Windows 10: Exclude Folders from File History in Windows 10

How to: Exclude Folders from File History in Windows 10

How to Exclude Folders from File History in Windows 10


Information File History was first introduced in Windows 8, and has been improved in Windows 10.

You can use File History to automatically back up versions of your files on a schedule to a location you select to save to. You can select to save backups to an internal hard drive, externally connected drive (ex: USB drive), or you can save to a drive on a network. You can add, remove, and exclude folders to be backed up by File History.

Over time, you'll have a complete history of your files. If the originals are lost, damaged, or deleted, you can restore them. You can also browse and restore different versions of your files.

This tutorial will show you how to add or remove folders to be excluded from being backed up by File History for your account in Windows 10.



Warning Making new backups with File History is no longer supported starting with Windows 10 build 16215.

You can still restore files from an existing File History backup though.

File History will eventually be replaced by a new feature called Timeline.

Update: File History is back in Windows 10 build 16226.


CONTENTS:

• Option One: To Add Folders to be Excluded by File History in Settings
• Option Two: To Remove Folders from being Excluded by File History in Settings
• Option Three: To Add Folders to be Excluded by File History in Control Panel
• Option Four: To Remove Folders from being Excluded by File History in Control Panel

OPTION ONE [/i] To Add Folders to be Excluded by File History in Settings
1. Open Settings, and click/tap on the Update & security icon.

2. Click/tap on Backup on the left side, and click/tap on the More options on the right side. (see screenshot below)



3. Scroll down to the Exclude these folders section, and click/tap on Add a folder. (see screenshot below)



4. Browse to and select a drive, folder, or library you want to exclude, and click/tap on Choose this folder. (see screenshot below)



5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 above if you want to exclude any other folders.

6. When finished, you can close Settings if you like.(see screenshot below)








OPTION TWO [/i] To Remove Folders from being Excluded by File History in Settings
1. Open Settings, and click/tap on the Update & security icon.

2. Click/tap on Backup on the left side, and click/tap on the More options link on the right side. (see screenshot below)



3. Scroll down to the Exclude these folders section, and click/tap on an excluded folder you no longer want to be excluded. (see screenshot below)



4. Click/tap on Remove. (see screenshot below)



5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 above if you want to remove any other folders from being excluded.

6. When finished, you can close Settings if you like.





OPTION THREE [/i] To Add Folders to be Excluded by File History in Control Panel
1. Open the Control Panel (icons view), and click/tap on the File History icon.

2. Click/tap on the Exclude folders link on the left side. (see screenshot below)



3. Click/tap on the Add button. (see screenshot below)



4. Browse to and select a drive, folder, or library you want to exclude, and click/tap on Select folder. (see screenshot below)



5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 above if you want to exclude any other folders.

6. When finished, click/tap on Save changes to apply. (see screenshot below)



7. You can now close the File History Control Panel if you like.





OPTION FOUR [/i] To Remove Folders from being Excluded by File History in Control Panel
1. Open the Control Panel (icons view), and click/tap on the File History icon.

2. Click/tap on the Exclude folders link on the left side. (see screenshot below)



3. Select an excluded folder you no longer want to be excluded, and click/tap on Remove. (see screenshot below)



4. Repeat step 3 above if you want to remove any other folders from being excluded.

5. When finished, click/tap on Save changes to apply. (see screenshot below)



6. You can now close the File History Control Panel if you like.


That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Reset File History to Default in Windows 10
• How to Turn On or Off File History in Windows 10
• How to Select a File History Drive in Windows 10
• How to Manually Create a File History Backup in Windows 10
• How to Add or Remove Folders to be Backed Up by File History in Windows 10
• How to Change how Often to Save File History in Windows 10
• How to Change how Long to Keep File History in Windows 10
• How to Delete Older Versions of File History in Windows 10
• How to Recommend File History Drive to Homegroup in Windows 10
• How to Add History to Context Menu in Windows 10
• How to Create File History shortcut in Windows 10

:)

 

File History won't exclude folders

I just tried to exclude C:\Users\Donny\Downloads using the legacy control panel File History interface. When I clicked "Select Folder" the folder was added to the excluded folders list. When I clicked "Save changes" and went back into the excluded folders
list, C:\Users\Donny\Downloads was not listed at all.

So certainly not fixed for me.

 

File History won't exclude folders

The 'remove this drive' technique appeared to work, but when I checked the drive, the folders were still being backed up. Opened the modern file history settings and the folders were still removed from the backup list. I tried to add them manually to the
excluded folders list and they disappeared like before. After a reboot, and I think opening the 'classic' file history control panel without making changes, the removed folders were back on the list and could not be removed.

I also did the same steps above, but manually deleted the backed up folders from the drive after removing them. Still no dice.

Everything is back to where it was before. Somehow I got a folder to stay in the classic and modern control panel exclude lists, but I can't add any more. One thing to note, the exclude list, I think, must contain folders within the backed up folder list.
I know it makes no sense to exclude a folder that isn't backed up anyway (i.e.-not a subfolder of a backed up folder), but it seems a likely place for some weird settings reset bug to occur.

My guess is that there is some interaction between the modern and classic control panels that causes them to reset these lists, compounded by the added functionality of selecting the folders in the modern settings. Something along the lines of the File History
engine checks the classic control panel for exclusions, then checks the modern settings for inclusions, finds a conflict, and reverts to the previous folder lists. Some type of weird tug-o-war over settings, and the underlying triggers are automatically called
from both sides in non-intuitive (to users) ways.

My solution was to ditch FH altogether and switch over to SynBackSE for versioning. Not a solution for everyone, I know, but there is something fundamentally messed up with FH, and I'd rather not gamble with my thesis backups.

 

"Exclude from File History" does not exclude folder

As I reported in a previous post, File History in Windows 10 keeps filling up my backup drive:

"File History" saves multiple copies of MP3 files (until all available
space on disk is consumed)

To avoid the issue, this morning I purged the music files from the backup drive and then added the folder to the list of excluded folders and libraries as shown below:



Next, I clicked the Run now link in File History and waited for it to finish, only to discover that it is still copying files from the excluded folder, as you can see in the screenshots below -- which simply show the disk usage on the backup
drive File History is configured to use (the second screenshot is a "drilldown" on the ~30 GB
E folder shown in the first screenshot):





Even though I excluded the folder, File History still copied the 30 GB of music to the backup drive.

This appears to be a bug in Windows 8 as well:

File history refuses to exclude a library I selected to exclude.


File History seems fundamentally broken in more ways than one. Or am I just missing something?

 

File History won't exclude folders

Hello,

I see the exact same behavior on my fresh Windows 10 installation.

Excluding folders does not work... it does not matter whether I try to exclude the folder in the modern file history settings dialog or the extended classic Windows dialog. In both dialogs I can select the folder to be excluded but after returning to the
overview, no folder has been added to the list of excluded folders.

In addition there seems to be an inconsistency between the modern and the classic dialog. In the modern dialog, the folders to be backed up can selected by the user. I wasn't able to find the corresponding functionality in the classic dialog.

Am I missing something?

Thanks

 

File History won't exclude folders

I had the same problem, and I solved in this way:

Control Panel -> System and Security-> File History -> Turn off

Settings -> Update & Security -> Backup -> More options -> Stop using this drive

Delete the File History folder in your external drive.

Start using File History again.

After these steps, I can add folders to "Excluded Folders" and they remain excluded. I checked in the actual files and folders saved on the external disk, and it works. So I guess it is important to click "Stop using this drive".

Hope this can help you.