Completely remove OneDrive from your Windows computer/installation

Due to OneDrive so aggressively activating/reactivating "features" I don't want, I've removed it from my Windows computers - very carefully, step-by-step, as follows:

1. Copy all folders/files within your OneDrive folder to a safe location - an external 2TB USB3 SSD drive, in my case.

2. Set all folders/files to be available offline (this will copy everything on OneDrive to your local computer), on all PCs.

3. Check that the Backup "feature" is disabled, and stop synchronization in your Windows OneDrive app, on all computers.

4. Disable your OneDrive app, then remove/uninstall it in Settings | Apps | Installed apps, on all computers.

5. Sign out of OneDrive and delete everything in your OneDrive folder that you can, on any laptop/secondary PCs you may have, then delete everything that you can in your OneDrive folder on your desktop/primary PC, and check that everything's removed from OneDrive online after emptying the Recycle Bin there, then sign out of OneDrive on the desktop/primary PC.

6. Check that nothing remains in your OneDrive folder on each computer, and if your default Windows folders remain, cut/paste them (Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, etc) from your OneDrive folder to C:\Users\[user-name], so nothing remains within your OneDrive folder, but all your default Windows folders exist where they should be, on all computers, then delete your OneDrive folder.

7. Copy the content of each default Windows folder from your external drive (or wherever you copied them to in step 1 above) to your default Windows folders under C:\Users\[user-name], skipping anything that already exists in the destination folder, to make certain you have everything where you want it.

8. With your OneDrive folder emptied, you can now delete it, then empty your Recycle Bin on all computers.

That's it! One Drive's completely removed from your computer. If anyone can see any mistakes I made here, please reply/comment, so I can make corrections/get it right in the future.

Ernie

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