Outlook and OneDrive

[pincivma]

My friend has outlook email. He cannot send or receive email on his outlook account. He gets a message that says your OneDrive is using 6.5 GB and you are over the storage limit.
Please buy more storage. He does not want to buy more storage space. So, I decided to help him out. He has Windows 11. I moved, by clicking and dragging, all of his files on the
OneDrive over to a new folder on his desk top. I could no do a cut and paste by right clicking on the folders. What I discovered was that the folders on his OneDrive and the folders that I dragged onto his desk top were somehow connected. In other words, if I deleted a folder on his OneDrive, that folder was also deleted on his desk top. So, that did not work My question is this: Is there a way to copy
all the files on his OneDrive to another location on his computer and then he can delete his folders and files on his OneDrive and free storage space. What if he buys a flash card and
copies all of his files and folders on it and the deletes all his files and folders on his OneDrive. Will that work. His flashcard and the OneDrive should not be connected so once he
deletes al the fils and folders on his OneDrive, all of his files and folders on the flash card should not be affected. If you have a better sand easer suggestion let me know.

 

[Trevor G]

How did you get on? My understanding is that once you've copied the files to your desktop or other location on your PC you should look to stop the sync in OneDrive and once you've checked by modifying a document then you can disconnect OneDrive. Please make sure you do a backup of the files before attempting. There are a number of YouTube videos that would show you how.

An example is shown below:

 

[pincivma]

Hi Trevor
Thanks for the video. I will first do a back up of all the files and then delete them from the OneDrive. That should fee up the OneDrive space.
Mario

 

[Trevor G]

Hi Mario. Can I suggest you try this with one document first to see if it works if it doesn't post back or if it does please let us know.

Create a dummy document and save it to onedrive then copy that file to another location on your PC. Then delete the file from onedrive and check the document has been removed from the onedrive folder. If on checking the file has been moved within onedrive folder to onedrive deleted items and it remains on your PC then all should be ok. If it doesn't appear on your PC and is in the onedrive deleted items you can restore it before proceeding. Please check before proceeding.

 

[pincivma]

My friend already had a file on the OneDrive that he did not need. I clicked and dragged the file from the OneDrive onto the desktop. Then I deleted the file from the OneDrive and it also deleted from the desktop. I guess that the OneDrive and Desktop are somehow connected. Next time I am at my friend's hose I will try to copy the file onto his documents folder and see what happens. I will keep you posted.