Windows 10: Onedrive setting for Pictures folder changes to 'always keep on this device' at random

I've used Onedrive for many years to store my pictures in the cloud, while allowing access through a quick download when I want to see a particular picture.


For the last several months, Onedrive it eternally trying to download every picture to my various laptops. All of these laptops Surface and similar have less than 1 TB of storage, so they cannot replicate the OneDrive space fully. Some have significantly smaller storage capacity than the total of my pictures library.


I've followed various suggestions to remove the Pictures folder from the Photos app, including resetting the photo app as if it had never been run. All to no avail.


It feels like some update to Windows currently on Windows 10 2004 has fatally broken the experience. The problem was happening in the previous release, so this is not a v2004 problem.


Any thoughts?

:)

 

Location on Documents folder and Pictures folder has been changed to OneDrive

Instead of unlinking and uninstalling OneDrive, you probably should just change its auto save behavior.

Use the OneDrive app settings to change where your files are saved by default.

In the Notifications area at the bottom of your Windows screen, right-click the OneDrive icon and click Settings. You might have to click Show hidden icons to find OneDrive.

In the Settings box, on the Auto save tab, under Documents and Pictures, click the list at Documents or Pictures and pick the default save location you want.

This PC only - When you create a file, the Documents or Pictures folder under This PC is the first-choice location offered to save it. The file is not saved to OneDrive unless you do so separately, and it is available only on the PC you used to save it.

OneDrive - When you create a file, the first location offered is within the Documents or Pictures folder under OneDrive. Because these folders sync to your PC, files you save there are available on your PC, even when it's not connected to the Internet. And
you can use any device with an Internet connection to access your files.

Note: No matter which default setting you choose, you still can select the save location you want each time you save a file. When you click Save for new files or Save As for existing files, click OneDrive or This PC and then pick a folder to save your file
to.

Find and move your files

The Documents and Pictures folders exist in both This PC and OneDrive, which might make them easy to mix up. If you've mistakenly saved a file - for example, you save a file to the Documents folder in your PC instead of the Documents folder in OneDrive, use
File Explorer or the OneDrive app to drag the files where you want them.

From the Start menu, click the OneDrive tile to open the OneDrive app built into File Explorer.

In the file list on the right, browse to find the file you want to move, and drag it to the correct folder in the folder list on the left.

 

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.

 

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.