Today I am binning Microsoft
Discussion
For some time I seem to have been battling MS’s attempts to sell me cloud storage.
Even documents saved to “this PC” were seemingly being saved to OneDrive. Try and save anything from a MS app and… OneDrive. Try to turn off OneDrive and everything went wobbly.
Today, in an attempt to recover what I thought were locally saved documents I seem to have reset my PC. This was by accessing what was previously system restore.
Nothing Microsoft seems to be easy to use anymore and all they want to do is sell storage and online services.
I still have a local backup of documents and MS seems to have saved a rudimentary version of those not yet backed up. My emails are on Outlook on my phone.
I am going to go to the Apple Store and buy a desktop machine later today. That will be a thirty year Microsoft relationship finished.
I want to keep my 3 screen setup and basically plug in an Apple box where the Windows one is. What is the current best buy? I will take the advice of the Apple sales chap, but having some advance idea would be helpful.
TIA.
Even documents saved to “this PC” were seemingly being saved to OneDrive. Try and save anything from a MS app and… OneDrive. Try to turn off OneDrive and everything went wobbly.
Today, in an attempt to recover what I thought were locally saved documents I seem to have reset my PC. This was by accessing what was previously system restore.
Nothing Microsoft seems to be easy to use anymore and all they want to do is sell storage and online services.
I still have a local backup of documents and MS seems to have saved a rudimentary version of those not yet backed up. My emails are on Outlook on my phone.
I am going to go to the Apple Store and buy a desktop machine later today. That will be a thirty year Microsoft relationship finished.
I want to keep my 3 screen setup and basically plug in an Apple box where the Windows one is. What is the current best buy? I will take the advice of the Apple sales chap, but having some advance idea would be helpful.
TIA.
Hedobot said:
There is absolutely no reason to use one drive if you dont want to.
Just save and backup locally like we have been doing for years.
:
For months I’ve manually selected “save to this PC” but it seems that actually stuff was still at least backing up to OneDrive. Some documents were saving there even when I selected otherwise.Just save and backup locally like we have been doing for years.
:
I had not realised that what appeared to be my PC desktop was in fact OneDrive. I only became suspicious when pasting something on there ceased to be immediate.
When I turned off OneDrive the lack of backing up added a red X to every document.
Now, I will be the first to admit that I an knocking on a bit. But I am educated to degree level from a decent uni, can run businesses and am basically literate. If I find this stuff difficult I am not the problem. I am consoled by the fact that one of my children is having similar MS issues and they are quite techy.
My iPhone is easy to use. My wife’s Mac notebook is great, hence why I am going to Apple today. But I won’t buy anything today.
Coincidentally it is 30 years to the week since I got my first PC. It had Windows 3.1 on it. It was logical, it worked and it was easy to use. A complete contrast to the W10.
sgrimshaw said:
Something changed with OneDrive in December.
It decided EVERYTHING was to be backed up to OneDrive and deleted all the local copies.
]
This may be what happened.It decided EVERYTHING was to be backed up to OneDrive and deleted all the local copies.
]
In an attempt to shut up OneDrive’s continual nagging I turned off some OneDrive settings. This morning, when I went into the documents on This PC nothing was there, apart from a link to OneDrive.
OK so Apple store today. It looks like I would ideally have a Mac Mini, but there are only certain ones available. I need a top model to run three screens.
If I want a desktop and a laptop, to move fully to the Apple ecosystem it looks like I am investing £2k. It can probably get teacher's discount.
I have spent much of today trying to make this PC usable. It seems that I cannot recover the Outlook 2019 app I bought to go with the Office suite. So I am using 365 online, which is rubbish.
If I want a desktop and a laptop, to move fully to the Apple ecosystem it looks like I am investing £2k. It can probably get teacher's discount.
I have spent much of today trying to make this PC usable. It seems that I cannot recover the Outlook 2019 app I bought to go with the Office suite. So I am using 365 online, which is rubbish.
Condi said:
Is there anyone near you who can help, kids or whatever?
Many people use MS products without using OneDrive, once you have the settings set up it works very well.
My eldest is quite IT savvy and he is also having Onedrive issues.Many people use MS products without using OneDrive, once you have the settings set up it works very well.
Having now got this PC mostly working again I can confirm that it appears MS has removed all my local storage folders. Where once under This PC>Documents I would have my business and personal folders there is just a shortcut to documents on Onedrive. Which was the situation before I reset the machine.
How can Microsoft do that? Just entirely remove a user's documents? It's bizarre.
Fore Left said:
I posted this on page one but I'll put it here again. Instructions on how to turn off & remove OneDrive.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-of...
You can also check the cloud OneDrive for any 'missing' files (it will still be there, it just won't be linked to your PC).
https://onedrive.live.com/
I doubt that my emails will be.https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-of...
You can also check the cloud OneDrive for any 'missing' files (it will still be there, it just won't be linked to your PC).
https://onedrive.live.com/
On the subject of which, I had a problem with attachments going missing from Outlook 2019. The emails would still be there, the attachments missing. I see that Onedrive has a section relating to Outlook attachments. I have a hunch that is why the attachments went AWOL.
gavsdavs said:
sgrimshaw said:
Something changed with OneDrive in December.
It decided EVERYTHING was to be backed up to OneDrive and deleted all the local copies.
Took bloody hours to sort it out, and I still don't trust it.
Whenever I create a new MS document, it wants to back it up to OneDrive .... even though it is set to "Save to Computer by default"
If that's true (deleting local copies) then that's extremely naughty and there are likely to be lawsuits around it.It decided EVERYTHING was to be backed up to OneDrive and deleted all the local copies.
Took bloody hours to sort it out, and I still don't trust it.
Whenever I create a new MS document, it wants to back it up to OneDrive .... even though it is set to "Save to Computer by default"
Maybe it's me, I'l still using windows 10 on a desktop and a laptop but I have no grief with one drive whatsoever. It's not even enabled.
Edited to add: Whilst I haven't done a detailed search, "Onedrive deleted my local copies" produces some results.
Edited by Louis Balfour on Thursday 4th January 08:10
Edited by Louis Balfour on Thursday 4th January 08:10
Granadier said:
I haven't read all the posts in this thread but I recently got a new work laptop (Dell) and was surprised to find that when saving items to the Desktop, it was in fact saving them to a location on OneDrive. In fact I have two folders called Desktop, the default one on OneDrive, and one in C:\Users. Actually when you look at the Properties for the two Desktops, both of them claim to be in C:\Users, but one of them is in fact on OneDrive, and they contain different files.
Ever since we moved from the monochrome MS-DOS world to GUI, and Desktops were invented, the fundamental principle has been that the Desktop is a location on the physical device itself, not elsewhere on a network, surely? Particularly a network which you don't have access to when you're offline.
Re trying to sell you more cloud storage, when I last changed my phone, it asked me "Do you want to back up all your photos on Google Drive? It's free!". So I said, "Yes, ok, if you like." A few months later, I got "Your Google Drive is full - you need to buy more storage!"
Yes, all of this is true.Ever since we moved from the monochrome MS-DOS world to GUI, and Desktops were invented, the fundamental principle has been that the Desktop is a location on the physical device itself, not elsewhere on a network, surely? Particularly a network which you don't have access to when you're offline.
Re trying to sell you more cloud storage, when I last changed my phone, it asked me "Do you want to back up all your photos on Google Drive? It's free!". So I said, "Yes, ok, if you like." A few months later, I got "Your Google Drive is full - you need to buy more storage!"
All these companies want to sell you storage and, probably, have a good nosey at your data whilst they are storing it for you.
All of which is fine, sort of, until it f
ks up your everyday computing and starts deleting files without permission.Durzel said:
Louis Balfour said:
My eldest is quite IT savvy and he is also having Onedrive issues.
Having now got this PC mostly working again I can confirm that it appears MS has removed all my local storage folders. Where once under This PC>Documents I would have my business and personal folders there is just a shortcut to documents on Onedrive. Which was the situation before I reset the machine.
How can Microsoft do that? Just entirely remove a user's documents? It's bizarre.
Since no one backs up anything if you just let them save stuff locally, I believe the default setup configuration for OneDrive is to "take over" your Documents, Downloads, etc. This is probably a good idea for the vast majority of people, because they'd lose things otherwise when their laptops etc inevitably die, get damaged or stolen.Having now got this PC mostly working again I can confirm that it appears MS has removed all my local storage folders. Where once under This PC>Documents I would have my business and personal folders there is just a shortcut to documents on Onedrive. Which was the situation before I reset the machine.
How can Microsoft do that? Just entirely remove a user's documents? It's bizarre.
I can imagine this choice during the initial setup could be a bit overwhelming though.
Following the instructions here ought to help, if you want to go back to storing things locally:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/back-up...
Visiting https://onedrive.live.com ought to confirm whether the files you're expecting to see (Documents, Downloads, etc) are in the cloud or not. If you follow the above instructions, whilst logged in to OneDrive in the app, and disable syncing on those folders it ought to ask you what you want to do with the files already stored in the cloud.
I fear switching to Apple might bring it's own set of challenges (I saw this as someone typing this on a MacBook Pro, supporting an estate of Macs and Windows PCs).
I am not expecting Apple to be perfect. I’ve looked after my wife’s MacBook for about ten years and sometimes find myself stabbing away at buttons, failing to achieve basic tasks. But it has been super reliable.
I accept that cloud storage is the future and will probably engage with Apple’s version. I trust them more with my data than I do Microsoft, rightly or wrongly.
I have been becoming annoyed with MS over a number of years, as they have slowly f
ked up what used to be a good operating system. Yes I understand that techies may love it, but I am not one and I just want stuff to work. Most of all I want the makers of my OS not to fk me over in the way that MS appears to have done on this occasion.Check back in two weeks for my thread “How do I make this f
king Mac work?”Thanks for your input guys.
I haven't bought the Apple kit yet, but still intend to.
The current major issue is loss of Outlook 2019 desktop. I think I bought the licence key online, to upgrade the other Office package that didn't have it, but cannot recall where. Whilst Outlook had become flaky (Onedrive again I think) I do rely upon having access to my sent and deleted emails, which have now vanished along with Outlook.
I am guessing that somewhere my PC will have saved the actual email files, I just cannot access them due to not having Outlook anymore. Does anyone know how to access them please?
Condi said:
Every version of O365 comes with Outlook as standard, so can you not just go onto Microsoft website and download whatever the latest version is?
I am probably being thick, but I am using Outlook online via 365 as I type and it doesn't have my contact there, or any of the emails I received and deleted via the desktop app.I selected Outllook from here, it is a web app. It doesn't enable me to download an app.
Edited by Louis Balfour on Friday 5th January 15:19
Condi said:
Click install apps in the top RHS
It might download all of them if you have non. You may be able to select which to download. Choose Outlook.
That gives me the opportunity to "go Premium" i.e. pay money to Microsoft. who caused the problem in the first place.It might download all of them if you have non. You may be able to select which to download. Choose Outlook.
I've just downloaded a free version of Outlook, let me see what I can do with that.
I searched my PC for .pst files and have found some relating to one of the mail accounts, though not the main one.
bhstewie said:
hstewie said:snuffy said:
A question for the Mac Users; I've never used one, so I don't know, but as the OP's prime issue is with cloud based storage, do Apple not do that then?
Yes they do.https://www.icloud.com
I think the OP's prime issue is not knowing how to configure their computer the way they'd like.
I will be the first to admit that I am not super IT savvy. But This problem has not really been caused by my lack of skills, it is because Microsoft are
s and trying to force users to pay for cloud stuff.MikeHo said:
Well this thread has been a bit predictable !
If you 'lost' all your files from your machine - you fked up.
Nope. MS deleted my local files, not me.If you 'lost' all your files from your machine - you f
ked up. MikeHo said:
Doing a system restore - you fked up again I'm afraid.
Arguably. But I was under time pressure and had just found that all my local files had vanished. System restore used to be a fairly safe process, it seems to have changed. In fact the whole Settings arrangement has changed.ked up again I'm afraid.I go back to the point that I have a 2:1 degree from a Russell Group Uni, I successfully run quite complicated businesses and can operate all the tools in my garage. If I struggle to work my computer I am not the problem.
MikeHo said:
Louis Balfour said:
MikeHo said:
Well this thread has been a bit predictable !
If you 'lost' all your files from your machine - you fked up.
Nope. MS deleted my local files, not me.If you 'lost' all your files from your machine - you f
ked up. MikeHo said:
Doing a system restore - you fked up again I'm afraid.
Arguably. But I was under time pressure and had just found that all my local files had vanished. System restore used to be a fairly safe process, it seems to have changed. In fact the whole Settings arrangement has changed.ked up again I'm afraid.I go back to the point that I have a 2:1 degree from a Russell Group Uni, I successfully run quite complicated businesses and can operate all the tools in my garage. If I struggle to work my computer I am not the problem.
Either way it sounds like you were a bit bull at a gate but aren’t we all sometimes.
Where were all these files before they were moved?
In your local ‘my documents’? And is your pc logon linked straight to your MS account?
Like I say …. you just change the settings on the folders you want and tell it to always keep a copy on your PC then let it do its thing.
Then one morning I had nothing locally except a link to Onedrive. I had changed no settings, I assume it was a software update.
Maybe I was a bull at a gate. But two things there, firstly I should be able to rely on my documents being where I left them. Secondly if MS is going to change system restore it should put in some safeguards lest they have pissed off customers who consequently have become bull-like.
Actual said:
Does Microsoft Windows System Restore delete all the users files on the computer. Microsoft Co-pilot Bing Chat with GPT-4 said:
Searching for: Does Microsoft Windows System Restore delete all the users files on the computer
Generating answers for you…
Hello, this is Bing. I can help you with your question. System Restore is a feature in Windows that allows you to restore your system files and settings to a previous point in time, when your PC was working properly. It can help you fix some common problems, such as errors, crashes, or malware infections.
System Restore does not delete or modify any of your personal files, such as your photos, documents, music, videos, or emails stored on your hard drive. It only affects your system files, Windows updates, and programs.
Did you do a system restore or was it possibly a factory reset?Generating answers for you…
Hello, this is Bing. I can help you with your question. System Restore is a feature in Windows that allows you to restore your system files and settings to a previous point in time, when your PC was working properly. It can help you fix some common problems, such as errors, crashes, or malware infections.
System Restore does not delete or modify any of your personal files, such as your photos, documents, music, videos, or emails stored on your hard drive. It only affects your system files, Windows updates, and programs.
If a system restore did not delete your files then something else happened.
What you did shouldn't matter if you have a viable backup. What was your plan to manage a house fire or hard disk failure or if your PC was stolen in a burglary?
The machine is manually backed up weekly. I have all my most important files, but the reset has deleted some apps that I would prefer not to have lost.
AW111 said:
OP - have you tried the Web interface to onedrive to see if your files are still in the cloud, even though they are gone from your PC?
Factory reset should not have deleted anything in the cloud, I think.
Yes, I thought I had made that clear. As far as I can determine most, if not all of them, are there.Factory reset should not have deleted anything in the cloud, I think.
But my emails have gone and I’ve lost some apps.
Condi said:
Please just go and take it to someone, a son/grandson/shop whatever. It's a 30 min job to set it up as you want, but has been 8 pages of you being able to inadequately explain what the situation is, and then seemingly not taking any of the advice offered.
Yes, you will need to pay for MS Office, in one guise or another. If you have deleted a load of files due to your inability to work your PC, then they can probably be found, but again, by a shop who can do data recovery, not some random people on the internet.
If you want to buy an Apple and have the same issues, then fine, at least you can take it to the Apple Store and get them to help you rather than asking on here!
The problem is more with your comprehension than my explanation. However feel free not to comment further..Yes, you will need to pay for MS Office, in one guise or another. If you have deleted a load of files due to your inability to work your PC, then they can probably be found, but again, by a shop who can do data recovery, not some random people on the internet.
If you want to buy an Apple and have the same issues, then fine, at least you can take it to the Apple Store and get them to help you rather than asking on here!
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