Windows 10: Lost OneDrive Files/Pictures

Good Day Forum,

I recently purchased a new desktop and transferred all the files from my old computer to new computer, and had my new computer linked to outlook account so onedrive was there etc, first time doing that.


I copied all my files onto my desktop.


A while later I saw on the the icons on the desktop that it looked like some of them were linked to the cloud.


I tried to remove desktop from cloud but couldn't figure it out. I mistakenly thought if I just delete the files from within OneDrive they would take them off onedrive but they would remain on my desktop. Boy was I wrong, everything quickly deleted from my desktop and I've lost over a decade of pictures and other files.

This is what I have done so far:


I have found recycle bin and recovered a few files that aren’t very important. From One Drive on computer I haven’t found many useful ways to recover. However when I sign into OneDrive on browser, I follow the below steps:

1-setting

2-options

3-restore your OneDrive



Here is shows me many files/folders etc. I selected everything to restore. I can now see the folders that once existed in the browser OneDrive but the majority of the folders are empty, the pictures seem to have not recovered.


I've tried tor recover a few times and sometimes then the folder disappears again. I'm pretty confused at this point.

I found this website:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/restore-your-onedrive-fa231298-759d-41cf-bcd0-25ac53eb8a15

......that states albums aren't recoverable which seems unbelievable.



There has to be some way to recover. I am really regretting linking the computer to a microsoft account at this point.

I know with google you can get a link and download everything that was there at a certain date, i am kind of hoping for something like that.

Any help would be much appreciated.


Thanks and Regards,

Robert

:)

 

Onedrive

Hi Hiatt,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



I suggest you to refer the article Find
lost or missing files in OneDrive for more information regarding the missing files.



If the issue still persists please follow the steps to contact
OneDrive support for further assistance on this issue.

1. Login to OneDrive.com.
2. Click the ? Help icon on the top banner of the page.
3. Select Email OneDrive support for the further assistance.

Muralidhar

Microsoft Community Moderator

 

Problem with location of Pictures library after making pictures available on OneDrive

Thanks Rhina

I did what you suggested but it ended up making OneDrive the Pictures library. This may have something to do with the way i originally moved the Pictures folders to OneDrive. I probably should explain:

Because there already was a (fairly empty) Pictures folder under OneDrive (automatically set up I think when transferring a few Ipad photos to PC via OneDrive) I had moved the top level Pictures folders into D/users/myname/OneDrive rather than moving
the Pictures folder itself. This was probably a bit stupid but I subsequently moved the top level Pictures folders into that pre-existing Pictures folder on OneDrive and that's how we got to where we are today.

To continue after that diversion. Following the restore you suggested, the pictures folder under Libraries was still wrong but it looked a lot better ie it was no longer offering me a choice of locations for Pictures folders and, instead was just showing
me all the top level folders for what it (wrongly) thought was the Pictures folder. But it was still not appearing directly under This PC.

My next step was to go into Properties option for Libraries/Pictures. Here I simply added the correct location D/users/myname/OneDrive/pictures and deleted the location D/users/myname/OneDrive which at that time was the current location.

So, on the Positive side:

• Libraries/Pictures now shows what I would expect ie my top level Pictures folders

But, on the negative side:

• Pictures still does not appear under This PC, unlike Documents, Videos, Music etc
• in the Photos app, if I go to Folders option, it shows the folder as OneDrive, not OneDrive/Pictures even though, if i go into "choose where to look" it is correctly showing OneDrive/Pictures as the location. Obviously i can still get to the photos I need
  but it's an extra unnecessary step
  

That's where i am currently.

 

Quick Access not searching Pictures folder

Summary, that last suggestion didn't work.

• I moved the pictures to another folder temporarily.

• Then I tried to remove the Pictures folder with option one at Add or Remove Folders from This PC in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials. Even after rebooting, the Pictures folder remained.
• So I tried using option two. Same thing: reboot >> Pictures folder still there.

• Since there were no troubleshooting steps for this scenario, just for the heck of it, I ran through the restore steps. Copied some pictures into the Pictures folder, ran a Quick Access search and initial problem remains: Searching all of QA doesn't find any files in Pictures folder, running search on just the Pictures folder does. I want to run a global search and find matching files in any/all of the Documents, Music, Videos, and Pictures folders.

That article dates from 2015 and I'm guessing is out of date. I hope it didn't create potential future problems in my registry.

Bottom line: I'm still looking for a fix.