Windows 10: How to add "Documents" folder to File History backup

I don't need a complete backup of my hard drive...just specific files, etc. - like my Documents, Pictures, etc....any way to do this with the "File History" backup option?

:)

 

Backup These Folders in File History

My Pictures and My Videos folders are inside the My Documents folder. In File History all three folders are listed in the Backup These Folders list. Does this mean that because of this, files in Pictures and Videos are backuped twice? Once when backing up
My Documents and once when backing up My Pictures and My Videos (included in My Documents)

 

File History Folders in Documents

I tried tinkering with File History and couldn't get anything to work: my issue is that I don't want to save all files within my documents folder. I only want to backup very particular files; however, after removing all of the preset folders and added
what I wanted, I found that any folders that are housed within my documents folder don't appear in the backup options. The only time I can see them in my list is when I re-add the documents folder. If I remove the folder again and try to run the backup, there
is an unspoken error and it just doesn't run the backup. I have numerous folders under documents that have been created by various programs and I don't want to go through each individual folder to exclude them nor have to worry about a new folder popping up
and automatically being added to my backup prior to excluding it. Any ideas?

 

File History not backing up OneDrive Documents folder (but correctly backing up other OneDrive folders)

I have my Documents folder and all my photos located in my OneDrive, so that they are always backed up to the cloud. I have previously successfully also used File History to back up all my user files and
libraries (including the OneDrive folder) to a local external drive and it has worked fine for many years. However, recently I noticed that there is something strange happening with the Documents subfolder in the OneDrive folder of the File History backup
when I went to restore a previous version of a file in OneDrive\Documents and the 'Restore personal files' view showed
only a small number of files and folders, not the whole of the current contents of the OneDrive\Documents folder. Moreover, instead of the most recent automatic backup date showing (effectively) the current state of the OneDrive\Documents folder,
it only showed files that had been modified since the previous automatic backup date. If I manually went backwards in time through the backups, I could see other files in my OneDrive\Documents folder that had been modified previously and were still currently
in that folder, but for some reason were not showing in the 'Restore personal files' view of the most recent backup.

I thought something must have gotten out of sync with the File History database, so I stopped the file history service, deleted the
%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory folder, deleted the File History backup folder from the external drive and then rebooted the PC. As expected after rebooting and going into Control Panel -> File History it showed that
File History was off and there was no File History drive set. I then created a new File History backup to the external drive and checked that there were no 'excluded folders' set. Absolutely everything else got backed up correctly in the new backup, except
for just the OneDrive\Documents folder, which wasn't created at all in the new backup. For example, my OneDrive\Pictures folder backup correctly had all 22.3GB of data comprising 13,067 files and 255 folders, exactly as expected.

I then modified a test file in my OneDrive\Documents folder, clicked on 'Run Now' in File History and then checked the backup. There was now a Documents folder showing in the OneDrive folder, but it contained
just that one test file I had modified.

I tried the suggestion I had seen in a previous discussion thread about this problem of manually adding the full OneDrive\Documents path to the list of backed up folders. It was already there in the list,
but I tried adding it anyway. It made no difference and the folder is still not being backed up.

Why isn't File History backing up all of the folders in OneDrive and selectively refusing to back up just the Documents folder?