OneDrive

[Barrie Greed]

I need help wresting back control of my wife’s laptop from the clutches of OneDrive.

Her Lenovo laptop is somehow running Windows 11 and has Office 365 installed. Somewhere along the way OneDrive seems to have taken control of the laptop to the extent that if I try to create a file on the laptop OneDrive copies it to the cloud and then treats the cloud copy as the prime copy.

My plan is to make sure everything currently on OneDrive is copied to the laptop, delete everything on OneDrive and then kill OneDrive. My problem is I have no idea how to kill OneDrive.

Can anyone enlighten me?


Barrie Greed

[terrie]

Barrie...

I can't offer specific help because I've never used (and will never use) One Drive and, I'm running Win7/Pro BUT!!!


I wanted to let you know that you aren't alone with this issue. I've read about this very thing in other forums. I'm going to try and see if I can find the thread I'm remembering and if so, I'll report back...




Terrie

[Barrie Greed]

Terrie


Thanks. I steer clear of OneDrive myself which is why I have no clue how to get it to leave files alone.


Barrie Greed

[Bo Aakerstrom]

Here's Microsoft's instructions: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...8-6efb09f944b0

I have mine permanently paused, so I can access any synced files whenever I want to.

[Steve Rindsberg]

That confirms my suspicion: that you could just uninstall the thing (Control Panel, Programs & Features). At least in Win10. The link doesn't address Win11 ... over to you for confirmation on that, Barrie.

But to reiterate what link points out, you can still upload/download files to/from OneDrive if you wish. After removing the OD app, you use your browser instead.

This is more or less what I've been doing for a couple years; the OD app is either removed or disabled, but putting stuff up on OD via brower's kind of convenient at times. Passing files to colleagues/clients whose locked-down email won't let them receive attachments, sharing photos with friends/family, moving files from my computers to the iPhone/iPad, stuff like that.

Note: If you want to send links to people in order to share files on OD, don't use its own feature to do the email. That works if and ONLY if their OD login email address is the same as their regular email address; a great setup if you want to make it easier for hackers. Instead, let OD create a link that you can email using your own email program. This will work regardless of the recipient's email address.

Same thing is true of Dropbox and probably most of the other sharing gadgets.

[Barrie Greed]

Originally Posted by Steve Rindsberg

That confirms my suspicion: that you could just uninstall the thing (Control Panel, Programs & Features). At least in Win10. The link doesn't address Win11 ... over to you for confirmation on that, Barrie.

But to reiterate what link points out, you can still upload/download files to/from OneDrive if you wish. After removing the OD app, you use your browser instead.

This is more or less what I've been doing for a couple years; the OD app is either removed or disabled, but putting stuff up on OD via brower's kind of convenient at times. Passing files to colleagues/clients whose locked-down email won't let them receive attachments, sharing photos with friends/family, moving files from my computers to the iPhone/iPad, stuff like that.

Note: If you want to send links to people in order to share files on OD, don't use its own feature to do the email. That works if and ONLY if their OD login email address is the same as their regular email address; a great setup if you want to make it easier for hackers. Instead, let OD create a link that you can email using your own email program. This will work regardless of the recipient's email address.

Same thing is true of Dropbox and probably most of the other sharing gadgets.

Steve


I have simply unlinked the account which seems to do what I wanted. OneDrive no longer seems to be live.


Uninstall does appear as an option for OneDrive on the right click menu in the start menu in Win 11 but I have not explored it further as unlinking did the trick for me.


At the moment I don't see a need for the browser option.



Barrie Greed

[Steve Rindsberg]

>> At the moment I don't see a need for the browser option.

For sure; if you don't store files on OneDrive, there's no need for *anything* it offers.

[woody649]

Like Dropbox, Box, pCloud, and other free cloud storage services, OneDrive is useful for when you'll be going on the road and you want to have access to certain files from wherever you're going to be. It's also useful for making files that are too large to send by e-mail available to friends, colleagues, or clients.

I use it rarely, but I do use it.

[Steve Rindsberg]

All that. And more: I don't know whether all of them have something like this, but with Dropbox, you can send someone a file request. They get a link to a folder that only they (well, anyone with the link) can use to upload a file to the dropbox folder you specify; the folder is read-only to anyone but you.

We used to do something similar with FTP transfers; you can create upload-only directories. Even the person who uploaded the file can't see/edit/download it.

[terrie]

My sister uses (or at least used to) yousendit and it worked well for her. I'll have to ask her if she's still using it...




Terrie