whatever it is called at the moment) - this WILL mess with your file system and your mind. You can check the setting by looking at "Manage Backup" in your OneDrive settings - mine looks like this:

I sorry your dealing with this. In the future, create our own backup plan. The automatic stuff from MS, Google, Apple, etc. works great until it doesn't. It's just not reliable IMO.

Any backup plan works great until it doesn't, and I think that for most users the "automatic stuff" is much more reliable than a plan devised an operated by one's self.

 

[Rive]

for most users the "automatic stuff" is much more reliable

Yes, it can do the backup silently, regularly: nice and tidy.

... so silently that I just noticed that I totally forgot the fine details of the management of my NAS. There was no trouble: no reason to open up the console - so I forgot most of the details...
=> always take notes of the important parts. That's a kind of a backup too.

Regarding OneDrive, Cloud and the whole buzz: this morning (after an unscheduled, forced restart, by the way) just noticed that even that 'yellowstickynotes' thingie which I use mostly only to hold copypaste stuff, started to complain about not being logged in.
Come on, to where and why? For a stickynote??? What's wrong with this shiny new world???

/rant off

 

[phinds]

What's wrong with this shiny new world???

It's built by Microsoft

 

[paulb203]

Update. Microsoft insisted there was nothing they could do. But the college has finally let me in to retreive my files. I'm actually glad it happened now as it forced me to learn a bit more about 'computery' stuff, which, as you'll have gathered by now, I'm pretty ignorant of.