u/Confident_Shower_202

This morning my partner, who is not the most confident Windows user, came to me with a crisis. They were led down some garden path after, an update I presume, and ended up giving One Drive (unknown at the time) permissions to take control of all the major folders on their system, including those containing Outlook files. When they rebooted Outlook could find no files and could not start. This led to great consternation until eventually I found that the user had inadvertently started a process that remaps all their main folders, moves all their files and starts uploading them to the cloud. This has taken a long time to part fix but Outlook is still in a bit of a mess. Taking control back from OneDrive after it has messed up a file system, mappings and embarked on syncing is not as trivial as it appears. If you get weird messages in Outlook maybe you too have inadvertently told One Drive to move everything and waste your partners time and life. The source of the misleading One Drive process has not yet been identified. I am assuming it was hidden in a routine update process. The main Microsoft community has still not yet helped and have been rather rude. I am trying to assist users on other forums in case they have the same problem. The files appear to all be intact but when they opened Outlook with messed up filesystem mappings it has caused ongoing problems. I am sure they are fixaable but would appreciate any assistance if anyone else ahs faced this issue. Apparently it is a known issue that One Drive messes with Outlook, or that Outlook files and profiles are highly vulnerable to being messed up by One Drive. Like 30+ years of stuff. Most backed up multiple times. But always a pain trying to reconfigure things unnecessarily

Hi

Some of us in this world know to be very careful clicking on any strange popups, especially Microsoft ones. People warn about ransom ware and other scams. For me the pushy One Drive and other forced updates are even more dangerous

Sadly we are the ones who have to bail out all the ignoramuses and others who pay no attention, do not understand, and start some massive, possibly system destroying process.

A few moments careless lack of attention to a pushy massive process. Without even a warning saying that this process could mess up your system and your tech support's life

A bit more consideration for users and those who have to support the ignorant ones would be appreciated

I am going to have to spend the best part of how many days carefully undoing a partial OneDrive sync which took the liberty of moving files such as Outlook files.

How does one of the world's biggest tech corporations get away with a process like that.

I am hoping nothing has been lost or damaged. And sure enough it took a bit of talking to an LLM to find the likely culprit, and observing that a load of files had appeared in her One Drive folder.

That is incompetence in the extreme. Something as massive as rearranging a whole filesystem with a few casual clicks and no warnings. Although I accept some users are so stupid they pay no attention to anything. But I am the one has to waste my life fixing it up.

Please be more considerate to the smart people out here and not expecting others to always fix up other people's messes. Life is short. Very short. Every minute is valuable for some of us. To have it so casually wasted by others including corporations is infuriating

The only good thing about the situation is that the system still appears stable. The process has been paused until we work out how to reverse it. Hopefully no important files were damaged. I am assuming they are just locked and have paths moved messing up any major apps needed to access them. Like Office

My time, which I will never get back. That is priceless. Every second has unlimited value

Maybe someone at Microsoft can post up a neat safe process to restore the system and office apps back to their state of a few hours ago. Save me wasting my life. At the moment I am using LLMs to help me through and theya re not the best always at understanding exact requirements. But they have got me this far and I am taking a break with One Drive paused for 8 hours. Can I tell One Drive to reverse everything it did for the last few hours and put the users system back the way it was. Apparently there is no simple way to tell OneDrive to undo what it has done. Wonderful

Apparently this issue is widely known, as is the damage it can cause to some Office Apps and users lives

And I know the obnoxious attitude of many people on the Internet and Support Forums. Stupid people deserve what happens to them kind of attitude. Well when the stupid person has their system messed by their stupidity it is up to people like me to sort it out and try to advise others of risks and problems. Most of my professional career has been spent helping and fixing up stuid ignorant people's problems. Not paid much either, and usually no thanks, and often having to take responsibility for their stupidity. I though one day I may be able to relax and have a break. But no. And I no longer get paid, even a pittance for it. So the attitude of support people towards people out in the world is never to be tolerated

The only positive in this situation is that the system that is half way being f**ked is fairly simple uses and apps. Only a few. Imagine if it were a complex system setup with thousands of apps