Windows 10: Retrieving lost files no longer showing on local drive after uninstalling OneDrive

Hello all,I just made the seemingly big mistake of uninstalling OneDrive from my laptop, thinking that I was previously saving only to local storage and cloud was going unused and hoping for guidance on how to retrieve files that now nonexistent in both places...For context, over the past year I thought I was saving to my local drive and I was simply not using OneDrive, as I had no interest in paying for the storage that I would need to save there. For some reason, my laptop started to use OneDrive as the default saving location in the last week or two, forcing me to change my file path each t

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Recent shortcuts for apps show files on OneDrive instead of local hard drive

I was able to follow the steps and uncheck the "Use Office apps to sync" box but it didn't change Office's behavior. I opened and closed an Excel spreadsheet on my local hard drive. After that, when I right-clicked on the Excel icon pinned to the taskbar, a link to the OneDrive cloud file was in the list of recent files instead of a link to the file on my hard drive.

Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks!

 

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.

 

One drive uninstall and retrieve files

Hi, I'm Elise, and I'd be happy to help with your issue.

If you select to sync folder from OneDrive by following these steps:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/choo...

This will copy all the files from your OneDrive account to your local device.

You can then follow these steps to disable/uninstall OneDrive:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn...

Please let me know if you need any further assistance.

Kind Regards,

Elise