Windows 10: How can I remove a folder from OneDrive sync without deleting it

Hello,I have a 4GB Virtual Machines folder in my Documents folder, and OneDrive is complaining and sending notifications every 10 minutes.I read on the support articles on how to remove a folder from sync, but all that does is delete the folder from my computer and keep it in OneDrive...How can I stop OneDrive from syncing a specific folder without deleting it?I did check the settings, and in 'Back up important PC folders to OneDrive', there's only the option to stop backing up the entire Documents folder, not one folder.also how does this make sense?

:)

 

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,

 

OneDrive Sync Issue

Honestly, I don't understand why you haven't already tried to boot with WinPE or other live disk and manually remove the file? This example using Macrium WinPE boot disk, download Macrium Free and let it create a boot disk for you. Option to create one is shown automatically when you launch Macrium first time:

1. Switch to C: drive
   
2. Change the working folder to your OneDrive folder
   
3. Check that the file has no Read Only (r) and System (s) attributes set. As the file name in your case is quite long, you don't have to type the full name. Use the *.* wildcard to replace any number of characters in file name and any extension, in your case command attrib .849C*.* should be enough
   
4. If r and / or s attributes are shown for the file, remove them with command attrib .849C*.* -r -s
   
5. Check that attributes r & s are removed
   
6. Delete the file with del .849C*.*

(Steps 3 & 5 not necessary; step 3 because removing attributes as in step 4 removes them if set but does no harm if not set, and step 5 because the attrib command works for 100% sure if no error messages are given.)

The file should be removed now. You can test with command dir .849C*.*, it should not be shown anymore.