Item saving ONLY to OneDrive

[AppyLover]

I have read several articles about getting rid of OneDrive and at one point, I thought it was gone. It was not on my start menu and it was not in my list of Programs Files. Then it came back and is saving things only to itself and not to my pc. The most recent example is I transferred a couple of pics from my phone to my pc through gmail to my msn email. When I opened the email in Outlook using Chrome, I got a popup message on the lower right corner of my screen saying OneDrive was backing up and I cancelled it immediately. Another popup appeared asking me to confirm the cancellation, which I did. However, when I went looking for the 2 pics, they were only in OneDrive, not on my pc. So now OneDrive is again showing in my start menu and has my Desktop and Pictures folders in it, but, again, is not in my Program Files. How is this happening? I have taken all the steps in the various articles; check to be sure that my default backup is my pc, uninstalling OneDrive, going through the Settings and removing the 3 items that OneDrive was backing up, yet nothing seems to work. My biggest concern is that there are files in OneDrive that are not on my pc. I have not deleted the files in OneDrive because I am afraid I will lose something valuable. AT one point, I moved everything out of OneDrive to my pc before I completed what I thought was a complete removal of OneDrive. I am attaching various screenshots I made during the process of removing OneDrive. I hope they help. Now it's back again and It's driving me crazy. I really need help. Thanks.

 

[Wolfie]

Hi AppyLover,

you can remove OneDrive completely by going to Settings > Apps > Apps & Features and click on the OneDrive icon and then remove!.

BACK UP ALL YOUR IMPORTANT FILES AND PICS ETC TO AN EXTERNAL MEDIUM BEFORE YOU REMOVE IT!,

 

[AppyLover]

Hi Wolfie. Thanks for your help.

Why do I have to back up my OneDrive items? Is that what you mean? Aren't they already on my pc? It makes me think that all files are ONLY saved to OneDrive, not to both OneDrive and my pc. Which is what I saw happening with the files I transferred from my phone. But I set my storage to go to my pc, so why isn't that happening? This is really scaring me. I have started moving my OneDrive files to my pc. Will that work as a backup? I read another article that said if I deleted files from OneDrive they would also be removed from my pc. Why would that happen?

A long time ago I used to belong to www.tenforums.com but that is no longer in existence. Is this www.windowstenforums.com the replacement for it? I had to register again as a new user.

 

[Wolfie]

Hi AppyLover,

I advised you to back up your files for that "just in case scenario", if you remove OneDrive, it may well delete any file related to it!. I don't know if simply copying them to the same drive on your PC will save them?.

 

[AppyLover]

Thanks again Wolfie. That makes perfect sense to do an external backup. I read in an article that OneDrive is the default backup site for Windows 10. Does this mean that it ONLY backs up to OneDrive and not my pc? Or is there a setting I must set so that it also backups to my pc? In doing the MOVE from OneDrive to my pc, it appears that everything was deleted from my desktop and about 99.9% of my items in MYPC. However, it appears that almost everything is still in OneDrive. I will do the external backup as you advised. And I guess I will try to COPY the files from OneDrive to MYPC also. But I still don't understand how OneDrive works. Can you help me with this? Thanks.

 

[Wolfie]

Here is the typical 1 minute description by MS:

Sync files with OneDrive in Windows - Microsoft Support

Learn how to install and use OneDrive to sync files between your Windows device and the cloud.

support.microsoft.com

And here from a more informed website:

https://www.dummies.com/computers/operating-systems/windows-10/how-does-onedrive-work-in-windows-10/