Windows 10: My files are synced with OneDrive. How can I retrieve them?

My desktop files are synced with OneDrive by mistake. Now all my files are in the OneDrive cloud, and I can't open them. I don't want to sync my files. How can I retrieve them?

:)

 

Files not syncing to OneDrive

Hi,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

I understand that you are facing issues not syncing properly with OneDrive.

I suggest you to refer the troubleshooting steps in the article
Fix OneDrive sync problems and check if it works for you.

For more information, you can check the article to
Sync files with the OneDrive sync client in Windows.

If you are still facing the issue, I suggest you to get in touch with the OneDrive support team.

Sign in to OneDrive.com from any browser, click the ‘?’ help icon on the top banner of the page and select
Email OneDrive support. Submit your question and follow the prompts to request support.

Hope it helps.

Nikhar Khare

Microsoft Community - Moderator

 

OneDrive Placeholders are coming back, now called On-Demand Sync




"At Ignite 2016, Microsoft has just announced that it is bringing Placeholders back to OneDrive on Windows 10. Now, they are not called Placeholders anymore — Microsoft is renaming the feature to “On-Demand Sync” which makes a lot more sense than “Placeholders”.

The company demoed this feature at Microsoft Ignite today, and it works just like it used to previously. As you can see in the screenshot above, the files stored in OneDrive weighed in around 9GB, but the actual size on disk was only around 3MB which is really neat. Of course, this feature isn’t anything new as it was available back in the Windows 8 days. However, Microsoft removed the feature with Windows 10, and after lots of waiting, they are finally coming back.

In case you are not familiar with OneDrive Placeholders, it’s a pretty neat feature which lets you see all of your OneDrive files on your computer — but they are not actually downloaded on your PC. When you open them, OneDrive will download the files on-demand, saving your local space which is really useful, especially if you have a PC that doesn’t have a lot of storage.

While Microsoft didn’t announce when exactly On-Demand Sync will be available to OneDrive users, we suspect it will be available with Windows 10 Redstone 2 — which is expected to arrive early next year. "

OneDrive Placeholders are coming back, now called On-Demand Sync

 

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.