Remove additional OneDrive account on Mac

Hi Paul,

 

Thanks for posting the question on our forum.

 

According to your description, I suggest you try the following steps to clear all OneDrive account information, then you can sign into Personal account to sync Personal OneDrive again:

1. Close OneDrive.

2. In Finder, press COMMAND +Shift+g.

3. In the window that opens, enter ~/Library and then click Go.

4. Search OneDrive.

5. Delete all folders and files which names include com.microsoft.OneDrive.

6. When you open OneDrive again, it may let you type account to sync, you can sign into with your personal OneDrive.

If this can’t help you, you are welcome and I will keep working on this.

 

Regards,

Qing

Hi Paul,

Have you tried my suggestion？Did you need further help?

Regards,

Qing

Hi Qing - thank you so much for taking the time to answer.

This does seem like it should work, however I am not game to try it during the work week and would prefer to leave it till the weekend.

I would encourage you to continue working on it if you can however, as users should not have to resort to these sorts of hacks to achieve what is quite a reasonably common user case.  It's quite surprising that this has not been implemented correctly over the many byears that OneDrive has been such an important member of the Office family.

Your instructions seem similar to fixes suggested to others here that go back 4+ years:-

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/remove-onedrive-for-business-account/42d0f6c5-dcde-400b-8e47-2b8712887a91

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/forum/all/cannot-remove-school-onedrive-account/af4cb161-ebd5-46ef-9224-cc516a1e009e

So it would be great if the OneDrive UI was modified to cater for adding and removing multiple accounts under the one OneDrive installation in a more professional manner.

I'll let you know how I get on soon. 

kind regards,

Paul.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your reply.

On our side, I have done the test on our side, the steps can remove it.

You are welcome to post back after trying it, if it can't help you, you are welcome to post back and I will keep working on this.

Besides, I would like to explain that if we can sign into OneDrive normally, we try the following steps to remove OneDrive account no need to delete the OneDrive files.

1. Right click OneDrive icon.

2. Select More.

3. Click Preferences>select Unlink the account.

I could understand your feeling, you can also feedback it via our uservoice, if there are many people voting this, our related team may develop it.

Thanks for your understanding.

Qing

Hi Qing,

Yes, Unlink would be good but it is only available in the Preferences for the blue (personal) screen above, and therefore will unlink the account I wish to keep.

The problem is, for the orange screen above, I have no doubt I could Unlink there also if I could login, however as I no longer work with that company, they have revoked my login.  Therefore that instance keeps popping up on startup and complaining it can't login.

This is a design fault in my opinion.  We need to be able to "Unlink" without being logged in, and without registry or other low-level hacks.

Do you think you could add that in to the Mac app any time soon? 

kind regards,

Paul.

Hi Paul,

 

Thanks for your updates.

 

I am very sorry about the inconvenience for you, however, if we can’t sign into OneDrive, there is not the option “Unlink”.

 

I could understand your requirement, I also think it is more convenience if we can unlink the unsigned account directly.

 

I am sorry that our team is focus on solving issue, we didn’t have resource about product design, given the situation, I suggest you post the requirement on our uservoice, it is the best way to let develop team hear your voice.

 

Thanks for your understanding.

Qing

Hi Paul, I had the same problem as you did. I was able to remove the Business Onedrive account by reseting Onedrive as described below.

Please note that you will have to set up the Personal account again. But I was able to point to my previous local Ondrive directory. I don't think it redownloads but it does have to go through and check that every file is synced. For me it took about 15 minutes to update the sync (~50GB in my Onedrive)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/onedrive-for-mac-faq-3fc4062c-8051-4392-bff1-551e32840cd0?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us

How do I reset the OneDrive app?

1. Quit OneDrive. (Select the cloud icon in the top tray, then select Settings > Quit OneDrive.)

2. Find OneDrive in your Applications folder.

3. Right-click OneDrive and select Show Package Contents.

4. Browse to the Contents > Resources folder.

5. Double-click ResetOneDriveApp.command (or ResetOneDriveAppStandalone.command, if you're using the standalone app).

6. Start OneDrive and finish the setup process.

thank you this is awesome. I have spent ages back and forth with Microsoft support and no one had mentioned this.

Thank you ever so much this has been a great help.

Hi Nevyn 42, 

Thank you for this. 

I have literally been searching for a solution to this problem for 5 hours now (and that's just today, after having given up numerous times in the past) - I tried the approach, suggested by Qing Tang, of deleting files Microsoft.com files, and also deleted files within caches and containers. I also uninstalled the whole of office 365 multiple times and re-installed, but nothing worked, as every time I reinstalled I was faced the same problem - OneDrive insisting that I log into a Business Account.

At this point, I am equal parts thankful for your existence and irate at Microsoft for releasing such a poor product for which they have provided no real support for Mac users.

Thanks so much - this was exactly what I needed.  I couldn't get my personal one drive to sync as my work account kept popping up, even when I had uninstalled office, removed licenses etc.  As for others, without the option to access preferences I couldn't unlink my work account either.  Great tip, thanks again.