Windows 10: How can deleting a OneDrive online folder "...permanently [remove] it from your PC", as a...

In OneDrive, I selected a folder with a "cloud" icon status, right-clicked, and on the popup clicked the trash icon.A confirmation dialog below appeared. It says deleting "an online-only folder permanently removes it from your PC..." Huh? If it's online only, what exactly will it remove from my desktop PC?I'm asking because I used OneDrive briefly years ago, and not since. Now I have a use for it and want to delete files. I'm having difficulty figuring out what, if anything, is "syncd" with local files, and what is only in OneDrive. This dialog only adds to my confusion.

:)

 

Trouble deleting a folder

Thanks for the suggestion but it says "delete folder failed for E:\....." for each folder I try.

*Confused

Will I be forever stuck with these unnecessary folders? *Oh Well hwell:

 

Unable to remove onedrive folder

Did that but still getting the error msg "The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program." when trying to rename the OneDrive folder. Thanks.

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Was finally able to delete the OneDrive folder.

After doing all of the previous suggestions, I was never able to rename the OneDrive folder and kept getting the error message: "The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program."

I decided to just go ahead and try to delete the OneDrive folder without the safety precaution of renaming it first. Here's what happened:

1. I did a shift+delete to delete the OneDrive folder without putting it into Win10's recycle bin.
2. Surprisingly the contents of the OneDrive folder started to be deleted. It took a long time and displayed a progress bar because it was 85GB in size.
3. Toward the end of the deletion process, it said it could not delete a file because it was open in Macrium Reflect. I did not use Macrium during this boot up so Macrium was running in the background due to some auto start on boot. It gave the choice to skip the file so I clicked that and the deletion procedure completed.
4. But the OneDrive folder was still present.
5. I tried to delete it again and got the same message about Macrium.
6. However, when I checked the size of the OneDrive folder, the 85GB was gone and it was only some kilo bytes in size.
7. I went into Task Manager and did an End Task for the 3 Macrium processes that were running.
8. Now I was able to delete the OneDrive folder.

So it appears that "maybe" the reason I could not rename the OneDrive folder "because a file was open in another program" was because of the auto start Macrium Reflect processes. Too bad that Microsoft programmers could not see fit to say which program it was during the rename process, but luckily did say which program it was in the delete process.

EDIT: I just rechecked and the OneDrive folder is still present. Either it appeared to have been deleted or I missed seeing it after step-8 above. But I'll just leave it since it only contains 1.46 MB of data. Though I'll need to check it later to see if it increases in size.

Thanks to the folks who helped and hope this info helps others,

 

Rename folder to OneDrive asks Confirm Replacement with another folder

Hi Kent,

Welcome to the Microsoft community.

I'm Hahn and I'm here to help you with your concern.

Based on your description, we suggest that you can do it all over again as follows:

• Open OneDrive settings on your computer.
  
• Go to the "Accounts" tab and click on "Unlink this computer".
  
• Restart your computer.
  
• Delete the D:/OldOneDrive folder.
  

You can try renaming the old OneDrive folder to something else, then create a new OneDrive folder and set it as a local folder in the OneDrive app.

If the above does not work, then you can try the following steps:

• Open a "Command Prompt" on your computer (run as administrator).
  
• Type rd /s /q "D:\OldOneDrive" and press Enter.
  

This will delete the "OldOneDrive" folder and all its contents.

• Create a new folder in D:/ and name its OneDrive.
  
• Open the OneDrive application and log in.
  
• During the setup process, choose to change the OneDrive folder location to D:/OneDrive.
  

Please note that this will permanently delete the "OldOneDrive" folder and all its contents, so please ensure that you have backed up all your important data.

If there is anything not clear, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Your Sincerely

| Microsoft Community Support Specialist