OneDrive and OneDrive for business, both these usage types are now been centralized with a single sync (Known as NGSC-Next Generation Sync Client or simply ONEDRIVE) client. Microsoft is actively working on improving OneDrive offerings to give its users a better next level collaboration experience. Nevertheless, there can be some scenarios when you want the link between your local and OneDrive folders and you may decide to keep the file offline instead (this could happen due to various reasons). With this post I’m going to demonstrate how to properly stop syncing OneDrive folders and keep a local copy instead without any data loss.
Step1: First and foremost, you have to ensure that the entire target folder structure including its files are properly synced to your local drives.
To do that ,click on OneDrive icon from your task bar and hit on “Open Folder”
Now your local folders will be opened. You must ! Ensure that you have enabled “Always available on this device” option for all necessary folders as this option will store a copy of your OneDrive files/folders locally on your device/s. Do not proceed to unlinking without having this enabled across all your folders which you plan to stop sync.
If you have not done this yet, you must do that before you stop syncing. To do that, simply right click on the desired folder and hit “Always available on this device“. With this option you will notice that your local drives getting filled as the files are downloaded to the device.
No we can stop the linking. Head back to your task bar and click on “OneDrive” icon. Hit “More” and go to “Settings” from there.
Direct to “Account tab” and hit “Stop Sync” on the desired location.
Note the message prompt. And hit “Stop Sync” to proceed.
That’s all ! you now have properly stopped syncing your desired location, yet, you have a local copy of your OneDrive location. You can head back to local folder to check if everything is there. I have tried this several times and its proven to work. Nevertheless, feel free to try it with a test location.files first before you do it for real ones.
DISCLAIMER NOTE: This is an enthusiast post and is not sponsored by Microsoft or any other vendor.
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