Stop OneDrive from Syncing All Contents of My Documents

Rick Elliott 0

I don't want OneDrive to sync the contents of a specific folder in the My Documents folder, namely the My Games folder. While somewhat convenient, it eats up GBs of space that I don't want to use for this purpose.

Since OneDrive COMPLETELY locks down every folder in My Documents (I'm on Windows 11 if that matters) to keep them synced by default regardless of whether I want to do so, I'm forced to try a workaround to keep it from syncing. I'm happy to be wrong here if someone wants to correct me...please do as that's all I want to do. :(

I read several articles where it stated symbolic links weren't synced to OneDrive, yet I sit here today watching the files re-upload to my OneDrive account despite having setup a symbolic link to the My Games directory. Perhaps this method is outdated and I'm out of luck. However, this would be solved if I could simply exclude sub-folders in My Documents from syncing. I'm not sure why this is hard... but it must be as I can't find a straightforward solution to my problem.

I generally don't have a problem with OneDrive syncing and have generally found it convenient, but this is an extremely frustrating exception.

MotoX80 34,856 Reputation points

2024-10-27T22:58:11.01+00:00

I too would like to see this functionality implemented. Other users have also asked for this feature.

See https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/f3e6583c-97cb-ee11-92bd-6045bd7b0481

It would appear that this is on someone's radar.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?rtc=1&filters=&searchterms=178292

Sadly a "Rollout Start: June 2025" is just absurd. It seems to me that this is basic functionality that should have been included from the start.

What about the implementation? 178292 uses the words "group policy". Does that mean that this only applies to the Business version of OneDrive? What about Home users? What if the user is not an administrator?

Can someone from Microsoft please comment on this?
MotoX80 34,856 Reputation points

2024-12-01T13:39:53.9033333+00:00

Can someone from Microsoft please comment on this?

Does anybody know of any way to contact the actual OneDrive development/planning/management team and find out if they acknowledge that this is a major problem for users?
D. Freire 376 Reputation points

2024-12-06T12:51:08.36+00:00

Hello!
Would this help? Or are you looking to something else?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/choose-which-onedrive-folders-to-sync-to-your-computer-98b8b011-8b94-419b-aa95-a14ff2415e85
MotoX80 34,856 Reputation points

2024-12-06T15:34:41.3+00:00

Wrong direction.That sets folders/files that are in the cloud from being download to your local pc.

What everyone is asking for is a way to make files "local only". Don't copy them to the cloud at all.

The problem is that some software uses Documents subfolders to store temporary files. Or files that are specific to the version of the software on that pc. There is no need to back them up for any reason. No reason for them to occupy cloud storage space. We can block them from being downloaded to another pc, but we don't want them copied from the source pc to the cloud in the first place.

I have seen web sites that document how to break OneDrive so that it can't sync certain subfolders, but I don't especially like the idea of doing that. MS should provide an exclude option.

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Stop OneDrive from Syncing All Contents of My Documents

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