How Do I Store Files on My Computer and Not OneDrive

How do I store files on my computer and not OneDrive? Hi everyone, Leo Notenboom here for AskLeo.com. Here's a question I got, and it's actually representative of a very common confusion. One question I had was how to store files on my computer hard drive instead of using OneDrive. Is there any special way to do that? The question should have a simple answer. And to be honest, for the most part, it does. However, Microsoft is not one for simple answers, and they've definitely set up OneDrive in ways that can very, very easily confuse. So, let's talk about one rule. There is one simple rule. If you remember nothing else from this video, remember this. OneDrive manages files that are anywhere within the OneDrive folder. OneDrive does not impact any files outside of the OneDrive folder. That's it. That is exactly what OneDrive does and does not do. It is both simple and, quite literally, accurate. We'll confuse it in a minute, but that is the rule, and it doesn't change no matter the confusion. Files you place anywhere within the OneDrive folder on your PC will be managed by the OneDrive app on your PC. That means they'll be synchronized with OneDrive.com online and to other computers using the same OneDrive account. It also means that changes made on computers using the same OneDrive account will appear on your computer. And of course, deleting is a change. So deleting a file in one place will delete it in all places. Deleting a file within your OneDrive on another machine or online will cause it to be deleted from your PC. Files that are not placed anywhere within the OneDrive folder, in other words, anywhere else, are not affected by OneDrive. Period. So if you want your files and folders to be unaffected by OneDrive, don't put them in the OneDrive folder. It's that easy. So I do need to be very clear first about what I mean by the OneDrive folder on your PC. The OneDrive folder is like any other folder on your computer's hard disk. While its full path is typically hidden by Windows File Explorer, you'll always find it in a normal location like any other folder. Let's flip over to Windows 11, and I'll show you exactly what I mean. So I'm bringing up Windows File Explorer, and we're going to go ahead and click on my OneDrive folder. This is the OneDrive folder that is currently being synchronized with the Microsoft account that I've signed in with. You'll notice it says OneDrive Ask Leo Personal. That really doesn't tell us anything about where on the computer this folder actually is. However, if we click here, you'll notice that there's a, I don't know if it's a tooltip or another pop-up, up that comes below the address bar that shows you the exact location of your OneDrive folder on your PC. On this machine, that folder is c colon backslash users backslash askleo backslash OneDrive, where of course, askleo is my login ID here. Normally, you don't see that. Normally, it's hidden by all of this other stuff, this askleo personal and this OneDrive askleo personal And like I said, even in the address bar, it doesn't show you the full path. It's this thing that pops up down below that shows you the full path. So what do I mean then by anywhere within? Well, literally any file or folder that is somewhere within this users.askleo.onedrive folder. Any files I place in here are going to be acted on by the OneDrive application. If I create another folder, like I've created this Secured in Cryptomator folder for a previous example, those files are all within the OneDrive folder. If we take a look at the full path, you'll see it's C, Users, askleo, OneDrive, and then Secured in Cryptomator. That implies these are within the OneDrive folder, and they are going to be managed by OneDrive. The key takeaway here is that if you take a look at the full path to something, anything on your computer, be it a folder or a file, if it starts with C colon users, your username, OneDrive, it's in the OneDrive folder. And it's probably going to be managed by OneDrive. Okay, so what does it mean then for something to be anywhere else? Well, any file whose location does not begin with the path to this OneDrive folder, is not within OneDrive. OneDrive is not going to touch it. So, as an example, if I were to just go up to C colon, users, askleo, and I create, I don't know, another folder. I'm going to go ahead and call it not in OneDrive. And I'll go ahead and just sort of create some silly temporary file just because. Okay. Okay, this folder and its contents have nothing to do with OneDrive. OneDrive doesn't look at them. It doesn't pay attention to them. It doesn't synchronize them. It doesn't step on them. They are completely unrelated to OneDrive. Okay, so far, so good. In fact, you can see here, if we take a look at the full path to this file, Users, Ask Lee, not in OneDrive. OneDrive, the folder OneDrive is not listed. This folder does not exist within the OneDrive folder and therefore it is not affected by OneDrive. Seems pretty simple, don't you think? Yeah, Microsoft couldn't let that stand. You'll notice that my example here does not include the popular Documents folder. Here's the problem. If you turn the OneDrive backup feature on, The Documents folder is moved from outside of your OneDrive, where it kind of looks like it is here, right? This looks like Users, Ask Lee, and then Documents. It's not in OneDrive. If you turn the backup feature on, this folder and its contents are moved from outside of your OneDrive folder, where they are not managed by OneDrive, to inside of your OneDrive folder, where they are managed by OneDrive. So if I double-click on OneDrive here, you'll see that there's a Documents folder here. That's because at some point in the past, I had the backup feature turned on. Now, you'll notice I said sometime in the past, because I've since turned it off. But there is still a Documents folder here in OneDrive. And it has stuff in it. Here's where it gets even more confusing. If you turn on the backup feature, which is incredibly easy to do without realizing it, OneDrive moves your documents and your documents folder into OneDrive. Then if you later turn it off, it does not move things back. It doesn't. It leaves things where they are. Your shortcuts will revert to being the documents folder you intend, the one that's not in OneDrive, But the stuff that it copied into OneDrive stays within OneDrive. So you'll actually end up with two Documents folders after having done this, exactly as I have here. I have a Documents folder that lives within my OneDrive because I've turned the backup feature on and then off again. And I have my traditional Documents folder that does not live within OneDrive. I told you, Microsoft could not let simplicity stay in place. It is confusing. But that rule that I talked about at the very beginning still holds true. OneDrive manages files anywhere within the OneDrive folder, and files outside of the OneDrive folder are not impacted by OneDrive at all. The difference here is that by turning on the backup feature, OneDrive reached out to your Documents folder and pulled it within OneDrive. And in fact, it's not just the Documents folder, there are other folders that are affected by this feature as well, but Documents is perhaps the most common, the one that's easiest to run into, and of course the easiest to explain in this example. So yes, it is a confusing mess. While I recommend you turn the backup feature off, or avoid turning it on in the first place, the fact is, no matter what has happened, the files within the OneDrive folder are managed by OneDrive, and if you don't want files managed by OneDrive, all you need to do is make sure that they are not within the OneDrive folder. Now, it gets, I'll say, worse because applications have become increasingly aggressive about storing things in your OneDrive folders. Microsoft Office is a great example. Saving a newly created document in Microsoft Office does default to storing it in your OneDrive folder. Again, it's within the OneDrive folder. Therefore, OneDrive's going to manage it. You then can explicitly choose a different location. But it's usually an inconvenient sequence of clicks in the Save dialog to make sure you're choosing a location, a path that is outside of the OneDrive folder. Let me show you real quick. I'm going to go ahead and close this File Explorer and bring up Word. We'll go ahead and come up with a new document. Hi. And look at File. Well, there is Save As. So what is it doing? Right, the default here is to save it in my OneDrive Personal. That's not what I want. However, instead, we can click on Browse, which will bring up the traditional File Save As dialog. And yes, that File Save As dialog is still defaulting to OneDrive Documents, that Documents folder that is within my OneDrive folder. If I want to save this file outside of OneDrive, I need to manually navigate to a place that is not that. So that means that I would go to C, Users, Ask Lee, my current username, and I would, in my example, I would go ahead and go to my Not In OneDrive folder. Not In OneDrive Document. Poof, it's been saved, and it is not within OneDrive. Now, it's a pain in the butt to have to do that for every document you might want to save, because sure enough, if I say New Blank Document, and I put something else in it, I now say File, Save As, it's defaulting back to OneDrive. It really is trying to push us all to use OneDrive as the place to put it. I do have an article and a video, How Do I Disable OneDrive in Office 365? You can, if you want to, go into Options, and I believe it's in Save, you can now specify different default locations. You can see here, the default location says OneDrive Documents, change that. Change that to be whatever you want that isn't within OneDrive, and you'll save yourself a step every time you save a document. I've shown you Word, Microsoft Office in general, because it's probably the most complicated. However, other apps may be defaulting to saving things within the OneDrive folder. All you need to do, I make it sound simple, but all you need to do is check the options in whatever application is doing that and see if they have a way to specify a different default save location that you get to specify. Therefore, you can specify a location that is not within the OneDrive folder. So bottom line after all of this, here's what I do. I use OneDrive. And it makes sense for how I work. These files are synchronized with OneDrive Online and other computers I've got signed into the same OneDrive account. I even have things shared with some of the folks that help me do Ask Leo. I save everything else outside of the OneDrive folder. Explicitly. These files live on my PC only. At the risk of getting overly repetitive, remember the rule. OneDrive manages files that have been placed anywhere within the OneDrive folder. OneDrive does not impact files anywhere outside of the OneDrive folder. As long as you pay attention to where your files are being saved on your PC, it's all within your control. Now, the companion article for this has a few more examples that I think might be useful. So I'll encourage you this time to visit askleo.com slash 178431. More examples, links to related articles, comments, updates, and more. As always, I'm Leo Notenboom. This is Ask Leo. Thanks for watching.