How Do I Delete Files From OneDrive, but Not My Computer?

how do i delete files from one drive but not my computer hi everyone leo notenboom here for askleo.com the original question how can i delete files from onedrive's cloud storage without deleting them on my pc it's actually pretty simple there are a couple of ways to vary depending on exactly what it is you're doing with onedrive what's your intent if you're leaving one drive completely there's one solution if you're planning on continuing to use onedrive there's a different one let's have a look so over here on my windows 10 home machine i'm going to click on the onedrive icon and just bring up the onedrive folder on my machine you can see i've got a few documents here document document 1 document 2. let's assume for a moment that document is something that i want to keep but i don't want to have it on one drive anymore i don't want to have it on white microsoft's cloud servers i just want it on my pc and only my pc well the answer to that is actually pretty simple i'm going to open up another windows file explorer window i'm going to navigate to a different folder in this case i'm navigating to the documents folder that's under my username so you can see that this documents folder does not have this and more importantly onedrive is nowhere in its path this document folder exists completely outside of my onedrive so all i'm going to do is click hold drag and drop so what i've done is i have moved the file out of one drive and into a local folder it has been removed from one drive with one exception now let's take a quick look at what that exception is this time i'm right clicking on one drive and i'm going to click on view online this brings up the onedrive folder in the web interface you'll notice that document is not here document 1 and document 2 still are but document is not that's because we removed it from one drive however over here in the recycle bin well gosh there it is in fact because i've been playing around with this a little bit it's there a couple of times so the catch here is that it's not really removed from one drive completely until you empty the recycled in as soon as i click on empty the recycle bin and confirm that i want that all to be gone it's gone now the file has well and truly been removed from one drive now the other technique i just did a drag and drop here of course you can instead do in my case i'll just show a copy a paste to make a copy of the file in this other folder and then i can go back and safely delete this file it's the same as moving it from one folder to the other as long as the original disappears copy and paste might be useful if you're actually doing this across drives where a move will not automatically delete the original but that's what i recommend for i'll say 99 of the scenarios where this question comes up if you're using onedrive and you want to take a file off of onedrive's cloud storage then what you need to do is move it out of your onedrive folder on your pc to another folder that is not within your onedrive folder structure and you'll have saved a copy for yourself if it matters you then empty the trash to make sure that there's no chance of recovering it online now the other approach that i suggested is a little bit more extreme and that's the approach where if you're no longer going to use one drive if you've decided that one drive is not for you the thing to do is to first go to your onedrive settings i've right clicked on the onedrive icon i'm clicking on settings and over here on account i would click unlink this pc all that does is it removes the association between the onedrive folder on your pc and the onedrive folder online and on any other pcs you happen to be using once you do this you can then return to onedrive online and delete all the files you want now i'm not doing this myself because i want to continue using onedrive but if you have unlinked onedrive from your pc then you can happily delete files from one drive in the cloud and it will not impact your machine it will not impact the files that are stored on your machine now normally and in fact in the article on which this video is based i start with a very important admonition we're deleting files we are about to do things that could potentially uh remove information from your pc if you're not careful you could accidentally delete the file everywhere and lose the copy that you want to keep you know what i'm going to say right before you do any of this backup just back up your machine back up your onedrive folder back up your files back up your machine make sure that if something goes wrong if the file is accidentally deleted in more than one place you've got a backup so that nothing can go wrong nothing that goes wrong will cause you to lose your data now there is one thing that i do need to talk about specifically and that i think is what people are looking for what they want what many people seem to want when they ask this question is they want the file to remain in the onedrive folder on their pc and not have it appear in onedrive's cloud storage that's not how it works that's not something that you can accomplish the whole point of the onedrive folder on your pc is to be a reflection of what's in the onedrive cloud storage if it's in the folder on your pc one way or another it's in onedrive in the cloud the only way is to disassociate somehow that file from one drive if you want to keep using one drive that means move the file out of your onedrive folder if you're no longer using onedrive that means disassociate one drive from the onedrive folder on your pc but there's really no way to keep the file in your onedrive folder on your pc without it also being in the onedrive cloud storage i hope that was helpful for the original article on which this video is based for links for related articles for comments for updates visit askleo.com one two six eight nine one i'm leo notenboom this is askleo.com thanks for watching you

Channel: Ask Leo!

Views: 250,788

Keywords: delete files from onedrive, askleo, ask leo, onedrive, onedrive folder, delete onedrive, onedrive files, backup onedrive, onedrive recycle bin, onedrive online, onedrive backup, onedrive copy, delete files fomr onedrive, delete files form onedrive, delete files from onedrive but not computer, delete files from onedrive but keep on pc, how to delete files from onedrive windows 10, How to delete files from onedrive without deleting from pc

Id: LVUDnvJHb4s

Length: 7min 51sec (471 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020