How To Stop Onedrive From Saving Everything

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OneDrive is an excellent platform for file storage and sharing, yet it can become burdensome when every action on your computer is automatically uploaded to the cloud. Thankfully, there are strategies to manage which items are saved to OneDrive and which are not.

Turn Off Auto Save

One of the easiest ways to stop OneDrive from saving everything is to turn off auto save. This will prevent your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from automatically saving to OneDrive every time you make a change.

  1. Open the document, spreadsheet, or presentation you want to edit
  2. Click on “File” in the top left corner of the screen
  3. Select “Options” from the drop-down menu
  4. Scroll down to the “Save” section and uncheck “AutoRecover info every X minutes”
  5. Click “OK” to save your changes

Exclude Folders from OneDrive

If you don’t want certain folders to be synced with OneDrive, you can exclude them. This will prevent any files in those folders from being saved to the cloud.

  1. Open File Explorer on your computer
  2. Right-click on the folder you want to exclude and select “OneDrive” from the drop-down menu
  3. Select “Stop syncing this folder to OneDrive”
  4. Click “OK” to save your changes

Disable OneDrive Sync

If you don’t want any files to be saved to OneDrive, you can disable the sync feature altogether. This will prevent any changes made on your computer from being synced with the cloud.

  1. Open File Explorer on your computer
  2. Right-click on the OneDrive folder and select “Properties” from the drop-down menu
  3. Select the “Settings” tab and uncheck “Start syncing this folder to OneDrive”
  4. Click “OK” to save your changes

Conclusion

OneDrive is an excellent platform for file storage and sharing, yet it can become burdensome when every action on your computer is automatically uploaded to the cloud. Thankfully, there are strategies to manage which items are saved to OneDrive and which are not. By turning off auto save, excluding folders from OneDrive, or disabling sync altogether, you can take control of your OneDrive experience.