[NA] I don't understand One Drive

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

May the force be with you
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Aug 8, 2013
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Sixer
Old Man Rant:
I don't like computers doing things I didn't tell them to do.

Today I get an alert that my one drive is getting full and I am running out of space in the cloud.
Much to my surprise, Windows has happily been replicating my files to a cloud I never asked for.
Naturally, I go to one drive settings, click unlink, and then I uninstall one drive.

Which of course DELETES ALL MY FILES LOCALLY! WTH Microsoft?
Since I got my first 486 in 1989, I have never been anywhere and needed a file while on the go so badly that I wished for a second copy of my computer floating around.

This is what the masses want? A default cloud space where all their crap is sent to a server they don't own in the off chance that they really need those family vacation photos in a pinch.
I don't get it. I get that this might be convenient for a select few that travel for work but really there is enough demand for this that it is the default?

I can remote into my computer from anywhere. I don't need a copy of it somewhere else.

Old Man Rant over.

feel free to let me know if you use and love One Drive and I am missing the point.

Also the whole deleting One drive, deletes the files locally is asinine. If I were wealthy, I wouldn't own a computer.
 
And now a perplexing thing has happened.
In explorer, I see a different set of files in the same folder than I see in my save as dialog.
I am trying to bill a client and I can open explorer and navigate to a folder and also navigate to the same folder in my save as dialog and I see 2 different things.
I broke something.

d3.png
 
Well, OD is convenient when you do a tech refresh at work or home and all you need to do is connect to OD and all your files are there.

But to your main rant about it doing things you didn't ask it to do, and deleting your local files just because you delete your OD, you have my sympathy.
 
The default windows defaults are terrible. "Let's show all of your notifications on the lock screen! The same lock screen you use to SECURE your computer!" "Let's advertise to people through the start menu! Or their file explorer!." "Let's take a screen of their entire screen every few seconds! Without asking first. And we'll save that data wherever we want."
 
It's not personal, it's just business.

Local storage is expensive and slow and unreliable since everyone switched to SSDs, and users were tired of data loss and were too dumb to do backups, so Abraham Lincoln invented the clown. Or was it Adolf Hitler? I can't remember.

1. Use dark patterns to browbeat users into moving data into the clown by default
2. Charge extra when you need more space in the clown
3. Make it a MFPITA to repatriate data out of the clown

Works for aapl and msft, anyway. Holy jeez it was a pain when my kid turned on iClown and it happily exfiltrated everything from his iPad.
 
One Drive is enabled by default with an Office subscription. It becomes the default storage every time you save a file. Fortunately, it can be changed. I only upload files I want to share. But, as you found, you have to be careful making the switch if you’ve been using it as created.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
And now a perplexing thing has happened.
In explorer, I see a different set of files in the same folder than I see in my save as dialog.
I am trying to bill a client and I can open explorer and navigate to a folder and also navigate to the same folder in my save as dialog and I see 2 different things.
I broke something.

View attachment 130228
Click to expand...
Just throwing out ideas here.
Is your save as dialog filtering by PDF file type?

If you have only accessed OneDrive from that particular computer then the local computer 'wins'. Ignore the OneDrive folder or change settings to exclude that folder.

Uninstalling the OneDrive app will not delete the /documents folder. I don't think any folders are deleted during uninstall.

Maybe you edited or deleted files on OneDrive and on the local machine. They got out of sync somehow and you lost your changes.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Old Man Rant:
I don't like computers doing things I didn't tell them to do.
Click to expand...
This, 100%!

I feel the same with cars.

I'm getting more than a bit weary of having to undo or remove an unhelpful setting that some 24-year old hack programmer in a cubicle in Pune decided that my car or computer needs to have as the default.
 
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I do like OneDrive, but it can be a real PITA if you aren't careful. Try having TWO OneDrive configurations on the same PC (have to for work). If it wiped your data, you should get permission to yell profanities to someone at Microsoft. :D

We use it a ton for work like someone said above so when you get handed a brand new, clean laptop you can sync all your files quickly and get to work.

I do use it for home stuff mainly so my wife and I can share files easily regardless of which device we're on. And it serves as a nice off-site backup without having to manually set it up. In middle age, I don't want to mess with tech any more than I have to outside my normal software engineering day job so I go with the path of least resistance, mostly.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Old Sane Man Rant:
I don't like computers doing things I didn't tell them to do.
Click to expand...

FTFY. I constantly tell people how much I hate computers, despite the fact that I work on/with them every. single. day. I look forward to retirement day when these things go away from my daily life.

Back on topic... What I really 'love' about OD is how painfully slow it is to browse my LOCAL folders because of how it tries to make sure local and OD are synched every time I open a folder. I know the daggum file I want is in this folder - I don't need you to check to see if it is also stored on the moon before you let me open it!!

GET OFF MY LAWN!!
 
I really dislike cloud based anything.
 
It's simple. Microsoft is helping you. Making it easy to have everything automatically copied to the cloud. Never mind that you will run out of room in 10 seconds and you will have to pay cash money to get more. Never mind that it just "happens" when you put things in documents. Never mind that they don't make it obvious. Never mind that with everything in the cloud you are only one data breach away from sharing everything. They are making it easy. Seamless. Easy to pay for. A forever income stream for them. Win win.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
It's simple. Microsoft is helping you. Making it easy to have everything automatically copied to the cloud. Never mind that you will run out of room in 10 seconds and you will have to pay cash money to get more. Never mind that it just "happens" when you put things in documents. Never mind that they don't make it obvious. Never mind that with everything in the cloud you are only one data breach away from sharing everything. They are making it easy. Seamless. Easy to pay for. A forever income stream for them. Win win.
Click to expand...

And, of course, they get access to every file so stored.
 
They copied their operations manual directly from Apple. One Drive is iCloud with easier account recovery proceedu...

NVM One Drive = iCloud.
 
Van Johnston said:
Well, OD is convenient when you do a tech refresh at work or home and all you need to do is connect to OD and all your files are there.

But to your main rant about it doing things you didn't ask it to do, and deleting your local files just because you delete your OD, you have my sympathy.
Click to expand...
It's not that you didn't ask it to do. It's that Microsoft knows better than you do, and demands you work the way Microsoft wants to you, unless you know the magic to avoid it. OD is the default at my university, and I have to keep reminding the students that OD is the default when they save a file. Not a good idea when you're not online.

I know that cloud computing is advantageous for many people (OD is just MS version of a cloud) but I'm not fond of any cloud computing. In reality, cloud computing and SaS (software as a service) is really nothing more than going back to the 60s & 70s when people only had dumb terminals and the big servers had all the software and data. Just fancier names and better technology.
 
StraightnLevel said:
This, 100%!

I feel the same with cars.

I'm getting more than a bit weary of having to undo or remove an unhelpful setting that some 24-year old hack programmer in a cubicle in Pune decided that my car or computer needs to have as the default.
Click to expand...
Car? What is "car"? My transportation device is 47 networked computers installed in a polycarbonate case with wheels attached to the bottom and 4 seats inside the case.
 
I'm a huge fan of cloud computing. I run a 250 person company scattered all across the world. ALL of our data is on the cloud. Local storage is strongly discouraged. I am far more productive because of the cloud, both professionally and personally.

Much less a fan of OneDrive. Like most things Microsoft, their enterprise focus complicates things unnecessarily for those without their sysadmin training. Plus they try to leverage integration, which leads to stuff being done behind the scenes, without user awareness. That leads to problems like the OP had.

I greatly prefer more overt cloud services where you can clearly see what is happening. We use Google Workspace, which comes with a huge amount of storage on Google Drive. Shared Drives are fantastic for a small business or moderately sized enterprise, plus My Drive for personal stuff. Family photos are on Google Photos, sync'ed with my android phone. I'm not an Apple guy, but understand they provide similar functionality minus the business side.

I have 4 windows computers: office, laptop, FL home office, and CO home office. My desktop and browser environment is identical, and I never have to worry about versioning. I could throw all 4 computers in the garbage, go to Best Buy, and be up and running again in an hour without having lost one single byte of data. I can also access any file in my company from my phone or tablet.
 
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I don't understand Microsoft. I use the Microsoft Outlook web interface for work and I can't believe how bad it is...it will ding to tell me I have a new message, but it won't actually appear until I click a different folder and then click inbox again. That and a bunch of other problems. Not sure how a $3 trillion company can get basic stuff so wrong.
 
I had a weird issue with it a few years back where I'd save a document and go to bed then the next day when I'd open it back up none of my work had been saved. For a while I thought I was just being an idiot and somehow despite decades of computer experience didn't save and managed to ignore the dialogue warning me to save when I closed the program. Nope, something going on with onedrive. I simply don't use it and don't trust it with anything.

I would kind of like a cloud storage service that was cross platform between windows, iOS, and mac AND had strong encryption features such that nobody-not even the storage company could recover my files if I lost the password. There probably is one, I just haven't needed the service badly enough to go looking.
 
dmspilot said:
I don't understand Microsoft. I use the Microsoft Outlook web interface for work and I can't believe how bad it is...it will ding to tell me I have a new message, but it won't actually appear until I click a different folder and then click inbox again. That and a bunch of other problems. Not sure how a $3 trillion company can get basic stuff so wrong.
Click to expand...
Microsoft boggles me.

They somehow left the <ctrl> F find feature out of the New Outlook.

So you can no longer search through an email with 100 addresses to see if Bob was included. Nor any other text search that every basic program since 1983 has been doing.

Here's an official response from the Microsoft forum, that completely misses the point, with the standard user frustration.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ails-new/230f3cb9-0dd1-4b62-b942-506ad0f54f87

Hi,​
​
I'm trying New Outlook, I would like to search inside an email for text, and also search for emails in the inbox.​
​
I cant see any way of doing these functions.​
​
Control-F does nothing.​
​
Can you help please ?!​
​
​
​
Fatima_J Microsoft Agent Moderator
Replied on September 26, 2023
​
​
Thank you for posting to the Microsoft community. ​
​
It seems that you wanted to know how to use Find me in searching Emails inside the Inbox or email.​
We understand the importance of this case to be addressed. Allow us to check on this and we’ll assist you in the best way we can.​
​
According to what I have researched the “Find Related: Messages in this conversation” feature is missing in the new Outlook. Many users have reported this issue and requested Microsoft to bring it back. However, there is no official response or solution from Microsoft yet.​
​
As a workaround, you can try to use the “View email messages by conversation” feature, which allows you to group and view all messages in the same thread with the same subject line2. To do this, you need to:​
​
Go to the View tab and select Show as Conversations in the Arrangement group.​
Choose All Folders or This Folder.​
Click the arrow next to the conversation header to expand or collapse the conversation.​
You can also customize the conversation settings by clicking Conversation Settings in the View tab.​
​
You may want to check the helpful links below that is related to the issue:​
​
​
You may also want to submit a feedback from Mciroosft regarding on this issue to help us improve your experience in Microsoft.​
​
I hope this helps you find the related messages in Outlook. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask me.​
We look forward to your response. ​
​
Truly Yours, ​
Fatima ​
Microsoft Moderator​
​
 
Ed Haywood said:
I'm a huge fan of cloud computing. I run a 250 person company scattered all across the world. ALL of our data is on the cloud. Local storage is strongly discouraged. I am far more productive because of the cloud, both professionally and personally.

Much less a fan of OneDrive. Like most things Microsoft, their enterprise focus complicates things unnecessarily for those without their sysadmin training. Plus they try to leverage integration, which leads to stuff being done behind the scenes, without user awareness. That leads to problems like the OP had.

I greatly prefer more overt cloud services where you can clearly see what is happening. We use Google Workspace, which comes with a huge amount of storage on Google Drive. Shared Drives are fantastic for a small business or moderately sized enterprise, plus My Drive for personal stuff. Family photos are on Google Photos, sync'ed with my android phone. I'm not an Apple guy, but understand they provide similar functionality minus the business side.

I have 4 windows computers: office, laptop, FL home office, and CO home office. My desktop and browser environment is identical, and I never have to worry about versioning. I could throw all 4 computers in the garbage, go to Best Buy, and be up and running again in an hour without having lost one single byte of data. I can also access any file in my company from my phone or tablet.
Click to expand...
I can do the same.....with OneDrive. Our 80 person company is not all on O365 yet and I can't wait until they are. The separate divisions will actually be able to talk to each other and share files. Will be so nice.
 
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