Windows 10: file history include exclude lists are erratic in Windows 10

Directories are added spontaneously to the include and exclude list. Some of these directories existed in the past but no longer exist. Adding some entries generates additional entries while adding others has no effect (that is, the directory is not added).

:)

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.