OneDrive Files On Demand doesn't work

I'll add to my story a bit. I turned off Onedrive and deleted about 50 GB of pictures. My thought was turning off the picture syncing on my laptop and just leaving them on Onedrive an on my home computer. But Onedrive immediately caught on when I restarted my computer and gave me the option of either restoring the deleted files to my computer OR deleting them from Onedrive, neither of which I wanted to do. So I tried exiting without chosing but right now it is busy merrily deleting half of my pictures from online as well. I'll let it go and restore them later. I also went into Onedrive settings and tried turning off syn folders. I can't turn off pictures altogether, because that is a system folder. So I tried turning off just some folders. Then it told me that it wasn't done syncing yet and I couldn't do that. 

Really, I'm about read to go back to google drive. Except that one reason I went to Office 365 was to get that terabyte of storage, which I'd need to pay for in Google drive. 

Sometimes you can't win for losing. I am very tempted to go to Linux and start using Google docs online and google drive for storage. 

No answers yet... Maybe no one else has this problem? I didn't have it either before the last feature upgrades, etc. 

Hi LesterBauman,

If you want to stop the backing up of your Pictures folder go to the Backup tab > Manage Backup in the OneDrive settings.

This video will help explain that better:  

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/back-up-your-documents-pictures-and-desktop-folders-with-onedrive-d61a7930-a6fb-4b95-b28a-6552e77c3057

Turning off OneDrive accomplishes nothing as you have found out.  Once OneDrive starts up again it will resume the syncing of your folders.  Whatever you do or have done with the files on your device the same will be done in the online OneDrive.

If you have freed up space and see little blue cloud icons next to your files, your files have become cloud-only files and do not take up space on your PC.  The files with blue cloud icons are just download links to the online files.  The video here should explain that better:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/save-disk-space-with-onedrive-files-on-demand-for-windows-10-0e6860d3-d9f3-4971-b321-7092438fb38e

With Files On-Demand there is no need to uncheck any folders in the Account tab > Choose folders.  Folders you uncheck are removed from your computer. Since you are using Files On-Demand which do not take up space on your computer you can keep all your folders checked.

I hope that helps.  Feel free to get back here with any questions you have.

With Files On-Demand there is no need to uncheck any folders in the Account tab > Choose folders.  Folders you uncheck are removed from your computer. Since you are using Files On-Demand which do not take up space on your computer you can keep all your folders checked.

That was one of the first things I did. I turned on the files-on-demand feature. Then I went to the pictures on my laptop already and selected a bunch of folders and marked each to "clear space" which, according to the documentation I've read should have removed them from my laptop and left them online. But it didn't. Actually, it did. It went all through the sequence and left me with a bunch of space. But I left my computer on over night and during the night it turned around and downloaded everything again, until it ran out of space. So I went through the whole thing again. 

Same story.

Right now, it's busy downloading again. By this evening everything will plugged up again...

:(

Lester

So are you saying your files had blue cloud icons (cloud-only) which is what you want and then overnight they turned back into green icons (which take up space on your PC)?

That's the weird thing about it. They will have white circles outlined in green with green check marks. Yet OneDrive shows them as downloading and my space available number keeps ticking down, until it gets to about 1 or 2 GB available. (They have the blue outlined symbol inbetween)

It's almost as if it were laying aside the space and keeping it available.

Right now its downloading my camera roll again even though I had turned off that folder. I even turned off the pictures folder back up. 

So are you saying your files had blue cloud icons (cloud-only) which is what you want and then overnight they turned back into green icons (which take up space on your PC)?

That's the weird thing about it. They will have white circles outlined in green with green check marks. Yet OneDrive shows them as downloading and my space available number keeps ticking down, until it gets to about 1 or 2 GB available. (They have the blue outlined symbol inbetween)

It's almost as if it were laying aside the space and keeping it available.

Right now its downloading my camera roll again even though I had turned off that folder. I even turned off the pictures folder back up. 

Have you been right clicking folders and selecting "Free up space"?  That's the only way to make those green icons become blue cloud icons.  Files with any type of green icons are NOT cloud-only files.  They are available locally on your PC.  Only files with blue cloud icons are cloud-only. 

Files with blue cloud icons are not on your PC even though you may see the file names and thumbnails.  They are not on your PC.  

Camera roll is in your Pictures folder and you want to make your Pictures folder online-only.  Did you go to the OneDrive Settings > Backup tab > Manage Backup to Stop the Backup of the Pictures folder?  

Have you been right clicking folders and selecting "Free up space"? 

Did you go to the OneDrive Settings > Backup tab > Manage Backup to Stop the Backup of the Pictures folder?  

Yes I did select "free up space" a number of times. Both for folders and for individual files, since doing it for folders didn't seem to carry through to the files. 

I also tried to stop the backup of the pictures folder several times. Normally it told me that not everything in the folder was synced yet and it couldn't turn it off. Like I said earlier, I finally turned off OneDrive and deleted several larger folders in the Pictures folder. That worked except that it also deleted them off OneDrive. I then restored them from the OneDrive recycle bin, assuming that they would now be online only. OneDrive created the folders I had deleted and then started downloading them all over again. 

However, at this point something seems to have finally worked and I have some free space for working. I'm not sure what kind of a mess I've made within OneDrive online, but I'll be back to my office in a bit over a week and I'll try to sort it out there. I took an image backup of my entire system before I left, so I don't think I lost any data. I'll still be within the thirty days that OneDrive stores deleted data as well. 

So I'll cross my fingers, I guess. 

Do you have enough cloud storage space available in your online OneDrive account?  Go to onedrive.live.com and at the left it shows how much space you have available.

Do you have one of these plans, a Home or Business plan?

https://products.office.com/en-us/onedrive/compare-onedrive-plans?activetab=tab%3aprimaryr1

With a plan comes Microsoft support.  They might offer support with the free plan but I'm not sure. 

I subscribe to Office 365 Home and they always help with my questions.  Go to onedrive.live.com and click on the "?" at the upper right and get in contact with them. 

But I'll still be here ready to help if I can.  Let me know how you are doing.

But I'll still be here ready to help if I can.  Let me know how you are doing.

Hi Craig,

Been working with MS support, and they haven't had a lot of luck either. It appears that I need to go to every subfolder and every sub-subfolder and click "free up space". Then OneDrive will free up a bunch of space, and I think I've got it licked. OneDrive tells me it is up-to-date. But after a while, it seems to see that my drive has some extra space and it starts downloading again and doesn't stop until my drive is full again. 

Then I go through the process again. And again. And again. :( 

I've turned off the Picture Folder backup in OneDrive. Hopefully it will stop this nonsense and I can get back to my work. [I've lost 5 GB of space in the last bit. All of those folders were marked as cloud only but it is downloading them and turning them into available. Were they only marked as online only because my SSD didn't have room for them, and now that it does, it's downloading them anyway? Or is OneDrive actually changing their status arbitrarily.

Who knows. Anyway now you know, or can guess, how I'm doing. :)

I don't know what's going on.  Eventually Microsoft may want to control your computer remotely and see what is going on if you don't mind them doing that.  Ask at the "?" at onedrive.live.com.  Don't "Google" Microsoft support.  You might get a scammer.

Here's information about resetting your PC:  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12415/windows-10-recovery-options