Windows 10: OneDrive stole all my pictures off my computer and I can't find them

I went to look in a folder I have on my desktop for pictures, and it only had a shortcut to OneDrive. I've removed OneDrive from my computer, so I went to OneDrive.com and signed in, but my pictures are not there. Have I lost them for good? I'm so upset.

:)

 

Windows 10 - OneDrive

Right click on the app and one of the properties has an option to not automatically start it. Uncheck, restart the computer, and it should stop. If you want to go another step further, find the OneDrive app in the start menu, right click on it and uninstall.

If that is still insufficient, there is a batch uninstaller for OneDrive available online. I can copy the code here if you need it.

 

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.