Windows 10: File History Cleanup

"Could not clean up File History data""Element not found."I'm attempting to clean up my file history however, I'm faced with that error.Cleaning up my file history would be very useful because it takes up 30% of the space on my D: drive.I've used sfc /scannow and it has located corrupted files and repaired them however it did not fix the problem.I'm on Windows 10, version 21H2Also, sorry if this post has already been made multiple times. I just really want my storage space back.

:)

 

File History Cleanup

File History Cleanup not working, whatever version of files and folders age selected, it pops up: "Could not clean up File History data, Element not found."

I have the Feature update to Windows 10, version 2004. How to make the File History Cleanup work? Please advise.

 

File History on/off status issues

Hi,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

1. Are you able to access your missing Email files on Web mail?
   
2. Which drive was selected to set up your back up on file history?
   
   
   

Probably the files might have been deleted when you perform the cleanup operation.

However, you may try the suggested steps to recover files from file History.



Restore files from File History

You may also refer this

Video link for more information regarding restoring files.



Hope it helps.

Muralidhar

Microsoft Community Moderator

 

Windows 10 File History Exclude and Cleanup interaction

I think I’m stuck. I don’t think I can recover the space in File History occupied by the Outlook 2016 files without losing all the other files. So far as I can see, all files already in File History are treated the same, regardless of whether their folders
have now been put into an Exclude List. So a Cleanup action which deletes Outlook files is going to delete all other files of the same age.

This is what I have done:

I have five user accounts on this PC, of which four have Outlook 2016 installed, and two of those have a lot of email activity and are what have filled up File History.

I put \username\Documents\Outlook Files\ into the Exclude List for the four user accounts which run Outlook. I ran Cleanup in the two Outlook-heavy accounts asking it delete anything over two years old; I chose that time period because I want to keep everything
(except Outlook) for ever, and I only started this backup system about 14 months ago when I moved to Windows 10.

Cleanup reported that it found nothing old enough to delete and WinDirStat shows the Outlook files are still in File History. The Cleanup text says ‘all other files and folders, such as versions that were excluded or removed from your libraries, are also
deleted’ so I had hoped that it would (a) delete old files from folders in the Include List (but it would find none) and (b) delete all files from folders in the Exclude List. However, it seems to have kept anything younger than the specified time, even though
its folder is now in the Exclude List. I suppose that that is reasonable – you might want to keep old copies of files which you no longer want to backup – but that’s not how I understood what it says.

I closed all user accounts and restarted the PC. No difference.

What to do next?

I could choose the most drastic Cleanup option and delete all versions of files except the latest, but I think that would leave a lot of Outlook files still in File History. And it would defeat the purpose of File History, which is to enable recovery of
earlier versions of files.

Is there no way to free up the space occupied by all the Outlook files?

I could take my current backup drive offline and buy another big hard drive and start backups and File History on it all over again, without the Outlook files this time. Would I then be able to recover files from the File History on the drive I have taken
offline?

Any suggestions?

I note that you seem to have to administer File History at the user account level. One of my user accounts has administrator privileges but from within that account I was unable to add folders from other user accounts to the Exclude List.